Toby Young

Winter is finally upon us and I’m relying on my usual array of tablets and powders to ward off seasonal viruses. Caroline and the children constantly ridicule me, saying I’ve been taken for a fool by snake-oil salesmen, but I tell myself these concoctions are responsible for my robust good health. I’ve tested positive for Covid twice and usually get two or three colds a year. But I haven’t taken a day off due to illness since 1987. My basic daily intake consists of a multi-vitamin tablet, 1,000iu of vitamin E, 1,000µg of vitamin B12 and 4,000iu of vitamin D3, all washed down with 1,000mg of vitamin C.

Should England be participating in the Qatar World Cup? On the face of it, the case for a boycott is pretty compelling. Much of the infrastructure – including eight stadiums, an airport expansion, a new metro system and multiple hotels – has been built by migrant workers who are notoriously poorly treated by their Qatari employers. Women still have to obtain permission from their male guardians to marry, study abroad on state scholarships and receive certain reproductive health care. Muslim women who have sex outside marriage can be sentenced to flogging. Homosexuality is against the law and punishable by imprisonment. Freedom of expression and of the press leave a lot to be desired. The list goes on.

I was a little disappointed by Boris Johnson’s argument against Britain paying reparations for the damage done to developing countries by climate change. Yes, he acknowledged at Cop27, Britain was the first country to industrialise and, as a result, ‘people in the UK have put an awful lot of carbon into the atmosphere’. But we simply don’t have the financial re-sources to pay compensation for all the harm caused by the industrial revolution. The economic model pioneered by Britain in the 18th century has lifted billions out of poverty Hmmm. I can think of several better arguments against climate change reparations.

Among people of a conservative disposition, it’s long been accepted that the Equality Act needs to be repealed. This legislation, passed in 2010 in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s premiership, was designed to embed Labour’s egalitarian ideology into the fabric of the British state, yet none of Brown’s successors have done anything about it. In July, Rishi Sunak told a group of Conservative party members at a leadership hustings in West Sussex that he would ‘review’ it if he became prime minister, but don’t expect major surgery. The most we can hope for is a bit of light cosmetic work. One thing about the Equality Act not widely understood is that it didn’t create much in the way of new law.

Rishi Sunak’s victory is a testament to how much progress we have made on the equalities front. As recently as 25 years ago, someone with his characteristics could never have become prime minister. Yet in today’s Britain, being a member of an historically disadvantaged minority is no impediment to success. I’m thinking, of course, of his height. As one wag joked on Twitter, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history has been succeeded by the shortest serving prime minister in British history. As a vertically challenged man myself, I take great comfort from this. Positive role models are few and far between in the modern world. In film and television there are the two Toms – Cruise and Hollander – but let’s face it, most successful leading men are tall.

I had a bicycle accident last week. Not terrible, but not great either. Of the five I’ve had since I took up cycling more than 20 years ago, it ranked third. No stitches needed,unlike the worst, which required more than 50 and a night in hospital. I didn’t bother with A&E this time, in spite of concerned onlookers advising me to. I think it looked worse than it was. Head injuries generally do because there’s so much blood. I’m slightly wary writing about this because I don’t want to give the anti-motorist lobby any more ammo. In fact, there were no other vehicles involved. The accident was actually caused by the front wheel of my bike hitting one of those kerbs in the middle of the road designed to stop cars drifting into cycle lanes.

Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good companies from great ones: trust.’ He told the audience that companies need to do more than deliver an outstanding product to build trust. In addition, they need to ‘stand up for social issues that are important’ and ‘do the right things to help create a better world’. Ironically, it is precisely because PayPal has been energetically pursuing this agenda that trust in the company is beginning to evaporate.

Once the dust has settled over the government’s mini-Budget, another big political battle looms: the Online Safety Bill. This is the legislation that will make Ofcom responsible for regulating the internet so Britain becomes ‘the safest place in the world to go online’ – at least, that’s how the last government tried to sell it. It was due to go the House of Lords for a second reading in July, but was put on hold because of the Tory leadership contest and I was hoping it would never be resuscitated. Liz Truss and her lieutenants are currently going through the last administration’s legislative programme, seeing what they can ditch to free up some parliamentary time for new bills.

I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference – on stage, no less – so I thought I’d better read it. It’s about the inexorable rise of the social justice warriors, whom he regards as a danger to the survival of free speech and, by extension, the institutions and traditions that our liberal democracy depends on. My first reaction was one of irritation. The book is called The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World and it’s annoyingly similar to the title of a book I’ve been working on – Salem 2.0:the Return of the Religious Police to the Public Square.

One of the most regrettable trends of the past few decades is the creep of politics into every aspect of our public life. Institutions tasked with preserving our heritage, such as Tate Britain, Kew Gardens and the National Trust, are busy holding themselves to account for their historic links to slavery and colonialism, while the police, the civil service and the Church of England have embraced the mantra of equity, diversity and inclusion. The people in charge of these organisations – liberal, urban, highly educated – don’t think of these values as politically contentious, while those of us who don’t fall into those categories – probably the majority of the population – cannot help but feel alienated and disenfranchised.

I went to the O2 on Sunday night to see the comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Chappelle, who survived an attempt to cancel him last year, didn’t disappoint, delivering some hilarious, politically incorrect jokes, and Rock was equally seditious, although his set went on for too long. But the rest of the evening was pretty painful. The effort it takes to get to this relic of the New Labour era is truly Herculean. Indeed, Rock made a joke about it, claiming he’d set off from his hotel on Wednesday morning and only just arrived. The Tube station is North Greenwich, one beyond Canary Wharf, and your only hope of getting there in less than 90 minutes from west London is via jet ski along the Thames.

Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their ‘expert’ advisers across the world have successfully promoted a series of controversial public policies by claiming they’re based on ‘the science’ rather than a particular moral or ideological vision. I’m thinking of lockdowns and net zero in particular. Yet at the same time, this group has engaged in behaviour that has undermined public confidence in science. Why appeal to the authority of science to win support for a series of politically contentious policies – and then diminish its authority? Take Anthony Fauci, for instance, who recently announced he’s stepping down as chief medical adviser to Joe Biden.

For the past few days I’ve been frantically watering my lawn in anticipation of the London hosepipe ban. True, there are other things in the garden that need watering – the roses, the magnolias, the rhododendrons, as well as the tomato plants, the rosemary bushes and the olive tree. But I can probably manage to get round them with my watering can once the ban kicks in and in any case it’s the lawn that’s my pride and joy. Gazing at the stripes after it’s just been mown is one of life’s great pleasures as I settle into late middle age. When Caroline and I first looked round our house in Acton as prospective buyers, the lawn, measuring about 45 feet by 30, was a selling point, but only as a space for our three boys to play in.

As a defender of free speech, I’m used to taking up the cudgels on behalf of unsavoury people. To quote Lord Justice Sedley in a famous High Court judgment in 1999, ‘Freedom of speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence.’ But the case of Graham Phillips, who was sanctioned by the British government last month, is one of the hardest I’ve ever had to wrestle with. Phillips styles himself an ‘independent journalist’, but it’s far from clear that the additional free-speech protections we apply to journalists should be extended to him. It would be more accurate to describe him as a pro-Russian propagandist.

I made my way to Loftus Road on Saturday for QPR’s first home fixture of the season. We’ve got a new gaffer in the form of Michael Beale, a 41-year-old Englishman who’s never managed a football club before but has worked as an assistant coach at San Paulo in Brazil and as Steven Gerrard’s right-hand at Rangers and Aston Villa. Can he make the transition from a bibs-and-cones man to a full-blown manager? I worry that QPR have brought him in because (a) he’s cheap and (b) won’t make a fuss about the club’s efforts to cut costs. Since the end of the last season, we’ve let go of 13 players and only brought in four, reducing the size of the squad by nearly a third. That will have cut the wage bill, but won’t do much for our prospects.

I’m writing this on the plane back from Iceland, a fact that fills me with relief. Not because I didn’t enjoy my trip to the land of fire and ice – far from it – but because there was a serious risk I might be stuck there indefinitely with Caroline and my three sons. In the 24 hours before our departure, nearly 4,000 earthquakes were detected in the southwestern region known as the Reykjanes peninsula, which is where the international airport is located. Such unusual seismic activity is often a sign that a volcano is about to erupt and that, in turn, can create an ash cloud that necessitates the grounding of all aircraft, as happened in 2011. There are worse places to be stranded, of course.