The Joke: Part Six

The show-trial and public execution of journalist Toby You

1

Thursday 11 January 2018. Question Time. Audience, approximately 2 million. Arguably, the most important political programme on British television. Subject for discussion: the resignation from the Office for Students of Toby Young.

On the panel that night:

Dawn Butler MP, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities

Presenter and interviewer Piers Morgan, presenter and interviewer

Dominic Raab, Tory MP and Housing Minister

Nish Kumar, Mash Report presenter and comedian Nish Kumar

Gina Miller, the businesswoman who had so strenuously fought against Brexit.

All divisive, Marmite characters who ignited arguments around themselves and were hate-figures for about half the country – much like Young himself.

The inevitable question about Young came about 20 minutes into the programme, from a young man named Josh Anthony. 

JA: “With the resignation of Toby Young, are we giving in to mob rule by a snowflake generation?”

Piers Morgan opened and sounded, for once, like the voice of reason. Young had made some distasteful comments, he admitted. Angela Rayner and Dawn Butler had led a charge against him and got their scalp. That was that.

But, he went on, the matter raised “the question of double-standards and hypocrisy.” As an example of these he mentioned the Labour MP Jared O’Mara (jailed in 2023 for fraud) who had been suspended for, among other things, tweeting that fat women “did not deserve respect” and inviting the members of Girls Aloud for an orgy. One MP particularly stood up for O’Mara at the time, claiming that “People change their views… He says he’s been on a journey since then, and doesn’t hold those views any more.”

O’Mara’s defender – the irony was lost on no one – was Angela Rayner MP, who together with Dawn Butler had the previous week led the attack on Young for comments mostly made nine years previously. 

Dominic Raab also defended Young, pointing out his record of putting “heart and soul” into setting up free schools and helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds. It was a shame, Raab said, that Young was now being ruined for once “taking things too far.”

But Dawn Butler, not to be deterred, repeated her usual allegation – demonstrably incorrect - that Young had been accused of sexual harassment “just over twelve months ago,”  and that he’d also, in the same time-period, hired a strippergram “on the day of take our daughters to day work” [sic].

“That shows,” she cried, “that shows what he’s like as a person.”

2

Things went up a notch. A young woman from the audience, quivering with outrage, started to speak. “I’m a student… and frankly what Toby Young says is just DISGUSTING… It’s frankly DESPICABLE that he was ever put forward. It’s just RIDICULOUS.”

Gina Miller added her euro’s worth to the debate. “You cannot have someone in public office who’s behaving like this and I don’t know how incompetent the screening process must have been to actually let him get into that position.” As for Young’s jokes: “To have someone thinking it’s a joke, or laughing or thinking it’s funny… you have no right to degrade another person… I’m sorry, but you don’t.”

Loud applause.

Nish Kumar, when it was his turn to speak, gave a masterclass in playing to the gallery, reminding you of why this very average comedian had carved out such a thriving career for himself. He referred back to a joke he’d made about Piers Morgan (“What would happen if someone injected a gammon steak with privilege?”), to much audience laughter. He namechecked the younger generation – weirdly – saying that he deplored the term “snowflake”: “You can’t castigate a whole generation for taking appropriate measures when you look at someone who’s been involved in tertiary education.” What Young said might have raised free speech issues, Kumar said, but Young should also realise that “there is [sic] consequences to the things you say” and that that free speech he’d taken advantage of might “preclude [him] from certain jobs.”

It was the usual argument – you want free speech? Then accept the cancellation that follows.

But Kumar was just warming towards what he really wanted to say. “We’re talking a lot about Toby Young, the things that he said. What about the things he’s done?”

Ah – was Kumar going to discuss the four free schools now?  

No. He was not.

What about the recent news, Kumar demanded, that Young had attended at UCL a eugenics conference?

“That is some dark, Nazi stuff man, and that is not acceptable in modern education.”  

3

This point went more or less unquestioned – it might well have been, as we shall see – and was effectively the knockout blow to Young’s reputation. But Kumar, after a pause, came back for more. 

“I’m profoundly sick of people like Toby Young who describes himself as a journalistic provocateur, who professionally are essentially unpleasant people, and that’s what they do, they do things to get a reaction. And then, when they get a reaction, they throw the toys out of the pram. Grow up!”

4

And then it was all over. After more than fifteen minutes, before a TV audience of about 2 million people, Young’s battered reputation was in the trash-can. Dawn Butler looked pleased with herself. Mission accomplished.

Did it matter that she was an MP accused of having spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a jacuzzi, or that she had allegedly claimed nearly £3000 too much in rent?

Not much – it really didn’t. The same went for the Twitter-attacks on Jamie Oliver for his “Punchy Jerk rice,” and her statement that “90% of giraffes are gay.” Arguably Butler was her own worst victim here, achieving little more than making a punchy jerk of herself.

But what about her willingness to destroy the career and reputation of someone she had apparently done so little to research. Did this matter?

Yes, it mattered. It really mattered. This was nasty, cut-throat stuff – a ruthless political kill. It was the most damning – and defining – of marks against her.

To adapt Butler herself: that showed you, that showed you what she was like as a person.

5

Others too revealed something of themselves at this time. Dr Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University – where Young held a visiting fellowship – had at first come out in support of him, claiming that what he would bring to the Office for Students would be “heterodox, lively and spoken with strength and experience.”

Eight days later, on January 10, Seldon jumped ship. You could not, he said, have such a person – “who has made grossly offensive comments for so long” – on a public education body, even if he had apologised. In the week beginning 15 January Buckingham University wrote to Young, informing him that he no longer held an honorary post there as Visiting Fellow.

6

But perhaps the cruellest blow of all came from a Guardian journalist called Peter Wilby, an associate of Young’s late father, who had in 2011 had written a broadly supportive – though not uncritical – article about Young’s Free Schools project.

Now, seven years later in another piece, the tone had changed. Wilby accused Young of  “disgracing his father’s memory… I’m astonished the government appointed him to the regulator’s board and even more astonished that he accepted… If the argument between the two is still going on, Young junior is losing it.”

Young later described this as one of the worst moments of the lot. “It was as if he was taking me aside into a dark room, handing me a glass of whisky and a revolver and telling me to do the decent thing.”

7

The Wilby attack would have an interesting coda five years on (of which more later). Right now, Young didn’t commit suicide, but he did do something not altogether different.

On March 24 he quit as Head of the New Schools Network Charity.

On March 29 he stepped down as Director of the Knowledge Schools Trust – which ran the West London Free School and its three affiliated schools.

And that was it. Toby Young had been as effectively vaporised from the world of education as it was possible to imagine.

Ave Atque Vale. And the grey river runs on.