IT'S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW OR WHO YOU KNOW, IT'S WHICH RULE YOU BREAK

I've never smoked dope. There... the shameful truth is out.
Confession being the better part of valour (or something like that)
it's time to make a clean breast of things, boot skeletons out of
closets and own up. I didn't do drugs. I haven't used cannabis. I'm
not the Home Secretary and now I know why.

I'm sorry. Truly, I am. Had I known the route to success, influence
and a chauffeur driven Jaguar was to be found in pot, ganja, hash,
skunk, weed - or whatever it was that went into those roll-ups enjoyed
by so many of this country's decision makers and legislators - I might
have thought differently about best use of teenage leisure time and
paper round money.

But I didn't. I was a girl who thought rules had reasons. When told
not to walk on the grass, I didn't. I didn't light it up and inhale
either.

It was a silly, juvenile mistake. I realise that now. Jacqui Smith got
it right - she didn't get to where she is today without breaking
rules. She experimented with marijuana as a teenager. I toyed with
Pony, "The little drink with the big kick", and Consulate menthol
cigarettes - because obviously if they tasted of mints they couldn't
smell of smoke.

But Ms Smith's illegal activities have led her to the top law and
order job in the land. My legal ones have put me out on the pavement
like an ostracised stray. Serves me right. I should have smoked dope.

David Cameron also alludes to dalliances with unlawful substances in
his youth. A tad mysterious about the whole thing, he avoids nailing
the subject on the head, preferring the enigmatic stance when asked if
he used something harder than cannabis.

But nobody could really expect a guy with a Hugh Grant hairdo to stoop
to demeaning straight talking, could they? Avoiding the issue goes
with his territory - or will when he finds one. Nevertheless, that
dilly-dally position of admitting to having done things of which he
couldn't be proud (like adding lime to his lager, perhaps?) hasn't
done him any harm either.

Clearly it's not what you know - nor even who you know - but which
rule you choose to break that catapults you into the lofty, exclusive
club of high achievers. Pretending you're old enough to get into the
cinema to see The Exorcist evidently doesn't count. Wearing a
Wonderbra to order a vodka and lime at the bar while still underage
cuts no ice either. If it had, I might have managed a shot at Culture
Secretary, at least.

The chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling has admitted to
drugs dabbling in his past - though I suspect he says so only to make
himself seem more interesting. The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly;
the business secretary, John Hutton; and the chief secretary to the
treasury, Andy Burnham have all done it too.

Skills secretary, John Denham, and the deputy Labour leader, Harriet
Harman, also admit they have broken the law by smoking cannabis.

Ms Harman said she did, when at university, smoke cannabis once or
twice (yeah, right) but added she had not smoked the drug since then:
"I have indulged in the odd glass of fine wine but not cannabis."

She probably thinks that makes her seem a bit cool - though usefully
middle class enough to hold onto her Labour seat in the Commons. Wine
is the new pot, sort of thing - unless it's a supermarket chardonnay,
of course. Don't think so Harriet.

Housing minister, Yvette Cooper, and communities secretary, Hazel
Blears, have both previously admitted taking the drug in the past. And
now I'm thoroughly cheesed off because I think I'm the only person in
the world who never did and I can't get past the idea that that's why
they are where they are today and - well, I'm not.

Mumsy Hazel Blears doing drugs! Good grief! Even her! They'll tell us
John Prescott took ballet lessons next.

It's terribly disappointing to learn that growing up trying hard to
behave yourself, to make elders and betters proud of your attempts to
resist stepping wide of the straight and narrow, was all one huge
waste of time and effort. It's a let down to discover too late that
the Brownie points you expected all went to the naughty kids who had a
better time... even though they don't remember it as well as they'd
like to.

Elders and betters sold us cider at the off-licence on youth club
nights and cigarettes singly (two matches included) at the sweet shop
beside our school gates - and made us promise not to do drugs. Now the
politically correct health police are chasing and punishing us for
doing as we were told and laughing out loud about their own fun,
doping up to the gills on the sly.

It makes honest, logical sense only as a first rate con trick, pulled
by the "getting away with it" gang. Confessions in long distance
retrospect mend little now. They simply add weight to the 11th
commandment... don't get caught.

Are we bothered that everybody who is anybody with the power to tell
us all what to do is now proudly wearing the badge of the transgressor
and rubbing law-abiders' noses in tough luck? Not especially. Some of
us had started wondering ages ago what it might have been that boiled
their brains in youth.

Skeletons fall from cupboards all the time. The rattle of old brittle
bones as they tumble into the open entertain for very limited periods.
Then we realise our laughter can be but a fleeting thing. Soon the
depressing truth hits home - that there's rarely any truth in politics.

Do we think less of them for keeping their secrets while climbing
slippery slopes to that moral high ground from which they issue their
edicts of virtue, good health, best practice, respect - and punishment
for getting caught? Not me - but if truth be known, I couldn't have
thought less of them if I tried.

Now in service to a prime minister insisting that no spin is the new
spin, they're competing to find sins more murky than the next man's to
curry favour with the boss and win close connection with the man and
woman at the ballot box.

Fine, you go for it, boys and girls. Let's hear what you did behind
the bike sheds, what you traded at your teen discos, which illegal
substances you shared in your halls of residence or passed round at
your uni parties. Just don't expect too much political capital to be
made from your youthful misdemeanours because your almost boastful
confessions leave but one lasting impression.

You're a let-down. Your proud and loudly declared membership of the
getting-away-with-it gang negates so much of your own generation's
belief in what seemed to be right at the time - that the straight and
narrow led to its own reward, that saying no to drugs was commendable,
that respect for the wisdom of elders and betters was a given.

What you have taught us confirms what we suspected you'd been working
towards all the time you were clawing your way up that slippery slope
of self-seeking ambition.

Finally you achieved it. Finally we understand. Your rules have no
reasons. They never did have. They were made to be broken by those
with success and privilege in their sights.

Now try convincing urban estate kids your rules are good for them but
your drugs are not... you can't can you?