Michael Gove admits to taking cocaine 'on several occasions'

The Environment Secretary said he used the drug 20 years ago and branded it "a mistake".

He made the confession ahead of the release of his new biography, written by political journalist Owen Bennett.

According to the new biography, Gove admitted to taking cocaine when aides attempted to predict what kinds of questions the media would ask during his Tory leadership bid in 2016. He said "yes, cocaine" when asked if he’d taken drugs.

It comes after fellow Tory contender Rory Stewart apologised for smoking opium at a wedding in Iran.

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Gove told the Daily Mail: "I took drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago.

"At the time I was a young journalist. It was a mistake. I look back and think 'I wish I hadn't done that'."

He added: "It was 20 years ago and yes, it was a mistake. But I don't believe that past mistakes disqualify you."

Gove, MP for Surrey Heath, said it would be up to his colleagues whether he should be leader, but added that he did not "act with an eye" on going into politics when he was younger.

"The question now is that people should look at my record as a politician and ask themselves 'is this person we see ready to lead now?'," he said.

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Speaking to Sky News last week, International Development Secretary Stewart said: "I think it was a very stupid mistake and I did it 15 years ago, and I actually went on in Iran to see the damage that opium was doing to communities."

He added: "I've seen it as a prisons minister. It was something that was very wrong, I made a stupid mistake.

"I was at a wedding in a large community meeting and somebody passed this pipe around the room and I smoked it – I shouldn't have done, I was wrong."

Following Gove's cocaine admission, leadership rival Dominic Raab said: "I certainly don't see it barring him from this race in any way," adding: "I rather admire his honesty."

Raab, who has previously admitted taking cannabis as a student, told BBC Radio 4's Today: "It was a long time ago and pretty few and far between. I have never taken cocaine or any class A drugs."

He said class A drugs "are a bit different" but "I'm not going to cast any further aspersions on Michael or anyone else who is just honest about being human and doing the things that some young people do – not everyone, obviously – and holding their hand up and saying 'I got that wrong, move on'".

Fellow contender Jeremy Hunt told the Times he had a "cannabis lassi", a yoghurt-based drink, when he was backpacking through India in his youth.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, the bookies' favourite in the race to succeed Theresa May, confessed to trying cocaine and smoking cannabis as a teenager at Oxford in a magazine interview in 2007.

The Tory MP told GQ: "I tried it at university and I remember it vividly. And it achieved no pharmacological, psychotropic or any other effect on me whatsoever."

On cannabis he said: "There was a period before university when I had quite a few (cannabis joints). It was jolly nice. But apparently it is very different these days. Much stronger.

"I've become very illiberal about it. I don't want my kids to take drugs."

Fellow Old Etonian David Cameron refused to be drawn on the subject of drug taking, saying in 2007: "Like many people, I did things when I was young that I shouldn't have done and that I regret.

"But I do believe that politicians are entitled to a past that remains private".

In 2005, his friend the then shadow chancellor George Osborne was forced to deny taking drugs after newspapers printed a picture of him with his arm around a woman described as a "cocaine-snorting hooker".

Osborne suggested he was the victim of a "smear campaign", adding: "The allegations are completely untrue, and dredging up a photo from when I was 22 years old is pretty desperate stuff."

In 2007, several ministers in Gordon Brown's government, including chancellor Alistair Darling, home secretary Jacqui Smith and deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, admitted using cannabis in their youth.

Yvette Cooper, then minister for housing, said cannabis use at university was "something that I have left behind" while Andy Burnham, now Mayor of Greater Manchester, admitted smoking the drug.

In 1992, US presidential hopeful Bill Clinton famously said he tried marijuana while at Oxford University but "didn't inhale".

The remark has been lampooned many times, including by then senator Barack Obama in 2006, who said: "When I was a kid, I inhaled ... that was the point".

Obama also admitted to using "a little blow" (cocaine) in his first book Dreams From My Father.