Toby Young

Toby Daniel Moorsom Young is a far-right British journalist, author, and former director of several educational institutions. He is known for supporting eugenics, making homophobic and misogynistic comments on Twitter, for admitting to being high on cocaine in a London club, and for founding the Free Speech Union. In November 2021 he was awarded the 2021 Contrarian Prize.
==Sexism and homophobia==
In January 2018, Toby was controversially appointed to the post of non-executive director on the board of the He resigned slightly over a week later after significant public pressure over his large number of misogynistic and homophobic tweets.
==Support of eugenics==
In 2015, Young wrote an article for the Australian magazine entitled "The fall of meritocracy". In it, he advocated what he termed "progressive eugenics". Young proposed that when the technology for genetically-engineered intelligence is practical, it should be allowable for a decision to be made by poor parents with low IQs concerning which embryos should be allowed to develop using intelligence as a marker. "It could help to address the problem of flat-lining inter-generational social mobility", he wrote.
In January 2018, Private Eye and the revealed that Young attended the London Conference on Intelligence at (UCL) in 2017, which was described by the media and a number of politicians as a "secret eugenics conference". The conference was convened by Honorary UCL professor James Thompson and included speakers such as Richard Lynn. Young distanced himself from the conference and wrote that his involvement was not significant — see London Conference on Intelligence § Toby Young.
== Drug use ==
In 2001, Toby admitted to having taken cocaine at the in central London in 1997, as well as supplying drugs to others. As such activities are against the Club rules, he was subsequently expelled in late 2001 after writing about the cocaine use of his friends to whom he had supplied the drug during a photo shoot for Vanity Fair.
==COVID-19==
In March 2020, he wrote an article in The Critic on COVID-19 that was condemned. In the article he wrote:
Journalist Ruth Wishart tweeted:
Byline Times editor Peter Jukes tweeted:
In the article, Young argued for ending the lockdown before April 14, 2020, a view similar to one espoused by Donald Trump.
Critics had suggested that Young would change his mind if he contracted COVID-19, to which he said he thought he'd already had it, adding:
==(The De Facto Non-)Free Speech Union==
In 2020 he formed the so-called Free Speech Union (FSU), supposedly dedicated to preserving free speech. It promised to defend the free speech of all members who paid a subscription fee, which started at £49.95 (50% off for students and pensioners).Say what you want about Toby Young – no, really, he’ll defend your right to say it, Joel Golby, The Guardian, 24 Feb 2020 However, in practice, it has de facto close links to right-wing thinktank Institute of Economic Affairs: for instance, co-hosting an event at which anti-woke campaigner Laurence Fox was one of the speakers.Think Tent 2020: Free speech in crisis?, Institute of Economic Affairs
It early opposed COVID orthodoxy, launching an unsuccessful judicial review challenging media regulator OFCOM's attempts to prevent COVID misinformation during the pandemic.
There are few occasions that it has actually spoken up for free speech; it offered to defend anti-monarchist protestors after Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022.If any republican is arrested and charged for protesting against the monarchy we urge them to contact a member of our case team on help@freespeechunion.com. The right to protest is a fundamental human right and the police and courts ignore it at their peril., @SpeechUnion, Twitter, 12 September 2022 However it is unclear if it actually provided any help.
In January 2021, the FSU was accused of secretly organising a campaign which claimed to be promoting free speech in universities but was actually a front for the FSU's right-wing beliefs, leading to many student groups disengaging from it. The Free Speech Youth Advisory Board was attacked by university anti-censorship and human rights groups as an "astroturfing" front that imposed the FSU's political beliefs and wasn't genuinely interested in international free speech but only in promoting a "culture war" against the left in the UK.Students quit free speech campaign over role of Toby Young-founded group, The Guardian, 9 Jan 2021
The group's views on free speech were also questioned when someone on Twitter insulted Allison Pearson, a trollish right-wing newspaper columnist and member of the FSU's media advisory group, and Pearson tried to contact the person's boss and get them sacked. This attempt at cancellation wasn't viewed as very pro-free-speech. In December 2021, a Byline Times investigation reported that the Free Speech Union was intimately tied to a network backed by right-wing German-American billionaire Peter Thiel.Nafeez Ahmed (December 10, 2021). "Peter Thiel's Free Speech for Race Science Crusade at Cambridge University Revealed". Byline Times.
In other instances of censorship, the FSU has called on the government to ban drag events for children including Drag Queen Story Hour UK, because the suggestion that people can change their gender is an affront to the FSU's transphobia.Free Speech Union calls on Liz Truss to censor family-friendly drag events, Pink News, 13 September 2022
In September 2022, there was also a brief tizzy when Twitter suspended the Free Speech Union's twitter account for a few days, along with accounts for COVID-sceptics The Daily Sceptic and UsForThem; some right-wing MPs wrote stern letters and the FSU was reinstated. As is common with Twitter, it isn't entirely clear why this happened but seems to have been about COVID misinformation (as the New Statesman has suggested).PayPal reinstates Free Speech Union accounts after being accused of ‘politically motivated’ ban, The Daily Telegraph, 27 September 2022PayPal vs Toby Young isn’t about free speech – it’s about the free market, New Statesman, 23 September 2022
==Stewart Lee vs The Toadmeister==
British comedian criticized Toby Young in two editorials in The Guardian. The first, published in 2018 addressed Young's habit of referring to himself as the "Toadmeister":
In the second article, published in 2020, Lee focused on the Free Speech union:
Lee also mentioned Young in his 2025 standup show Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf.REVIEW: Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf, York Theatre Royal (January 30, 2025) Charles Hutchinson The Press (Retrieved February 12, 2025)
==See also==
*The Critic
==References==
Category:Authors
Category:British people
Category:Journalists
Category:Eugenics supporters
Category:Living people
Category:Sexists
Category:Thielsphere
Category:Homophobes
Category:Purity culture
Category:Racists
Category:COVID-19 denialists