TOBY Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union and an associate editor of The Spectator, has been made a life peer soon to enter the House of Lords.
The commentator was nominated by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch alongside other notable figures nominated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, including former chief of staff Sue Gray.
Young said he looked forward to working with Badenoch to “repair the damage” Starmer has done to free speech when he enters the House.
He wrote on Twitter/X: “I look forward to working with the Leader of the Opposition on how to restore free speech to pride of place in our democracy and repair the damage Keir Starmer has done to this vital human right when she succeeds him as our next prime minister."
Young previously caused outrage in 2020 after saying he had become an English nationalist because the devolved nations were behaving like “irresponsible students” during the coronavirus pandemic, calling them "ungrateful".
Who is Young and what other controversies has he been involved in?
Early life
Young was brought up in Highgate, North London, and in South Devon.
His mother Sasha was a BBC Radio producer and daughter of Raisley Stewart Moorsom, a descendant of Admiral Sir Robert Moorsom, who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar.
His father was Michael Young (later Lord Young of Dartington), a Labour life peer and sociologist.
He attended Creighton School (now Fortismere School), Muswell Hill and King Edward VI Community College, in Totnes.
Young was then offered a place at Oxford University by mistake. However, after a call to the principal by his father, the university conceded a place to Young because of the "moral obligation the mistaken acceptance created".
Young graduated in 1986 and later worked for The Times as a news trainee until he was fired.
He previously stated he hacked the computer system, impersonated editor Charles Wilson and circulated information about senior executives' salaries to others around the building. He went on to study at Harvard and Trinity College in Cambridge, but left without completing his PhD.
Journalism and activism
Young is an associate editor and columnist at The Spectator, and a regular contributor to the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph.
In 2015, Young wrote an article exploring eugenics, where he discussed developments in genetically engineered intelligence. He 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".
In 2020, Young founded the Free Speech Union, an organisation which views itself as countering cancel culture by opposing hostility on Twitter and the withdrawal of some individuals' invitations to speak at some university events.
In 2021, IPSO ruled that an article Young had written for The Daily Telegraph was "significantly misleading". He had claimed London had almost achieved herd immunity in July 2020.
The Telegraph removed the article from its website and Young deleted many of his tweets about the pandemic.
In 2022, PayPal shut down the accounts of Young, the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic website. The accounts were closed because of breaches of PayPal's acceptable use policy, but later reopened after MPs intervened.
Controversies
Young caused outrage at the start of lockdown when he complained about the UK Government’s willingness to spend a lot of money to limit the effects of the coronavirus outbreak, and complained about the cost of localised lockdowns in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Previously Young wrote that spending to “prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayer’s money”.
He claimed that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were “running up massive debts on their credit cards because they can count on the bank of mum and dad to bail them out”.
The commentator takes particular issue with Scotland, saying the situation here is “even worse”. He claimed Nicola Sturgeon placed large chunks of the country “under virtual house arrest” to “whip up nationalist sentiment”, rather than protect people from a highly infectious illness.
In 2021, social media users hit out at Young for claiming "Scottish mobs are turning people away at the Border".
Young was responding to a poll that found that Scots were the most likely in the UK to believe a high percentage of Brits have died of coronavirus.
He had tweeted: "This is incredible. Scottish people think COVID-19 has killed 10% of the U.K. population. No wonder mobs are turning people away at the border! Real figure is <0.1%."
