Has The Telegraph Sacked Toby Young?

As the bear pit that is Telegraph blogs goes through its death throes – no posts at all on Monday of this week, and one on each subsequent day, unless you count the entries for Adams’ cartoons – it is coming clear that, in the state of flux the paper now finds itself, nobody is at the helm and the vessel is drifting aimlessly, as the supposed star cast is finding something better to do.

Tobes talks total cock no shock horror

Some pundits, like Dan Hodges, are finding themselves transformed into Real Serious Writers (no, don’t laugh), but others are conspicuous by their absence. And one regular who has all but vanished, although he is still writing for the Spectator, is the loathsome Toby Young, whose regular propaganda for Free Schools, especially the one founded by Himself Personally Now, was such a tedious former fixture.

Indeed, Tobes had managed seven posts as recently as last month, but there have been just two in October, and nothing for the past three weeks, which suggests either that he has nothing to say (improbable, as Tobes is always prepared to talk about his favourite subject, which is, of course, himself), or that he has been deemed surplus to requirements and therefore binned.

Of course, he could have merely walked away, but denying himself an outlet for all that right-wing tosh is not the Tobes way. The record of ructions at the Telegraph that has featured prominently in every recent issue of Private Eye (the latest litany of redundancies, featuring the word “decimation”, is top left of Page 9 in Issue 1378) has not yet featured him, but time will tell.

After all, if the Tel is binning the likes of Tim Walker, who is way better at being creative with reality than the loathsome Tobes, then it won’t have a problem getting shot of a pundit who went to catch a plum assignment at the Murdoch Sun – but ended up dropping it. If Louise Mensch is the preferred choice as Sunday pundit, it really wasn’t worth his while turning up.

So what’s the deal, Tobes? You’re giving Spectator readers chapter and verse on your holiday – the Portuguese have my sympathies, but there you go, that’s the dastardly EU and its Freedom of Movement for you – and telling them, at other times, how wonderful your hero Michael “Oiky” Gove was, and how you’ve just opened another Free School, but there’s nothing in the Telegraph.

It’s sort of “downhill all the way”, isn’t it? Sacked by Vanity Fair, sacked by the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, and now it’s looking like he’s been sacked by the Tel. Perhaps he’ll be in touch soon, bleating that I’ve “libelled” him again. Most likely, like all the other Tel blogs contributors that are no longer there, he’ll just slink off and hope that nobody notices. Except I have done.

Yes, there goes the loathsome Toby Young. On his way ... out.