Toby Young

It’s no good. I’ve tried to resist it, but I’ve succumbed. I’m now a full-blown litter Nazi. Whenever I leave my house, I make a point of taking a plastic bag with me so I can pick up litter. This is in Acton, mind you, so we’re talking a full-size bin liner, not your common-or-garden Sainsbury’s job. Everything goes in the bag. Not just beer cans and cigarette packets — I’m talking about mucky stuff like wet newspapers, polystyrene takeaway containers and banana skins. I even pick up those little black plastic bags full of excrement that some dog owners carefully place beside trees or hang on railings. My children are mortified by this behaviour.

I’ve just written an essay for Quadrant, an Australian periodical, in which I propose a controversial solution to the problem of entrenched inequality: free designer babies for the poor. Yes, yes, I know. It sounds like a 21st-century version of Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ and, at first, I rejected it as being too far-fetched. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. So how did I get there? The essay starts by discussing one of the long-term problems with meritocracy, which is that it ends up replacing one hereditary elite with another. This shortcoming was first pointed out by my father, who invented the word ‘meritocracy’ in the 1950s to describe the sort of society he thought Britain was becoming.

This is a cautionary tale for any young couples out there thinking of tying the knot. Be wary of what you have in common — it may end up dividing you. When I first got together with Caroline, one of the things that made me think we were well suited was her slightly curmudgeonly nature. She wasn’t a full-blown misanthrope like me, but she was fond of a good grumble, particularly about other people. That’s a character trait that can leave you feeling quite isolated — it’s borderline socially unacceptable — so it was quite bonding to discover we both suffered from the same vice. Caroline reminded me of the slogan on a novelty cushion I once saw: ‘If you can’t think of anything nice to say… come and sit next to me.

Boy, am I glad I’m not a Frenchman. Last week’s dramatic incident on board a Paris-bound train, in which a terrorist atrocity was narrowly averted by a group of heroic passengers, is a stain on French manhood to rival the Battle of Agincourt. I’m not referring to the incompetence of the French security services, who seem unable to stop terrorists roaming the country, shooting people at will. I’m talking about the response of the French men on the train when they became aware that a crazy-looking Middle Eastern man was stalking the carriages, armed with an assault rifle. The vast majority hid under their seats.

I’m currently at a French campsite in the Languedoc, having been persuaded by my wife that it would be a good place to spend our summer holiday. She described the campsite as ‘a French Butlins’, which she knew would appeal to me. If I can’t afford to stay at the Hotel du Cap, which I can’t, I’d prefer to be at the bottom of the social pyramid rather than somewhere in the middle. But her main argument was that it would be incredibly cheap —cheaper, even, than renting a house in Cornwall. We’re paying about £100 a day for a ‘chalet’ that sleeps six. There was simply no way we could be disappointed. Well, yes and no. I’ll start with the positive. The staff are remarkably well-mannered.

The 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has produced some predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about the horrors of nuclear weapons. The Guardian called the dropping of the bombs ‘obscene’, citing the figure of 250,000 casualties, and CND organised a commemorative event where Jeremy Corbyn renewed his call for unilateral nuclear disarmament. As a conservative and a realist, I don’t have the luxury of moral certainty. Was Harry Truman wrong to take the decision he did? On 16 August 1945, Winston Churchill defended him in a speech in the House of Commons, making what has since become the standard case. Yes, Japan would have been defeated eventually, but the bombings brought the second world war to an end without the need for a land invasion.

Watching a group of unruly children make mincemeat out of a well-meaning teacher has become a television staple and Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, a factual entertainment series that debuted on BBC2 on Tuesday, is a case in point. We look on aghast as five teachers from China struggle to manage a class of ordinary 14-year-olds in England. They quickly discover that the techniques that have made Chinese schoolchildren the envy of the world don’t work with Kevin the Teenager. On the face of it, the Chinese educational model has much to recommend it. Shanghai is at the top of the Pisa international education league tables in maths, while the UK is in 26th place.

A few years ago, I got a bit fed up with receiving Christmas cards from my friends designed to show off just how well they were doing. A typical card consisted of five or six blond children on ponies or quad bikes with a massive country house in the background. The caption would be something like: ‘Greetings from Shropshire.’ So I came up with an idea. Why not create my own version? I’d get my four children to strike a variety of delinquent poses. One would be outside QPR stadium, fag in mouth and can of beer in hand. Another would be doing an impression of Lord Coke with a rolled-up £10 note sticking out of his nose. My daughter would be pushing a double buggy containing two snotty babies and sporting a Croydon facelift.

Is the ‘Tories for Corbyn’ campaign politics at its most infantile? As one of the few conservative commentators willing to defend it in the media, I’ve been doing my best to rebut that charge. The most frequent line of attack is that there’s something dishonest about it. The Labour leadership election isn’t an open primary. It’s restricted to members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters. OK, you can register as a supporter for £3 — a change brought in by Ed Miliband to reduce union influence — but only if you pretend to be a Labour sympathiser. And that’s just wrong. The short answer to this is that no such pretence is necessary — at least, it wasn’t when I signed up via the party’s website.

Forget about the countryside. When is the government going to do something about the vulpine creatures wreaking havoc in central London? The situation is now so out of control, it’s time the Prime Minister convened a meeting of Cobra to discuss the ginger menace. I’m talking, of course, about the horde of SNP MPs who’ve invaded Westminster. Actually, I’m not, but I couldn’t resist that gag. No, foxes are the problem. I don’t actually keep a chicken coop in my back garden in Acton — and, for that reason, I’m spared the sight of my beloved poultry lying in a pool of blood with their heads bitten off. But I still have a long list of complaints. First, there’s the appalling sound they make, particularly during the mating season.

I took my three boys for a cycle ride in Richmond Park on Sunday. Under normal circumstances, this would have been a good way to relax, but I had to be back home in Acton by 2.15 p.m. for my daughter’s 12th birthday party. Given that we didn’t leave the house until 11 a.m., and were relying on public transport, we were slightly up against it. We got to the park at noon, which gave us about 75 minutes to complete a seven-mile circuit, allowing for an hour to get home. Just about doable, but only if all three boys went flat out and resisted the urge to get off and push when we were going uphill. The weakest link was seven-year-old Charlie, who still has the same bike he had when he was five. No gears and tiny wheels, so he has to pedal twice as quickly to keep up.

Two months ago, I set myself the target of losing 11 pounds in time for the Spectator’s summer party on 1 July. To help achieve that, I swore off alcohol and, had I succeeded, my plan was to start drinking again at the party. I managed the weight loss, but didn’t make it to the party because it clashed with a board meeting of the educational charity I set up five years ago. The upshot is that I haven’t started drinking again and I’m debating whether to remain teetotal in perpetuity. Temperance has its advantages. I’ve experienced almost no headaches or stomach aches since I gave up the booze, although that may also be connected with my diet.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/angelamerkel-sburden/media.mp3" title="Toby Young and Oliver Kamm debate Gove's grammar" startat=1394] Listen [/audioplayer]Few things are more likely to provoke the disapproval of the bien-pensant left than criticising someone’s grammar. The very idea that one way of speaking is more ‘correct’ than another is anathema to them. Under the guise of being helpful, it asserts the supremacy of the white educated bourgeoisie and seeks to rob the working class and ethnic minorities of any pride in their own culture. It’s a form of ‘linguistic imperialism’.

There’s a warning buried in the detail of the new report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission on why top companies employ so few applicants from comprehensive schools: ‘Though this study provides valuable insights into barriers to the elite professions, there are nevertheless some limitations associated with the chosen research methodology. As a small-scale qualitative study, the aim is to explore issues and generalisability is limited.’ But most pundits who’ve commented so far missed this caveat. ‘New research… reveals the privileged choose and look after their own,’ wrote Owen Jones in the Guardian. ‘They don’t like accents that sound a bit, well, “common”.

I’ve been reading Fire and Ashes, Michael Ignatieff’s account of his disastrous foray into politics, in an attempt to understand where it all went wrong for Ed Miliband. In combination with the election postmortems and interviews with the people in Miliband’s inner circle, it’s extremely illuminating. For those unfamiliar with his story, Ignatieff is a left-wing Harvard professor who in 2004 received a surprise visit by three ‘men in black’ — high-ups in the Liberal party of Canada who sounded him out about making a run for the leadership.