Toby Young

Toby Young is the co-author of What Every Parent Needs to Know and the co-founder of several free schools. In addition to being an associate editor of The Spectator, he is an associate editor of Quillette. Follow him on Twitter @toadmeister

Britain is becoming more meritocratic, not less

29 June 2019 9:00 am

You have to admire the Sutton Trust’s PR skills. For those who don’t know, the Sutton Trust is a social…

Are you suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome?

22 June 2019 9:00 am

I switched on the radio last week and caught the tail end of a discussion about the Conservative leadership election.…

Is this a turning point in the culture war?

22 June 2019 9:00 am

Something rather wonderful happened last week for those of us who have been the victims of a public shaming —…

It’s a scandal that the BBC can still tax anyone who owns a TV

15 June 2019 9:00 am

If I were a pensioner, I’d be a bit miffed by the BBC’s decision to end the policy of giving…

Budweiser flags up how Pride has been taken over by woke corporations

8 June 2019 9:00 am

Maurice Bowra, the flamboyant warden of Wadham College from 1938 to 1970, once argued against the legalisation of homosexuality on…

Could a Tory-Brexit Party alliance actually work?

7 June 2019 2:06 am

In 2013, I started promoting a tactical voting alliance between Conservative and Ukip voters. It wasn’t just about avoiding the…

The fanatical thinking that’s on its way to British schools

1 June 2019 9:00 am

For anyone who isn’t following the long march of racial self-flagellation through America’s institutions, last week’s revelations about the excesses…

How paranoia has infected our politics

25 May 2019 9:00 am

The politics professor Matthew Goodwin made an interesting observation on Twitter this week. He pointed out that many of the…

In defence of British landowners (and the truth about grouse moors)

18 May 2019 9:00 am

I was surprised to read the article by Ben Macdonald in last week’s Spectator urging Britain’s grouse moor owners to…

The UN’s extinction warning doesn’t add up

11 May 2019 9:00 am

Anyone watching the BBC’s News at Ten on Monday would have been surprised to learn that economic growth poses a…

Charities are allowed to be political – if they’re left wing

4 May 2019 9:00 am

On Monday, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate President Trump’s forthcoming state visit with Asad Rehman, the executive…

What would a Corbyn victory mean for me?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

Until now, I haven’t been too worried about Jeremy Corbyn. True, he exceeded expectations two years ago, but that was…

No mere mortal could possibly keep up with Game of Thrones

20 April 2019 9:00 am

By the time you read this, James Delingpole and I will have made our first podcast in 596 days. That’s…

iPlod: Sajid Javid’s new internet rules will have a chilling effect on free speech

13 April 2019 9:00 am

Monday wasn’t the best day for the government to launch Online Harms, its white paper on internet regulation. As Sajid…

Penny Mordaunt at a meeting of think tank Onward (Getty)

Being ‘down with the kids’ has turned the Tories into a laughing stock

13 April 2019 9:00 am

The news that 83 per cent of Conservative voters are over 45, compared to 53 per cent of Labour voters,…

Now – as in the Soviet Union – making a joke can be a dangerous, life-changing mistake

6 April 2019 9:00 am

I was surprised to learn that the novelist Milan Kundera celebrated his 90th birthday on Monday. I had no idea…

Jordan Peterson and mob rule at the University of Cambridge

30 March 2019 9:00 am

On Monday, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, Stephen Toope, issued a statement defending the decision of the divinity faculty to…

Why the LGBT health panel isn’t diverse enough

23 March 2019 9:00 am

On Monday, the government announced that Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equalities as well as the Secretary of…

Why is it only privately educated women who get to lecture people about ‘oppression’?

16 March 2019 9:00 am

Scarcely a week passes without a privately educated young woman with a successful career in journalism publishing a book about…

The woke corporation: how campus madness entered the workplace

9 March 2019 9:00 am

New employees at the British headquarters of Accenture, a global management consultancy, were slightly taken aback during a recent induction…

Gone are the days when the middle class could afford to go skiing

9 March 2019 9:00 am

It won’t be news to readers of The Spectator that one of the long-term effects of globalisation is the hollowing…

We thought having four kids would be idyllic. What were we thinking?

2 March 2019 9:00 am

You’d think the little buggers would be grateful. Caroline and I had just shelled out for our two middle children…

Roy Jenkins at an SDP conference in 1986 (Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

There’s space for a new party in Britain, but not for another SDP

23 February 2019 9:00 am

I was 17 when the Labour party last split, in January 1981, and for a variety of reasons got quite…

School children gather in Sydney last November to demand the government takes action on climate change [MARK METCALFE/GETTY IMAGES]

If children want to protest against climate change, why not do it at the weekend?

16 February 2019 9:00 am

Thousands of schoolchildren are planning to go on ‘strike’ on Friday to protest about government inaction on climate change. Called…

The hypocrisy of Ken Loach’s Eurovision boycott

9 February 2019 9:00 am

The Guardian last week published a ‘we, the undersigned’ letter from 50 ‘artists of conscience’ urging the BBC to boycott…