UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly is facing mounted calls for his resignation after making jokes about spiking his wife’s drink with a date rape drug at a Downing Street reception.
Cleverly swiftly apologised for making the remarks hours after the Home Office announced plans to crack down on the increasing trend of putting drugs into another person’s drink or directly into their body without their knowledge.
Protesters said his comments were likely to upset and trigger victims of spiking and sexual assault, and called for an overhaul of attitudes that normalised banter about date rape and coercive control.
Home Secretary Cleverly had told guests at a Downing Street reception that “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit”.
He also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was making sure your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there”.
Conversations at Downing Street receptions are usually understood to be off the record, but a news medium said it decided to break that convention because of Cleverley’s position and the subject matter.
A spokesperson for the home secretary said: “In what was always understood as a private conversation, James, the home secretary, tackling spiking made what was clearly meant to be an ironic joke for which he apologises.”
The home secretary has previously described tackling violence against women and girls as a “personal priority” and called spiking – when someone puts drugs into another person’s drink or directly into their body without their knowledge or consent – a “perverse” crime.
According to a Home Office report, Police receive an average of 561 reports of spiking a month, with the majority being made by women, typically after incidents in or near bars and nightclubs. Between May 2022 and April 2023, there were 6,732 reports of spiking in England and Wales including 957 reported incidents of needle spiking.
