After eight days of damaging revelations about the odious hard-right polemicist Toby Young, he has resigned from the Tory government's new universities watchdog.
Young had tried to hide his disgusting past by deleting some 50,000 Tweets, but people had already taken screenshots of some of the worst comments including anal rape 'jokes', casual misogyny and homophobia, a description of masturbating over images of starving children, and crude comments about the breasts of an underage girl.
Aside from the shower of gross Twitter comments there was Young's journalistic output, which included an article admitting the supply of cocaine, an article describing his efforts to trick lesbian women into having sexual contact with him, and most concerning of all, articles in which he tried to rehabilitate the concept of eugenics.
Had this been a Labour Party figure (like Jared O'Mara for example), we all know what the reaction would have been from the likes of Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog. But instead of a tidal wave of faux outrage we witnessed a week-long exercise in ridiculous Tory excuse-making.
Theresa May said that she was "not impressed" by Toby Young's comments, but refused to sack him; Boris Johnson described Young as having a "caustic wit" as if describing wanking over dying children is the work of a modern day Oscar Wilde; Toby Young even thanked the Guido Fawkes blog for their support in his ludicrous Facebook self-exoneration; and the universities minister Jo Johnson (the brother of Boris) even found himself defending anal rape jokes and modern eugenics in parliament after opposition MPs secured an emergency debate over Toby Young's appointment.
After a the furore showed no signs of dying down after a week the Tories even circulated a memo urging Tory MPs to deflect attention away from Toby Young by attacking and smearing Labour politicians. This wasn't just members of the Tory boys club sticking up for their horrible mate, it was an orchestrated effort by the Tory party machine to defend the indefensible.
Despite the desperate rearguard action from the Tory party machine, the pressure eventually told and Toby Young gave in and announced his resignation. It's astounding that despite all the repulsive comments and articles, he was allowed to walk away of his own volition, not fired.
The fact that the Tories stuck with such a repulsive and desperately unsuitable appointment to a supposedly neutral and impartial public sector role tells you all you need to know about how nasty they are, but there's another angle too.
The way they spent eight days robustly defending the indefensible and sustaining damage to their reputation just to let the guy resign illustrates their sheer incompetence.
Any competent organisation would have nipped the scandal in the bud by admitting the comments and pro-eugenics articles were unacceptable, and cancelling the appointment. But that's just not the way the Tory party works, especially under the weak and directionless leadership of Theresa May.
Toby Young is part of the Tory boys club and untouchable. Even if Theresa May had the inclination to sack him, she couldn't because she's in such a weak position and Toby's fellow members of the Tory boys club like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Jo Johnson would have kicked up a stink that would have threatened her position as party leader, so as usual she put self-interest above all and let the obnoxious creep keep his position.
Even after Young's resignation, Tories like Jo Johnson are still intent on making the situation worse by continuing to spew one-sided Toby Young eulogies and smearing everyone who objected to his appointment as "armchair critics".
It's as if they genuinely can't see what's wrong with appointing such a savagely biased and repulsive character to a supposedly impartial public position, and they're going to take their fury out on any members of the general public with the rudimentary judgement skills necessary to see why such a person is so catastrophically unfit for public office.
In their warped minds masturbating over starving children, anal rape 'jokes', casual misogyny and homophobia, obsessing over the breasts of a minor, and efforts to rehabilitate eugenics are absolutely fine, and Toby Young is some kind of unfortunate martyr, and that's the ridiculous narrative these out-of-touch Tory boys club buffoons are actually running with!
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In October 2017 the Tories and their baying attack dogs in the right-wing media laid siege to our universities.
On October 19th the Tory Universities minister Jo Johnson kicked off the campaign with the announcement of a classic divide and conquer strategy designed to create divisions between students and university administrators by levying fines on universities if any of their student groups attempt to prevent the likes of right-wing extremists, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, white supremacists and Salafi Islamist extremists from attending events at their campuses.
It seems absurd that the Tory universities minister would seek to interfere in student politics to ensure student groups are prevented from "no platforming" extreme-right groups and Salafi Islamist organisations like the EDL, the banned extreme-right terrorist organisation National Action, and the far-right Salafist groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun, because it seems like an insane move in light of the fact that several of extreme-right and Islamist organisations that have been "no-platformed" by the National Union of Students have also been proscribed as illegal terrorist organisations by the Home Office.
Why would the Tories want British students to be exposed to the ravings of extreme-right neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and the kind of Islamist fanatics that their (much criticised) Prevent strategy is actually aimed at keeping out of our education system?
The answer that springs to mind is that the Tories have no real interest in protecting the free speech of extreme-right hatemongers or Islamist extremists, they're just looking for an excuse to drive a massive wedge between students and their universities by threatening to impose fines on the universities if they don't intervene to force student groups to host such extremists.
There's pretty much nothing more guaranteed to create chaos and conflict on university campuses than compelling university administrators to try and force their students to listen to fascists and Islamist extremists.
The next salvo in the right-wing attack on our universities was triggered by the Tory whip and hard-right Brexit fanatic Chris Heaton-Harris sending out a McCarthyite letter requesting lists of all university staff teaching about Brexit, and copies of all coursework.
When the letters became public it caused a massive furore causing Jo Johnson to step in and claim that it was all perfectly fine because Heaton-Harris wasn't actually conducting a witch hunt on behalf of the government, but just misusing parliamentary resources and abusing his position as an MP in order to obtain information for a book!
However the Heaton-Harris letters had the desired effect nonetheless, triggering a furious anti-intellectual witch hunt of Britain's universities for anyone who had ever attempted to criticise or critique Brexit, led by the Daily Mail (which is nothing more than the Pravda of the Tory party these days).
So now not only are the Tory government trying to force student groups to listen to extreme-right fanatics, holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and Islamist fanatics, their attack dogs are also intent on trying to intimidate university staff into never criticising or critiquing the Tory government's approach to Brexit.
In one breath they're demanding more free speech for neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and Islamist hate-preachers, and in the very next breath they're desperately seeking to clamp down on the free speech of university lecturers who dare to critique the ongoing Brexit farce!
When it comes to thinking about who this cognitive dissonance inducing campaign of right-wing attacks on our universities is aimed at pleasing, it's hardly likely to appeal to the youth vote is it?
There's no way that making young people listen to fascists against their will and trying to interfere with the contents of university courses could be anything but the most cack-handed attempt to appeal to the youth vote imaginable. So if this assault on our universities is meant to do anything other than destabilise our universities just for the sake of it, it's got to be an effort to shore up the reactionary Tory blue-kip vote.
You can just imagine the demographic these Tory attacks on students and the independence of academics are designed to appeal to:
- The kind of bitter right-wing tabloid rote-learner who thinks that the really big problem with our universities is that the youngsters there don't spend enough time listening to fascists, white-supremacists, Holocaust deniers and other extreme-right hate groups.
- The kind of instinctive authoritarian who mistrusts experts and intellectuals, and thinks that the government should scrap the concept of academic independence and dictate what can and can't be taught in universities.
- The kind of knee-jerk reactionary who can't even see how contradictory their own views are, one minute demanding that the free speech of right-wing hatemongers should be sacrosanct, and the next minute demanding curbs on the free speech of politics, economics, and law lecturers in our universities.
The Tories know perfectly well that they were only saved from an outright Jeremy Corbyn victory in 2017 by a huge surge of Ukippers deserting the laughing stock Paul Nuttall in order to back the opportunistic Brexit convert Theresa May and the Tory party.
Perhaps these assaults on students and the academic independence of university staff are a last ditch attempt to shore up the Tory Blue-kip vote with a massive display of hard-right anti-intellectualism?
Or perhaps they're an even more desperate and cack-handed attempt to resolve the demographic problem the Tories are facing by deliberately pushing right-wing hate preachers onto university campuses, and attempting to intimidate academics into subservience to the government?
Whatever the case, the Tories and their right-wing attack dogs in the Daily Mail are likely to suffer a lot of blowback from a student body that is already furious about the Tories' rip-off tuition fees, and an university staff who recognise the fundamental importance of academic independence from the whims of government ministers and right-wing propaganda barons.
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After the Tory whip Chris Heaton-Harris triggered condemnation from universities, students, opposition parties, pro- and anti- Brexit campaigners, and free speech activists alike with his McCarthyite inquisition into what universities are teaching about Brexit, the Tory party wheeled out the Universities minister Jo Johnson to make a series of excuses.
Heaton-Harris had sent out letters to every university in the UK requesting a list of all professors teaching about Brexit, and copies of all Brexit-related course materials.
The important thing to note is that he used parliamentary resources to send out these letters, and he made his request for this information in a professional capacity, not a personal one.
Jo Johnson's attempted excuse for Heaton-Harris' behaviour was quite extraordinary: "He was pursuing inquiries of his own which may in time, I think, lead to a book on these questions".
Instead of getting his Tory colleague out of trouble, this attempted excuse is absolutely scandalous.
If it is true that Heaton-Harris sent out these letters in order to conduct research for a personal book project, then he's massively overstepped the line by abusing his position as a member of government, and by using parliamentary resources for his own personal benefit.
If you or I wrote to every university in the country in a personal capacity asking for a list of staff teaching about Brexit, and free copies of all their course material on the subject so that we could write a book about our findings, we'd obviously get very short shrift, but according to Jo Johnson's version of events, Heaton-Harris decided to use his position as a government minister to ask for this information.
In trying to make an excuse for his Tory colleague's behaviour Jo Johnson has publicly accused him of attempting to obtain information by deception. Johnson has inadvertently accused Heaton-Harris of using his position as an MP for the governing party in order to seek access to information that he would clearly not have been able to obtain if he had asked in a personal capacity.
There couldn't really be a clearer example of a politician seeking to abuse their position in government than this.
The idea of a government minister interfering in the independence of our universities by demanding lists of lecturers, and free copies of course materials is bad enough in its own right. But if it turns out that Heaton-Harris only made this McCarthyite inquisition because he was abusing his position as a member of the government in order to try to harvest information for a personal project, then he needs to be severely punished.
There now needs to be a proper investigation into what the purpose of the Heaton-Harris inquisition was.
If Heaton-Harris was sending the letters on behalf of a government department as was originally suspected, we need to know which department, and what they wanted the information for. And if he was indeed misusing parliamentary resources and abusing his position in government in order to obtain the kind of information he would not have been able to obtain in a personal capacity, he clearly needs to be held to account for his actions.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
