It’s time to come out after all these years: ladies and gentlemen, I am a Tory

Four weeks ago, I made one of the toughest decisions of my life. Ever since I was a child I’ve known I was different but I’ve done my best to conceal that fact. For most of my adult life I’ve pretended to be ‘normal’ and my late mother, God bless her, went to her grave without knowing the truth. But I cannot continue to live a lie. At the beginning of the election campaign I finally came out. Ladies and gentleman, I am a Tory.

Not surprisingly, many of my friends said they already knew this. Indeed, they claimed to be amused to discover I was under the impression that I had successfully concealed it from them. As one of them put it, the closet I was in had a glass door. ‘Surely, no one is shocked by the news?’ asked a Facebook friend.

But some have not been so understanding. As someone put it on Twitter: ‘Trying really hard to differentiate Toby Young, writer and general witty guy, and Toby Young, Tory twat.’