Editorials

What Annoyed the Internet Last Week?

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10 June 2019

By Bronwen

In a strange turn of events, it has been revealed that nearly all of the candidates for the Conservative Party leadership have hit the bong or snorted a line at some point in their lives. The only candidate who hasn’t had a big drug reveal is Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who actually spoke out about middle class drug users and the hypocrisy of it all.

As news broke of more and more Tories confessing to drug use, the Internet was quick to react.

The first observation that most people made instantly was the double standard between the reaction to Michael Gove taking class A drugs and the reaction to Diane Abbott having tiny can of mojito on a train.


It was only a few weeks ago I was writing about the ridiculous backlash Abbott received over the mojito fiasco. The Sun published an article with the headline ‘Labour’s Diane Abbott breaks the law by swigging can of mojito on the train home‘- notice the emphasis on the ‘law’.

Reporting on Gove’s cocaine use, the same newspaper’s headline was: ‘MICHAEL Gove hosted a cocaine-fuelled party hours after slamming the evils of hard drugs, it was claimed last night‘. What struck me with this headline was the emphasis on the fact that it was ‘claimed’, meaning it may or may not be true.

While the tabloids may have had it out for Abbott, the whole of Twitter seemed to have her back. The opposite can be said for Gove and the other Tory leadership candidates..

As soon as the news went viral, all anyone wanted to do was laugh at Gove, Johnson, Leadsom and the other MPs who’ve been named in the scandal.

https://twitter.com/katemoulesx/status/1137496713382551556

Boris Johnson seems to have found a loophole in which sneezing the coke out means it didn’t really count.

The best response came in the comment section of a Sky News tweet about a man who left a bag of drugs on a train.

Many news outlets suggest that the next Prime Minister will be Gove or Johnson. It’s unlikely that this scandal will affect their chances given the double standards mentioned above.

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