The Lord Young of Acton | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Young in 2011 | |
| Director of theFree Speech Union | |
| Assumed office 24 February 2020 | |
| Non-Executive Member of the Board of theOffice for Students | |
| In office 2 January 2018 – 9 January 2018 | |
| Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal | |
| Assumed office 21 January 2025 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Toby Daniel Moorsom Young (1963-10-17)17 October 1963 (age 62) Buckinghamshire, England |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Parent | |
| Education | Brasenose College, Oxford Harvard University Trinity College, Cambridge (did not graduate) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
Toby Daniel Moorsom Young, Baron Young of Acton (born 17 October 1963), is a British social commentator andConservativelife peer.[1] He is the founder and director of theFree Speech Union,[2][3] an associate editor ofThe Spectator,[4] creator ofThe Daily Sceptic blog and a former associate editor atQuillette.[5]
A graduate of theUniversity of Oxford, Young briefly worked forThe Times, before co-founding the London magazineModern Review in 1991. He edited it until financial difficulties led to its demise in 1995. His 2001 memoir,How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, details his subsequent employment atVanity Fair. He then went on to write forThe Sun on Sunday, theDaily Mail,The Daily Telegraph, andThe Spectator. He also served as a judge in series five and six of the television showTop Chef.[6] A proponent offree schools, Young co-founded theWest London Free School and served as director of theNew Schools Network.
In 2015 Young wrote an article in advocacy of genetically engineered intelligence, which he described as "progressiveeugenics".[7] In early January 2018, he was briefly a non-executive director on the board of theOffice for Students,[8] an appointment from which he resigned within a few days afterTwitter posts described as "misogynistic and homophobic" were uncovered.[9] In 2020, press regulatorIndependent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) found Young to have promotedmisinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic in aDaily Telegraph column.[10][11]
Born inBuckinghamshire, Young was brought up inHighgate,North London, and inSouth Devon. His mother Sasha (1931–1993), daughter of Raisley Stewart Moorsom, a descendant of Admiral SirRobert Moorsom, who fought at theBattle of Trafalgar,[12][13] was a BBC Radio producer, artist and writer,[14] and his father wasMichael Young (later Lord Young of Dartington), aLabourlife peer andsociologist who popularized the wordmeritocracy.[15] Although entitled to use the styleThe Hon. Toby Young,[16] he did not.[17]
Young attendedCreighton School (nowFortismere School),Muswell Hill andKing Edward VI Community College,Totnes.[citation needed] Young later wrote that he was not popular at school: "My only friend was a black boy called Remi, who explained that the reason he'd taken a shine to me was because he knew what it was like to be a 'nigger'."[18] He left school at 16, having failed all but one of hisO Levels (the pass was a C in English Literature[19]). He then retook his O Levels and went to the Sixth Form ofWilliam Ellis School,Highgate, leaving with two Bs and a C atA Level. Having applied to studyphilosophy, politics and economics (PPE) atOxford University, he had been given a conditional offer of three Bs plus an O Level pass in a foreign language fromBrasenose College, under anInner London Education Authority scheme to provide university access to comprehensive pupils. Despite failing to meet that offer, he was awarded a place to study at the college.[20][21][22] Young said he was sent an acceptance letter by mistake, as well as a letter of rejection from the admissions tutorHarry Judge. In an article he wrote forThe Spectator, he said that his father phoned Judge to clarify the situation – Judge was in a meeting with the PPE tutors at the time, and after some discussion, they decided to offer Young a place owing to a moral obligation the mistaken acceptance created.[22][23]
Young graduated in 1986 with afirst in PPE, and then worked forThe Times for six months as a news trainee until he was fired for (according to Young himself) hacking the computer system, impersonating the editorCharles Wilson and circulating information about senior executives' salaries to others around the building.[24][25] He was awarded aFulbright Scholarship and studied atHarvard then spent two years atTrinity College, Cambridge, where he carried out research for aPhD which he left without completing.[23]
In 1991, Young co-founded and co-edited theModern Review withJulie Burchill and her then husbandCosmo Landesman. Its motto was "Low culture for highbrows".[26] "The whole enterprise was driven by one fairly simple idea", Young said in 2005. "And that was that critics had a responsibility to take the best popular culture as seriously as the best high culture".[26]
Four years later the magazine was close to financial collapse and Young closed it down, angering his principal financial backerPeter York, as well as Burchill and staff writerCharlotte Raven.[27] Burchill had tried to replace Young as editor with Raven. "Ultimately the reason we fell out is because our relationship began as a kind of mentor-apprentice, and that was a kind of relationship which Julie was comfortable with. It was only when I succeeded in getting out from under her shadow that our relationship deteriorated", Young said in 2005.[28]
Young moved to New York City shortly afterwards to work forVanity Fair. In the time he wrote for the magazine he contributed 3,000 words, and was paid $85,000.[29] After being sacked byVanity Fair in 1998, he stayed in New York for two more years, working as a columnist for theNew York Press, before returning to the UK in 2000. A memoir of these years,How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, was published in 2001.[30]
FollowingJack Davenport, Young performed in theWest End one-man stage adaptation ofHow to Lose Friends and Alienate People in 2004. Theatre criticLyn Gardner gave it a one star review commenting that "The curious thing about this is that Young's day job is as theatre critic of theSpectator. You would think he might have developed some respect for the job that actors do. Clearly not. But then, neither does he appear to have picked up any tips on acting along the way."[31] A review inThe Stage stated, "Despite Young's previous thespic experience being the only student at Anna Scher’s drama school not to get a part inGrange Hill and having been fired after a week as an extra on the filmAnother Country, he gives a thoroughly convincing performance as himself…".[32] TheEvening Standard praised his performance.[33] In 2005, he co-wrote (with fellowSpectator journalist Lloyd Evans) a sex farce about theDavid Blunkett/Kimberley Quinn intrigue and the "Sextator" affairs ofBoris Johnson andRod Liddle calledWho's the Daddy?[34][35] It was named as the Best New Comedy at the2006 Theatregoers' Choice Awards.[36] The following yearA Right Royal Farce, Young and Evans' play about sexual antics of theBritish royal family was poorly received by the press.[35][37] Young said of the play "It was an unqualified disaster".[35] It received scathing reviews from theEvening Standard[35] andThe Guardian.[37]
From 2002 to 2007, Young wrote a restaurant column for theEvening Standard and claimed in aPM (BBC Radio 4) club membership discussion (20 March 2024) withEvan Davis that he was previouslyblackballed from joining theGarrick Club, a decade earlier, for criticising their catering in his column, while working for theEvening Standard. He later authored a restaurant column forThe Independent on Sunday. In addition to serving as a judge onTop Chef, Young has competed in theChannel 4 TV seriesCome Dine with Me, appearing as one of the panel of food critics in the 2008BBC Two seriesEating with the Enemy and served as a judge onHell's Kitchen.[38]
Young is an associate editor ofThe Spectator, where he writes a weekly column, the editor ofSpectator Life[4] and a regular contributor to theDaily Mail andThe Daily Telegraph.[39] HisTelegraph blog was long-listed for the2012 George Orwell Prize for blogging.[40] He was a political columnist forThe Sun on Sunday for its first 11 months.[41]
During the2015 Labour leadership election, he encouraged readers of the politically conservativeDaily Telegraph to join the Labour party and supportJeremy Corbyn, who Young thought was the weakest candidate.[42]
In February 2020, Young co-founded theFree Speech Union.[43] In November 2021 he was awarded the 2021Contrarian Prize.[44]
In 2019, Youngsupported Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party.[45] In 2020, he said he was wrong to back him.[46] Two years later he again backed Johnson as party leader.[47][48] In 2023, theNew Statesman named Young as the 44th most influential right-wing figure in British politics.[49]
Young was a proposer and co-founder of theWest London Free School, the firstfree school to sign afunding agreement with theEducation Secretary, and is now a trustee of The West London Free School Academy Trust, thecharitable trust that manages the school.[50][51] The school was founded at Palingswick House, which displaced over 20 voluntary organisations previously located there.[52] He stood down as CEO of the school in May 2016 after admitting that he did not realise how difficult it was going to be to run.[53] The national press coverage of the school having four headteachers in six years was linked to the higher profile for the school caused by its connection to Young.[54] The trust opened a primary school inHammersmith in 2013, a second primary inEarls Court in 2014 and a third primary inKensington in 2016.[55] Young is a follower of the AmericaneducationalistE. D. Hirsch and an advocate of a traditional, knowledge-based approach to education.
In 2012, Young wrote an article inThe Spectator criticising the emphasis on "inclusion" in state schools, saying that the word "inclusive" was "one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise ofNew Labour. Schools have got to be 'inclusive' these days. That means wheelchair ramps, the complete works ofAlice Walker in the school library...".[56] Young denied that he was attacking the provision of equal access to mainstream schools for people with disabilities, saying he was only referring to the alleged "dumbing down" of the curriculum.[57]
In 2015, theLondon Review of Books's cover story for its May 7 issue was an article written by British journalistDawn Foster criticising the free school movement. In a letter to theLondon Review of Books, Young took issue with Foster's interpretation of free schools data and made claims that were challenged by the authorMichael Rosen, journalistMelissa Benn, and education researcher Janet Downs in further letters written to the publication.[58][59] Foster responded to Young in theLondon Review of Books letters refuting Young's criticism and wrote:
Creaming off the children of more affluent parents constitutes social segregation; so too does the existence of religious free schools. Young seems to think he is held in high regard by free school advocates. When I mentioned his name in the course of interviewing a former Department for Education employee for the piece, my interviewee headbutted the restaurant table in exasperation. I have found the sentiment, if not the gesture, to be common among his ideological comrades.[58][59]
On 29 October 2016, Young was appointed Director of theNew Schools Network, a charity founded in 2009 to support groups setting up free schools.[60] He resigned in March 2018.[61]
In 2015, Young wrote an article for the Australian magazineQuadrant entitled "The fall of meritocracy". Under a section titled "Progressive eugenics"[62] he discussed developments in genetically engineered intelligence, and proposed that should the technology for selecting embryos for high intelligence become practicable, it could be provided "free of charge to parents on low incomes with below-average IQs.” He argued this "could help to address the problem of flat-lining inter-generationalsocial mobility and serve as a counterweight to the tendency for the meritocratic elite to become a hereditary elite," through a mechanism that should be acceptable to political conservatives and also argued that "This is a kind ofeugenics that should appeal to liberals — progressive eugenics."[7] Young has maintained that criticism of him as a eugenicist is "based on a deliberate misreading" of the article and that "If 'eugenics' is forced sterilisation, what I was proposing was the opposite — freeIVF for the poor."[63]
Young attended theLondon Conference on Intelligence atUniversity College London (UCL) in 2017, which was described by the media and a number of politicians as a "secret eugenics conference".[64][65] Young said that he attended the conference as a journalist to report about it (which he later did),[66] in preparation for the "super-respectable"International Society for Intelligence Research conference inMontreal in July 2017 at which he gave a speech, which was later published.[67][68][69]
In January 2018 Young was announced as one of the non-executive members of the board for the newOffice for Students (OfS), a body intended to ensure institutions in higher education are accountable.[8][70]The Guardian later revealed that claims by the Department for Education about Young's teaching posts at theUniversity of Cambridge andHarvard were misleading as although Young had taught at the universities, he had not been appointed to an academic post.[8][57] The appointment became the subject of controversy whenTwitter posts, described as "misogynistic and homophobic", were uncovered.[9] He resigned a week later, stating that his appointment had "become a distraction" counteracting the "vital work" of the OfS.[71][72] Shortly afterwards he resigned also as aFulbright Commissioner.[73]
An inquiry was launched shortly after Young's resignation byPeter Riddell, theCommissioner for Public Appointments. Riddell said the OfS panel report to ministers about Young "made no mention of Mr Young’s history of controversial comments and use of social media". The disquiet which followed "makes a strong case for more extensive due diligence inquiries".[66]
In March 2020, during the early stages of theCOVID-19 pandemic in the UK, Young wrote inThe Critic that he "suspect[ed] the Government has overreacted to the coronavirus crisis", expressing worry about the "economic cost".[74][75] In opposition to lockdown and some social distancing, that would flatten the infection curve, reduce peak incidence and overall deaths, according to modelling by the COVID-19 Response Team led byNeil Ferguson atImperial College London,[76] he wrote: "spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayer's money."[74][75] He called for lockdown to end on April 14 (or at the latest the following week).[74] Instead he proposed, "limiting social distancing measures to the elderly and those with underlying health conditions."[74] Saying that he had probably contracted the virus, he wrote that "if the Government does end the lockdown, and it turns out that by the time I require critical care the NHS cannot accommodate me, I won't regret writing this".[74][75] He argued his own death would be "acceptable collateral damage".[74][75]Peter Jukes wrote that Young's views could be "outright deadly" in a pandemic;Darren McGarvey compared Young's views toausterity.[75]
In April 2020 Young initiated theLockdown Sceptics newsletter (now retitledThe Daily Sceptic).[77][78]
In June 2020, he wrote that "the virus has all but disappeared".[79] In January 2021, he appeared onNewsnight, and when he was challenged about his comments about the virus, he said: "hands up, I got that wrong" and made arguments against lockdowns.[79]
On 14 January 2021, the British press regulatorIPSO ruled that an article Young had written forThe Daily Telegraph in July 2020 was "significantly misleading" and that the newspaper had failed to take care not to publish inaccurate information.[10][11] In the article, Young claimed that common cold coronaviruses gave people immunity against SARS-CoV-2, and that in July 2020 London had almost achieved herd immunity.[10][11] Neither claim was supported by scientists at the time.[80][10][11] IPSO ordered the newspaper to publish a correction.[10][11]The Telegraph removed the article from its website and Young deleted many of his tweets about the pandemic.[10]
The Daily Sceptic has promotedmisinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.[87] In September 2022,PayPal shut down the accounts of Young, theFree Speech Union andThe Daily Sceptic website. The accounts were closed because of breaches of PayPal's acceptable use policy, thought to be because of alleged misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.[88] The accounts were restored later that month after extensive criticism of PayPal's actions by MPs.[89]
In late 2024, Young was nominated for alife peerage byKemi Badenoch, the leader of theConservative Party.[90][91][92] He was createdBaron Young of Acton, of Acton in the London Borough of Ealing, on 21 January 2025,[93] and wasintroduced to the House of Lords on 28 January that year.[94] He is affiliated to the Conservatives.[1]
In addition to the bookHow to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Young is the author ofThe Sound of No Hands Clapping (2006),How to Set Up a Free School (2011) andWhat Every Parent Needs to Know: How to Help Your Child Get the Most Out of Primary School (2014), which he co-wrote with Miranda Thomas.[95]
British producerStephen Woolley and his wife Elizabeth Karlsen produced the film adaptationHow to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) in conjunction withFilmFour. Young, who co-produced the film, was played bySimon Pegg.[96] It was released in Britain on 3 October 2008 and reached the number one spot at the box office in its opening week.[97][98] The film received mostly negative reviews[99] and was a commercial failure, losing over £8 million.[100]
Young co-produced and co-wroteWhen Boris Met Dave (2009), a drama-documentary forChannel 4 about the relationship betweenEton andOxford University contemporariesMayorBoris Johnson and Conservative Party LeaderPMDavid Cameron. It was first broadcast onMore4 on 7 October 2009 and later shown onChannel 4.[101]
Young has come under criticism for comments he made onTwitter, most of which were deleted upon his appointment to the Board of the Office for Students. Young said that he posted more than 56,000 tweets, of which 8,439 remained as at January 2018.[9]
These included what anEvening Standard editorial called "an obsession with commenting on the anatomy of women in the public eye".[102] He referred onTwitter to the cleavage of unnamed female MPs sitting behindEd Miliband in the Commons in 2011 and 2012. When later challenged byStella Creasy onNewsnight, he said of the second such incident: "It wasn't my proudest moment".[103][62] Other remarks included slurs described ashomophobic, including a claim thatGeorge Clooney is "asqueer as a coot".[104][105]
One tweet by Young was in response to a BBCComic Relief appeal in 2009 for starving Kenyan children.[106] During the broadcast, a Twitter user commented that she had "gone through about 5 boxes of kleenex" whilst watching. Toby Young replied: "Me too, I havn't [sic] wanked so much in ages".[107] He has expressed regret for his "politically incorrect" tweets.[108]
Young is reported to have edited his ownWikipedia page 282 times over the course of six years.[109][110] In October 2020, he wrote an article inThe Spectator criticising "lazy journalists [for whom] Wikipedia is the only thing they read when 'researching' an article" and stating that "Wikipedia has a strong left-wing bias — which might explain why the page about me reads as if it's been written byOwen Jones."[111]
In 1997, Young met Caroline Bondy while living in New York.[112] After they split up, Young gave up drinking, saying he "thought the only way I could persuade her to get back with me would be if I sobered up". He began drinking alcohol again two years later, on their wedding day in July 2001.[113] They have four children.[114]
Young has admitted usingcocaine at theGroucho Club in central London,[115] and also supplying drugs to others. He was subsequently expelled from membership of the club in late 2001 for writing about the cocaine use of friends he had supplied with the drug during a 1997 photo shoot forVanity Fair.[116] Such activities are against club rules.[115]
'Labour has since demanded that Theresa May reverse his appointment because of what the party said was a history of "homophobia and misogyny"
However, Labour has urged May to reverse the appointment, citing a series of tweets Young has now deleted which have been described as sexist, homophobic and insulting to a number of groups.
His appointment has been heavily criticised, first on the ground that Mr Young is poorly qualified for the job and then on ground that he has poor judgment after a slew of sexually derogatory tweets emerged.Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint leaders of the new National Education Union, have become the latest to criticise the appointment. In a letter to Ms Greening, they say Mr Young has made "unacceptable comments on disability, students from state schools getting into Oxbridge and children with special education needs. As equalities minister the sexist and homophobic comments Mr Young has made publicly must be as unacceptable to you as they are to the National Education Union.
Theresa May has backed Toby Young to continue in his new role with the higher education watchdog, despite mounting pressure to sack him over a series of misogynistic and homophobic tweets.
Mr Young had come under increasing scrutiny since his appointment in early January, when posts from his Twitter account were unearthed in which he was alleged to have made sexist and homophobic remarks.
May said she was "not impressed" with his language on Twitter when sexist, homophobic and other offences posts were revealed.
If it ever becomes possible for couples to cherry-pick embryos in a genetics lab according to which ones are likely to have the highest IQ, that technology should be made available for free on the NHS because otherwise it will enable the rich to give their children an even greater competitive advantage. If 'eugenics' is forced sterilisation, what I was proposing was the opposite — free IVF for the poor.
An article published by the website The Daily Sceptic, formerly known as Lockdown Sceptics...
