Dear Boris, Michael, Jeremy, Dominic, Sajid, Matt, Rory, Mark, Andrea, Sam and Esther.
Blimey there’s a lot of you, but thank you all for volunteering. I think you’d all be fantastic at the job of Prime Minister, and it’s sad to think that ten of you will be disappointed. I love long lists, and the pulsating tension as they gradually reduce to the last man standing. Personally, I’m going for Mark, if that’s OK, as I’ve never heard of him. Possibly Sam, as I’m not sure I’ve heard of him either. Or Rory, because he is cool and walked across Afghanistan.
Like you, I’m not too fussed about Brexit, or tax, or the economy or the NHS either, and I’m glad to see that you aren’t wasting good time coming up with policies for any of them. They’re just a talking shop, if you ask me. Over-rated. A matter for mere pedants. A distraction to the real business of this campaign. What would the 124,000 Tory members want with policies to choose from, when they could have more important things like how the candidates plan to give Johnny Brussels a bloody nose?
No, the pith and sinew of this leadership campaign just has to be the exhileratingly wide range of recreational drugs that you cover between you, and I am secretly proud to live in a country where, for example, my next Prime Minister might be barred access from the United States on account of over-indulging in white powder. Or flour. It has given me a glimpse into a country that I had feared obsolete and, personally, I thoroughly support the idea of upper middle class stoners opining freely on the wretchedness of the drug culture among the underclass.
Personally, I’m not sophisticated enough to have snorted cocaine (although now I’m writing books, you never know!), well-travelled enough to have had opium, or brave enough to have downed a cannabis lassi in some Indian bazaar. Most of the substance adventures I had in my teens either involved bostik for my sticking the bits of my model aircraft together, or tobacco laced with pencil shavings that I paid a fortune for and inhaled on the basis that I thought that being self-consciously cool would pass the time before my acne faded.
My point is this. Have a TV hustings, by all means, where that nice girl from Newsnight grills each of you in front of a hand-picked studio audience. But make it about drugs, not boring stuff like policy. With the experience you have between you (or definitely not, apparently, if you’re called Matt or Sajid), I think you could enlighten us lesser mortals to the sheer breadth of what is available these days, where to get it from and how much to pay for it.
I’m not saying, but in the challenging days to come, we may all be extremely grateful for the tips.
Kindest regards, and good luck!
Roger
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