Toby Young Euro Lecture Hypocrisy

Every member of the Pundit Establishment seems to not only have an opinion on the upcoming EU referendum, but also has no problem with letting us all know what it is, whether we want to hear it or not. And someone who is never backwards in coming forwards on the subject is the loathsome Toby Young, who wants everyone to know he is so important that he went to debate the subject in Paris recently.

More less than grown up debate from Tobes

Tobes begins with his customary dishonesty, telling of “My day as the only Eurosceptic at the finishing school for Europe’s elite”. A word in your shell-like, Tobes: “Eurosceptic” suggests scepticism, that one’s mind is not yet made up, someone who is in “show me” mode. But Tobes’ mind is already made up, and he is not even slightly sceptical. He is a full-on, unvarnished, unflinching Europhobe.

The substance of his argument was patronising, in addition to the dishonesty: “When I pointed out EU deficiencies such as its lack of transparency, the fact that laws can be introduced only by unelected European Commissioners and the widespread corruption that has confounded its auditors for 21 years”. Laws get through only when the European Parliament votes them through. It is a democratically elected body.

And the “widespread corruption” he talks of does not exist: this is the old and tired claim that the EU’s auditors have not signed off the accounts, but they have, and every year too. What they won’t sign off is the way that spending EU funds in some member states doesn’t meet the same accounting standards as the EU has centrally. And I have another problem with taking Tobes as a credible lecturer on laws and lawmaking.

As we were reminded recently, Toby Young has no room to lecture anyone about probity, and certainly none about our obligations under the law. This is, after all, someone who confessed to having his membership of the Groucho Club terminated for his use of currently illegal drugs, something to which he ‘fessed up readily in the pages of the Guardian, which at the time was useful to him and not yet beyond the pale.

“My crime was to write about a cocaine-taking incident that occurred during a photo shoot for Vanity Fair's 'Cool Britannia' issue at the club. I was the editor in charge and in my recently published book I reveal that Damien Hirst and Keith Allen, the photo's two subjects, demanded I supply them with alcohol and cocaine as a condition of posing for the camera” he explained, confirming he both supplied and used cocaine.

“Needless to say, things soon got out of hand and I felt like a supply teacher presiding over a group of naughty schoolchildren. I didn't help matters by dipping into the Bolivian marching powder myself”. He did Charlie as well as supplying it. Then he shot his mouth off about it. Then, after all of that, he demanded that the taxpayer allow him to blow an eight-figure sum setting up his own school. And now we should trust him on the EU.

Nobody should trust Toby Young any further than they could chuck him. End of story.