Anne Widdecombe or 'Doris Karloff' ('Morticia on Pies' we like to call her) is the Tory Shadow Home Secretary. Last month she tried to outbid Tony and Jack in the 'get tough' on drugs game. The problem is trying to get to the right of New Labour on this one. Remember they're the ones who are giving us compulsory treatment, mandatory drug testing of all arrestees for Class A's (coming soon), funding for mutant fungi to attack drug plants and so on. How do you top all that?

So Doris decided to have a go at weed. When the Tories get back in, she told the Conservative conference last month, there would be "zero tolerance of possession". No more cautioning. £100 automatic fine on the spot and a criminal record for every smoker caught. (Jack Staw's kid would have been in trouble). The 'hang 'em and flog 'em' brigade, who make up the audience at Tory conferences, lapped it up. Wild cheering and break out the champagne on the platform. There they all were, guzzling alcohol to celebrate a speech on the "scourge of drugs". The hypocrisy of this seemed to escape everyone. But then what do you expect from a party with a bald prat of a leader who's constantly going on about how much he can drink - "14 pints a day when I was a lad", "I once drank 32 rum and blacks". So fucking what? Grow up baldy and get a life. As if anyone is interested anyway.

The point is that, once they'd sobered up, they realised Doris had shot them in the foot. The Dibble immediately said "We would not support this proposal" and pointed out that they were short enough of coppers as it was without chasing millions of weed smokers. Then someone did the sums and worked out that around I in 4 adult Britons had smoked or did smoke draw. Hang on, that's 1 in 4 voters. Ooops, and suddenly it seemed that Doris had gone too far and the back pedaling began. Particularly when they saw the headlines in the papers next day. The Mirror's front page screamed 'Doris the Dope' and all the editorials suggested the proposals were stupid. Then half the Shadow Cabinet revealed that they'd tried it 'once' and didn't like it. A MORI Poll showed there was now a majority for decriminalisation. Tony and Jack said as little as possible and the papers had a field day making jokes about politicians and pot for a week. There's a number of lessons here. First, it's impossible to be more right wing than this government when it comes to drugs. Second, there's votes in drugs. As more generations who have used drugs grow into adult voters, we get more voters who know the truth about drugs. This makes it harder for politicians to tell porkies about them. If all drug using voters and their families and friends started telling politicians that they'll only vote for parties with sensible drug policies, maybe we could stop the slide into a drugs war? Just a thought.

I.T.S. Nottwright