The Left might not recognise the real monsters, but we do

The appointment of Toby Young, a colourful commentator and journalist, as a non-executive director of the new Office for Students, was announced only last week.

Young, 54, would undoubtedly have been rather good at it. he is an incisive writer with an original brain. he has studied and taught at several renowned universities, both here and in the US.

he is, too, a fervent believer in free speech and, a firm believer in traditional education methods, was instrumental in founding the West London Free School.

But we will never know what Toby Young might have contributed to the Office for Students because, on Tuesday, he withdrew from it. The effective demotion of his patron Jo Johnson, in Theresa May’s reshuffle, was perhaps a factor – but, really, Young was worn down by a vituperative and orchestrated campaign, the minions of the Left mobilised online to paint him as the incarnation of evil.

Unfortunately, through three decades in public life and, in particular, on social media, Young had left the virtue signalling point-and-shriek mob abundant ammunition. By his own claim, he posted more than 56,000 jokes, jibes and bons mots on Twitter alone and, though the mass of these he deleted last week, his enemies had little difficulty in salvaging them.

Much was indefensible, particularly offensive comments on the physical attributes of women in the public eye and an extraordinarily coarse joke about starving children in Africa.

But most of it was self-evidently puerile and from years ago and, in his fifties now and a family man, Young no longer behaves like that. As Theresa May said on the Andrew Marr Show last weekend, ‘he would no longer be in public office’ if such antics were resumed.

There are certainly lessons to be learned. One is the extraordinary digital incontinence of the age we are. Time spent broadcasting on social media is time stolen from, for instance, reading and reflection; it also (and rather arrogantly) assumes people will be interested in what we have to say.

Alas, some – Katie hopkins and Milo Yiannopoulos spring to mind – are so desperate for attention, even infamy, that they go to the most extreme and shocking lengths in their online ravings.

YOUNG stopped short of certain depths they have plumbed but he was undone, too, by the coarseness of our times. Not so long ago, sex jokes, foul language and profanity had no place in public life. It was understood that certain subjects were not to be discussed and that certain words must never be used. When they were – as Bill Grundy and others discovered; the presenter in 1976 goaded the Sex Pistols, live, into a stream of expletives – it was usually career ending.

Now, it seems, the corridors of Whitehall echo to lockerroom language and even female politicians stoop to vulgarity: in November 2014, the Commons endured an innuendo-clotted speech from Penny Mordaunt, ostensibly on poultry welfare and the result, it later transpired, of a bet.

And today’s technology, of course, has also to large degree collapsed the old boundaries of public and private. Lads have been joking and joshing, often in crude cruel terms, for as long as there have been lads – in low taverns and behind the bike sheds of the local comp.

But much that may be mildly amusing in speech can be profoundly disturbing in print. Once it is on the internet, it is there for the world to see and, unless deleted within minutes, before our foes have had time to react or to screen grab, will be there for ever.

Of course, though, the real reason Young was last week so tirelessly hounded was not because he had been crass and stupid, but because he is a Tory – and an extraordinarily good one, running rings effortlessly around assorted Lefties and time and again demolishing their arguments in print, and often in hilarious style.

he is not, though, a politician. They have learned to be more circumspect in social media and, when caught out or momentarily embarrassed, tend to be far more tenacious than the rest of us. Nicola Sturgeon, one of the most effective operators on Twitter, has an absolute rule – never to post anything after a glass of wine. Jeremy hunt has weathered not a few bids to destroy him.

There is, here, an unnerving double standard. The Twitchfork host went after Young on the basis of past utterances, boiling down to some dirty jokes, sexist remarks and an unwise proposal of eugenics. But most of the very same people would love to see Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in government – men of the most sinister associations who have, on occasion, cosied up to our enemies overseas and to the advocates of mayhem and murder back home.

Take, for instance, their welldocumented links to Irish republicanism. No, not Irish nationalism but those who believe that ‘force of arms is the only method capable of bringing about a free and united Socialist Ireland’.

That is from the programme of a Republican commemoration event in 1988, three weeks after the Provisional IRA had killed three British servicemen in the Netherlands.

MR Corbyn should remember it well for he was there. Indeed, for seven years running, while the IRA was bombing British cities, murdering civilians at a Remembrance service, tried to kill the Prime Minister and most of her Cabinet and weekly shot the kneecaps off Belfast schoolboys, Mr Corbyn attended and spoke at this commemoration.

Late in 1984, an issue of the hard-Left magazine Briefing – Mr Corbyn sat on its editorial board – carried an article in praise of the Brighton bombing, to say nothing of a letter crowing, ‘What do you call four dead Tories? A start…’

At a later IRA love-in, the future Leader of the Opposition condemned the British-Irish Agreement, which effectively launched the Northern Ireland peace process.

In 2004, John McDonnell was given a special award by Sinn Fein for ‘unfailing political and personal support he has given to the republican community in the Six Counties over many years’. The plaque was presented by Gerry Kelly, who once bombed the Old Bailey – killing one and injuring nearly 200 others – and later escaped from the Maze Prison, shooting a warden as he went.

Still, no doubt all present felt McDonnell deserved it: he had told the Wolfe Tone Society the year before that ‘it was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table’.

The moral logic as to why those who have proudly dined with murder are fit to lead this country, while Toby Young must be hounded from its affairs over dire jokes about big breasts, should be lost on all right-thinking people.