Toby or not Toby? Spectator columnist Toby Young, chairman of the West London Free School Academy Trust, has thrown his hat in the ring as a possible Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith. Or is it just a toe in the water?
Young concedes in today’s Spectator that the current Labour MP, Andy Slaughter, who has a 3,549 majority, is a good constituency member but this is a double-edged compliment.
“They mean ‘good’ in the sense that he’ll turn up to the opening of an envelope,” says Young, explaining that he has a busy life and would have to take a drop in salary if elected. “One reason he can do this is because politics is his life. He’s unmarried and childless.”
As chairman of the trust, Young explains, he has opened two schools so far and plans six more. “The election campaign itself would inevitably be an unpleasant experience in which all the embarrassing stuff I’ve ever done would be dug up and used against me. Not difficult since I’ve dredged up most of it myself in the pages of this magazine. As Kingsley Amis once said, ‘Never make a joke against yourself that some little bastard can turn into a piece of shit and send your way’.”
Young says he’d have to decide whether to suck up to George Osborne or Speaker John Bercow, and neither prospect fills him with joy.
“Once, MPs could expect a little respect for devoting themselves to public service but not any more. Nowadays, you’re regarded as a lying, cheating bastard who’s either on the fiddle or having it off with his secretary.”
