Sarah Vine
ONLy relatively recently did I get to know Toby young, the journalist who yesterday resigned from the new universities regulator over his offensive tweets.
when we were younger he was always far too edgy for me, always ran with a fast set, surfing that wave of late-Nineties, Cool Britannia chic, before moving to New york, where he cut a swathe through polite society and wrote his book, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.
The stories of his obnoxious behaviour are legend. one friend describes a typical night out with Toby. They had gone drinking in Soho until closing time and had repaired to an after-hours basement for further refreshment.
In one corner sat a group of hard-looking fellows. Suddenly, Toby had an idea. ‘Come on, let’s fight them,’ he said, rising unsteadily to his feet.
The friend followed anxiously. He took one look at Toby, one look at the opposition, and made a decision. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said and punched Toby, knocking him clean out.
He said that it was the only way to stop both of them getting killed.
I’ll bet pro-Brexit Toby — brought down this week after his Left-wing enemies dredged up some age-old, but admittedly ghastly, tweets, many about women’s breasts, others worse — is wishing that friend had been at his side to stay his hand when he posted those tweets.
THereis no doubt that, in the past, young’s capacity to offend — his need to draw attention to himself through often selfdestructive behaviour — has been so pronounced, it might almost be considered an illness.
But in the time that I have got to know him — principally via his work in setting up Britain’s first free school and helping to expand the network of parent and communitydriven schools — I have only ever known a very different man.
A courteous chap who takes his work very seriously, who adores his (vegetarian, staunch remainer) wife and their four children and who has, albeit later than most, finally got his head screwed on straight.
Don’t swallow the victory cries of the Left over his resignation. For all Toby’s flaws, few people know as much about improving educational standards for ordinary children in Britain today; few have done more to ensure that every child gets the chances they deserve in life.
That his past should have finally caught up with him now, that he should be brought down so publicly and painfully by the puerile echoes of the arrogant, angry young man he used to be is a great shame.
I’m not saying that the things he said weren’t in very poor taste; merely that the person paying for his crimes is no longer the same one who committed them.
everyone has a past. But the test is not where you come from, it’s where you are heading. what you make of the future, whether you learn from your mistakes or continue to repeat them. Knowledge comes from that experience. In fact, it’s often those who have wrestled the hardest with their demons who are best at helping others conquer theirs.
That’s the thing that really troubles me about Toby’s case. Not so much what he said or why he said it. More that we now live in a world where words speak louder than actions.
where years of hard work can be obliterated in one misguided sentence uttered in another age.
where the past will always come to find you, and there are no longer any second chances.
THERE is something faintly Pythonesque about BBC women — former China editor Carrie Gracie et al — tying themselves in knots over equal pay. Has it occurred to them that if they spent less time complaining about inequality and more doing their actual jobs, they wouldn’t be fighting these battles in the first place?