Toby Young

Oh dear. I think I may have inadvertently contributed to the dissolution of Great Britain. I’m not claiming sole responsibility. In due course, when the blame game begins, I’ll play second fiddle to the party leaders, Gordon Brown, Eddie Izzard and successive generations of carpet-bagging aristocrats. Nevertheless, when the rise and fall of the British Isles is written, I’ll be deserving of a minor footnote. I’m talking, of course, about the imminent secession of Wales from the United Kingdom. I say ‘imminent’, but it’s contingent upon a ‘yes’ vote in next week’s Scottish referendum, which isn’t yet a foregone conclusion.

I had an interesting discussion with my friend Aidan Hartley earlier this week about whether the young men fighting for the so-called Islamic State are psychopaths. (This was before the news broke of Steven Sotloff’s beheading.) Aidan is better placed than most to answer this question, having worked as a war correspondent for many years and written a classic book on the subject called The Zanzibar Chest. His view is that the Islamic radicals attracted to IS are not run-of-the-mill jihadis, but a particularly nasty sub-species. Without in any way trying to defend the activities of terrorist groups like al-Shabaab, whose handiwork he’s witnessed close up, he thinks of them as being more like the IRA.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a veteran of the summer festival circuit, but I’ve been to enough to have a theory about them. Or, rather, discuss someone else’s — in this case that of Matthew Taylor, head of the RSA. For those readers who’ve never been to a festival, I will begin with a short primer. They usually take place in a muddy field over a long weekend, often in the grounds of a stately home or similar, and cost upwards of £200 to attend. There is nearly always an adjoining campsite, where many of the festival-goers stay for the duration, although the sanitary arrangements are poor.

I feel some sympathy for Mark Simmonds, the Conservative MP who’s resigned as a minister and is stepping down at the end of this Parliament because he can’t support his family. His announcement has been greeted with scorn and derision by the chattering classes — how dare he complain that an MP’s salary isn’t enough to live on? — even though most of them are earning far more than him. Any politician who utters a murmur of dissent about the terms and conditions of his or her employment is an instant pariah. In fact, if you can be bothered to read beyond the headlines, Simmonds’s complaint seems pretty reasonable.

I’m due to speak at an Intelligence Squared debate on Saturday and I’m worried that I might be on the wrong side. The motion is ‘Monogamy equals monotony’ and I’m opening the batting for the opposition. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m perfectly happy to make the case for monogamy. But the problem with framing the debate in this way is that it invites those of us opposing the motion to argue that, in fact, being faithful to one person is every bit as exciting as sleeping with whomever we choose.

A few years ago, a family friend described my father as being a bit like Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House, by which he meant that he neglected his own family in favour of helping others. By way of proof, he cited the famous occasion when my father abandoned all of us on Christmas Day to spend time with some elderly widows in the local cemetery, pouring cups of tea into the graves of their dear departed husbands. He had a point. My father wasn’t a deadbeat dad in the conventional sense of the word, but he was a workaholic. The only time I can remember him playing football with me was on my birthday — a huge treat. The rest of the time he was either at work or ensconced in his office at the top of the house.

I tried to reach Michael Gove on Tuesday shortly after the news broke that he’d been moved to the Whips’ Office. I’m quite relieved he never called back, because my intention was to offer my condolences, never a good idea when a friend suffers a setback. I know from experience that any expression of pity when some calamity befalls you only makes it ten times worse. ‘Oh Christ,’ you think. ‘Is it really that bad?’ In Gove’s case, I don’t think it is. He achieved more in his four years as Education Secretary than his predecessors did in 40. Given the hostility of the education establishment to even the mildest of reforms, it’s remarkable he lasted that long.

Unlike 99 per cent of my colleagues, I was quite touched by John Bercow’s comment about how fed up he is with jokes about his height. ‘Whereas nobody these days would regard it as acceptable to criticise someone on grounds of race or creed or disability or sexual orientation, somehow it seems to be acceptable to comment on someone’s height, or lack of it,’ he said. OK, maybe taking the mickey out of someone for being short isn’t quite on the same level as, say, murdering them for being black or homosexual, but I think he has a point. I say this for two reasons. The first, obviously, is because I hope to become an MP one day and have a vested interest in sucking up to the Speaker. The second, though, is because I’m a bit of a short-arse myself.

The Times headline on Tuesday was rather cruel: ‘Stars turn down No. 10 invitation.’ This was a reference to the party the press dubbed ‘Cool Britannia II’, David Cameron’s attempt to recreate the glamour of Tony Blair’s star-studded Downing Street reception in 1997. ‘They wanted Daniel Craig and Benedict Cumberbatch,’ said the Times. ‘They got Ronnie Corbett and Bruce Forsyth.’ To be fair, the guests also included Helena Bonham-Carter, Claudia Winkleman, Harvey Weinstein, Richard Curtis, Roger Daltrey, Eliza Doolittle and Kirstie Allsopp. But according to Fleet Street’s finest, who were milling about outside with their noses pressed up against the windows, it still compared unfavourably with Blair’s bash.

This isn’t a headline I was expecting to read: ‘Free schools could be a bigger negative for the Tories than Ed Miliband is for Labour.’ Given that Miliband’s net satisfaction ratings are minus 39, that was quite a shock. Do the people who disapprove of free schools really outweigh the people who approve of them by a bigger margin than that? Well, no, they don’t, obviously. The headline, which appeared on the blog of Mike Smithson, a left-wing gadfly, was a reference to a YouGov poll on 20 June. Respondents were asked whether they supported or opposed the creation of free schools: 23 per cent were in favour, 53 per cent opposed and 24 per cent undecided. That’s minus 20, not quite in Miliband territory. But not good, definitely not good.

As you’re reading this, I will still be recovering from the dinner I’m due to attend this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. Earlier the same day, I’m due to appear on a panel with various conservative grandees to discuss whether the other side has won. Classical liberals emerged victorious from the battle of ideas in the 1980s, thanks in part to the work of the CPS, but it’s beginning to look as though we’ll have to have the same arguments all over again. One reason for concern is the hard left turn taken by the Labour party. It has often been said that Thatcher’s greatest victory was converting her socialist opponents to economic liberalism.

I expect all of us have said something we regret at one time or another, but not everyone does so in front of 1.5 million people. That was my misfortune when I was caught off guard by an interviewer for ITN on my way out of a television studio in Westminster on Sunday. I’d just done a review of the morning’s papers on Murnaghan and was feeling rather chipper on account of the exchange I’d just had with Diane Abbott about Labour’s electoral chances. Live on air, I offered to bet her £100 that Ed Miliband wouldn’t win the election and, to my delight, she refused to take it. ‘I never bet,’ she said. Not exactly a vote of confidence from someone who, until recently, was a key member of Miliband’s leadership team.

In The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s a poignant shot towards the end in which we see an FBI agent going home on the subway. This law enforcement officer — Agent Patrick Denham — will eventually bring about the downfall of Jordan Belfort, the film’s main character, and the fact that he uses public transport is supposed to be evidence of his integrity. He’s an honest, hard-working tax-payer who plays by the rules. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but in the past 25 years I’ve gone from being an international party boy to a kind of FBI agent. Admittedly, I’ve never plumbed the depths of debauchery that Jordan Belfort does in the film. Even in my New York heyday, I was more of a Mouse of Madison Avenue than a Wolf of Wall Street.

I suppose I should be grateful that the liberal intelligentsia doesn’t bother to check any of the facts if an opportunity presents itself to attack Michael Gove. They have a fixed idea about him, which is that he’s a Tory philistine who wants to turn the clock back to the 1950s, and they leap on any story that confirms that view, regardless of how far-fetched it is. The reason I’m grateful is because it enables me to scratch out a living putting the record straight. Last November, Polly Toynbee wrote a column in the Guardian claiming that Gove intended to strip English literature from the national curriculum, an act of cultural vandalism she compared to ethnic cleansing. Why had he perpetrated this terrible crime?

I was interested to read a story by Michael Wolff in USA Today saying that Graydon Carter may be about to step down as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Carter has been at the helm for 22 years and was my boss during the three years I spent there between 1995 and 1998. According to Wolff, himself a columnist at the magazine, the runners and riders to take over are nearly all British. Wolff thinks this is mainly because power within Condé Nast, the publishing company that owns Vanity Fair, has shifted from New York and towards London, home of Condé Nast International, a subsidiary that is now more profitable than the mother ship.

I went to a meeting at Penguin earlier this week to discuss ‘publicity opportunities’ for my forthcoming book. Chance would be a fine thing, I thought. It’s essentially a guide to what’s in the new national curriculum, how it’s likely to be taught at primary schools and what parents can do at home to supplement it. Surely, not a single radio or television producer will be interested in that? No, no, no, said the crack publicity team at Penguin. You’re quite wrong. This book’s going to get a ton of media attention. There are two reasons for this, apparently. First, the book is called What Every Parent Needs to Know and no one considering whether to cover it in their programme is going to bother opening the book or finding out what’s inside.

I find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment when my support for Queen’s Park Rangers crossed over into full-blown fandom. I’ve lived in Shepherd’s Bush since 1991, and at one stage owned a house that overlooked their stadium. When dinner guests asked me whether I was bothered by the noise, I used to joke that it only got really loud when QPR scored — so, no, it was like living next door to the British Library. I didn’t go to my first match until after my daughter Sasha was born in 2003 and back then Caroline was convinced I’d only developed an interest in the local club to escape her and the baby. Probably some truth in that, but as a strategy for avoiding childcare it backfired.

I wonder how many cyclists are killed in London during tube strikes? I had a 10 a.m. meeting in the West End on Tuesday that I couldn’t cancel so made the seven-and-a-half-mile journey by bike. It was hairy, to put it mildly. You’d think it would be safer cycling in London when the tube’s not running because the traffic is almost stationary. But it isn’t, thanks to the above average number of cyclists. I found myself constantly having to overtake people, most of whom were too cautious to weave in and out of the traffic like me. The danger came when they’d gingerly poke their noses out in between cars, completely oblivious to the maniac bearing down on them at breakneck speed. I almost killed at least half a dozen people.