The Joke: Part Three

The show-trial and public execution of journalist Toby Young

1

On 5 January, there were two developments.

In 2001, seventeen years before, Young had written an article for the Spectator discussing film certification and pornography. In it, he enthused about a mildly titillating programme called The Glamour Game on a non-premium channel, which Young admitted was “basically pure porn.” But was pornography automatically a bad thing? In its defence, Young wrote: “All I can say is that, at least so far, my own obsession with porn hasn’t endangered my marriage.” The article’s headline, put in place by a cheeky sub-editor was “Confessions of a Porn Addict.”

Now the Evening Standard , alerted to this “historical” piece, produced a headline of their own: “New pressure on Theresa May to sack ‘porn addict’ Toby Young from watchdog role.’” Shadow Women and Equalities Minister Dawn Butler said Prime Minister May could be accused of “wilfully rewarding misogyny, homophobia and bigotry.”

Few of us knew the name Dawn Butler before this week. Within a few days we would know it very well.

2

On the weekend of January 6-7 three more articles were published about Toby Young. They were very different in tone and content. The first was by Janice Turner for the Times. Entitled “Toby Young believes in nothing but Tobyism,” it had this to say: “Toby was foul, duplicitous and sloppy: the most obnoxious writer I ever employed.” He had, she went on,  “this bizarre addiction to the worst kind of attention, like a child who defecates in the bath.” He was “a solipsist, a Tobyist. Beyond himself, he doesn’t believe in anything at all.” Describing Young, as an “onanistic monkey in his public cage” she finished: “Like a weekend masochist at an S&M dungeon who has forgotten his ‘safe word’, he is being properly beaten up. But there is no one else he can blame.”

This kind of article – score-settling or perhaps simply seizing the chance to make a journalistic splash – was becoming routine. Colleagues had clearly discovered their inner hyena. And Young, with his notorious brashness and his tendency to provoke, had clearly upset more than a few people over the years.

3

The second article appeared in the Daily Mail and was headed thus.

“PM’s disgust at student tsar Toby Young’s sordid tweets: May slams obscene and sexist posts by university watchdog as female MPs call for his scalp.”

You couldn’t help noticing an economy with the truth here. From being an equal member on a board of fifteen colleagues tasked with overseeing standards in the universities, Young had been promoted by the Mail to “student tsar.” The deliberately misleading inflation begun by the Guardian (“to help lead the government’s new universities regulator”) had now been embellished by its right-wing, tabloid counterpart. Those who called the Guardian the “Daily Mail of the Left” were perhaps onto something.

4

The third article was very different in tone, and was written by Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, for whom Young worked.

Nelson had already defended Young on the Andrew Marr show on 7 January, in conversation with the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee.

“He is a journalist, Polly,” Nelson pointed out. “Like you and me. But the difference between him and us is that he actually went out there to shape, to improve the situation.”

“Because he wanted to create a school for his kids,” Toynbee muttered. “That was his motivation.”

Nelson’s response was pointed: “Yes. It’s better than sending them private, as some columnists I could mention.”

Toynbee had part-educated her own children in the private sector.

5

Now Nelson returned to this theme in his weekend column.  The Toby Young recently attacked in the newspapers was, he added, someone he “just did not recognise. Someone who… only cares about himself. If so, why would he go to so much trouble for hundreds of children from families that he doesn’t’ know? Why would he be running the New Schools Network, a charity, and give up better-paid, easier work to make time for it?”

“People,” Nelson finished, “should be judged by what they do with their lives, not by the worst of their bad jokes. And it might drive Toby’s critics mad, but he has done more for others in the last few years than most of his critics will do in a lifetime.”