DAVID CAMERON’S moment of triumph was marred last night when he was forced to deny for the first time that he had taken hard drugs since becoming an MP in 2001.

The Conservative leadership candidate had toured the television studios for a round of routine interviews after he cruised to victory in yesterday’s ballot of the party’s MPs.

But Mr Cameron, who has consistently deflected questions about his drugs use with the same formula that it was a “private matter” but that he had made “mistakes” before he entered politics was hijacked on Channel 4 News.

Mr Cameron was repeatedly and specifically asked whether he had ever “snorted cocaine” since entering Parliament as MP for Witney.

A rattled Mr Cameron said that he had not, but that the issue had already been dealt with. Alex Thomson, the interviewer, pressed him to say “no” — he had never taken drugs. Mr Cameron, to the alarm of his campaign advisers, was drawn into an area that he had hoped had been put to rest last weekend.

Many Tory activists, who regard the young pretender as the heir apparent to Michael Howard, may have assumed that drugs use, if any, would have been confined to the period when Mr Cameron was at Oxford University in the 1980s. His response, however — alluding only to the time when he was an MP — now means that he will face repeated questioning in media interviews as to whether he had taken hard drugs when he worked at Carlton Television, in corporate affairs, from 1996.

In 1997 Mr Cameron stood for Parliament in Stafford. Any candidate who was proven to have taken hard drugs while representing the Tory party in an election would face possible ejection from the organisation.

Mr Cameron, who secured a decisive advantage in the MPs’ poll over David Davis and has seen opinion polls pointing to a comfortable victory in the contest with grassroot activists, will now desperately try to turn attention on to his plans to reform the party.

Mr Davis, his rival for the Tory crown, has already intensified the pressure by declaring in a Channel 4 interview last weekend that no one who had “recently” taken hard drugs could be leader of the Conservative Party or Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron’s aides now face several weeks in which the drugs question could again become a pressing issue. One MP who voted for Mr Cameron said last night: “They probably should have dealt with it during the Tory party conference. I just hope that David has not forced himself into a corner.

“The trouble is his answer tonight is going to lead journalists, and maybe some of our members, to ask even more uncomfortable questions.”

Mr Cameron already faces another anxious weekend as some Sunday newspapers have been poring over his past to try to find evidence that he may have taken drugs after he left university.

WHAT HE SAID - AND WHAT HE DIDN'T SAY

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