Boris Johnson has defended Toby Young’s “caustic wit” amid a bitter row over the former journalist’s suitability to be appointed to a new universities watchdog.
Johnson, who used to edit The Spectator for which Young has been a regular contributer, condemned the “ridiculous outcry” that followed the announcement that Young would sit on the new Office for Students.
Young’s appointment to the Office for Students (OfS) triggered anger over Young’s controversial statements and lack of experience in higher education.
The Foreign Secretary said today [Wednesday] that Young, who once said “fuck you, penis breath” during an argument on Twitter, would “bring independent rigour and caustic wit” to the job, for which he was the “ideal man”.
Sir Anthony Seldon, the political historian and vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, told HuffPost UK that Young was “a controversialist” who would stand up for free speech on university campuses.
However Young himself does not seem to agree his controversial “caustic wit” boosts his credentials for the job.
Here are 9 examples of Young’s “caustic wit”:
1. A ‘witty’ insult about a random man’s breath
Young has already deleted this tweet from 2009 in which he said: “Fuck you, penis breath.”
And this one where he praised the “smoking hot” women at the 2009 Emmy Awards, saying: “There should be an award for Best Baps.”
Another now-deleted tweet said he had his “dick up her arse”, in reference to Padma Lakshmi, who was his fellow judge on US TV show Top Chef at the time.
4. The ‘censorious left’ and its ‘joyless, sanctimonious’ worldview
Young tweeted in December to mock an article about what intersectional feminists should ask on first dates, calling it a “wonderful insight into the joyless, sanctimonious weltanschaung of the censorious left”.
5. Getting excited about breasts
Also now deleted is a March 2012 tweet where Young got excited during Prime Minister’s Questions because Labour MP Pamela Nash sitting behind Ed Miliband had “serious cleavage”.
Young’s writings off Twitter have raised eyebrows too.
6. The ‘Ghastly’ need for wheelchair ramps
In 2012, he wrote for The Spectator about the “ghastly” need for schools to be inclusive by having things like wheelchair ramps.
“Inclusive. It’s one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise of New Labour… That means wheelchair ramps, the complete works of Alice Walker in the school library (though no Mark Twain) and a Special Educational Needs Department that can cope with everything from dyslexia to Münchausen syndrome by proxy.”
Young called for the Equalities Act to be axed, saying: “Any exam that isn’t ‘accessible’ to a functionally illiterate troglodyte with a mental age of six will be judged to be ‘elitist’ and therefore forbidden by Harman’s Law.”
7. Kids are being ‘dragooned’ into celebrating LGBT rights
In 2011, he wrote a blog for The Spectator, condemning a school in Stoke Newington for celebrating LGBT rights with a week of lessons focussed on the issue.
“The very idea that a group of 12-year-old schoolchildren would be dragooned into ‘creating banners and other materials’ to promote LGBT week is preposterous,” he said.
“How many ‘transgendered’ pupils could there possibly be at a comprehensive in Stoke Newington? It stretches credulity to breaking point.”
8. Wearing a wig to get in with the ‘hard-core dykes’
In 2000, Young wrote for men’s magazine GQ about disguising himself as a lesbian, including by putting on a wig, and trying to infiltrate gay bars in New York to kiss other women, some of whom he referred to as “hard-core dykes”.
“I’d been warned by several veterans of the New York gay scene that if the denizens of Ruby Fruit discovered I was a man there was a good chance they’d beat the crap out of me. I joked that I wasn’t scared of a bunch of lesbians but, in reality, I was terrified. Several of them looked like German shot-putters,” he wrote.
9. ‘Small, vaguely deformed undergraduates’
In 1988, Young contributed to a book called The Oxford Myth, in which he said working class boys studying at the university were “universally unattractive” and “small, vaguely deformed undergraduates”.
Young has said people repeating this in recent days are showing a “complete distortion of what I wrote”, without clarifying exactly how this was the case.
That’s a complete distortion of what I wrote. I wasn’t referring to grammar school boys (or wc kids) and it would’ve been odd if I was as I was one myself. I’m committed to widening participation and increasing social mobility and have proved that by my actions many times since. https://t.co/NjBA5X5v3Y
January 2, 2018