Will Sir Keir be quizzed on drug past in revenge for Rishi attacks?

Sir Keir Starmer risks opening himself up to personal attacks – including questions about whether he has taken drugs – by sanctioning controversial attack adverts on Rishi Sunak, senior Labour figures have warned.

Labour has been split over the new strategy, which launched with a Twitter post accusing the Prime Minister of not wanting child sex abusers to go to jail.

It was branded ‘gutter politics’ by critics, with some internal Labour opponents fearing it could lead to the Conservatives launching a more personal campaign against their leader.

One possible line of attack could be the question of whether Sir Keir has ever taken illegal drugs.

In a 2021 interview, Piers Morgan asked him 14 times whether he had ever taken drugs, only to get the response: ‘We worked hard and played hard.’

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer visits a medical ward training facility at Middlesbrough College

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a gala dinner at Hillsborough Castle

Mr Morgan then pressed Sir Keir to give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, saying: ‘Given your clear reluctance to give me a straight, simple answer, am I right in assuming from your response that you have tried drugs but that you didn’t actually like them and didn’t want to take any more?’

Sir Keir said: ‘I haven’t said no.’

Red Knight, an unauthorised biography of Sir Keir by Lord Ashcroft, quotes an anonymous friend saying the Labour leader was ‘not averse to smoking weed at social occasions when he was a younger man’.

In contrast, when Mr Sunak was asked during last summer’s Tory leadership contest whether he had ever taken drugs, he replied with an unequivocal ‘no’.

We revealed earlier this month that the attack adverts were hatched to neutralise headlines describing Sir Keir Starmer as ‘Sir Softy’ for his record on crime.

It sparked controversy within Labour, with former Home Secretary David Blunkett saying: ‘My party is better than this.’ But Sir Keir said that he made ‘zero apologies’ for the strategy.

It has already put Sir Keir’s track record on crime under renewed scrutiny. In 2020, he campaigned against the deportation of Tajay Thompson back to Jamaica after serving half of a 15-month sentence for drug dealing. After the 26-year-old’s flight was grounded by the legal challenge Thompson went on to beat two women.

The Prime Minister used the ‘Sir Softy’ label to attack the Labour leader in the Commons last week, saying he was ‘soft on crime, soft on criminals’.

Boris Johnson has previously admitted he had smoked ‘quite a few spliffs’ at university, and said: ‘I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar.’

In February, Sir Keir said an incoming Labour government would crack down on drug dealing by supporting neighbourhood policing.

A Labour spokesman declined to comment last night.