No sacred cows

Friday

Toby Young

Can British democracy survive the ‘bad chaps?’

What is the greatest threat to British democracy? Zack Polanski’s call for “building a society” that “doesn’t include” people who “identify as right-wing?” Labour’s efforts to flood the Upper House with party apparatchiks? Islamist extremism? The correct answer is Reform UK. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new book called What If Reform Wins by the Times reporter Peter Chappell. Before I get to its flaws, I should acknowledge it’s an enjoyable read, with plenty of deft, comic touches. It imagines that Reform wins a majority in June 2029, and then gives a blow-by-blow account of the constitutional crisis that follows, with the informal rules and conventions underpinning our democracy being stress-tested and found wanting.

british democracy

Friday

Toby Young

The American dream is dying. Good

The American dream is dying, according to the Times of London. To mark the US’s 250th anniversary, the paper commissioned YouGov to explore whether the country’s citizens still believe that if you “work hard and play by the rules” you will eventually be successful. Turns out, only 38 percent of the respondents think this applies to all Americans, while 59 percent think the American dream is now less attainable than it was when they were growing up. In addition, 38 percent rated today’s quality of life as “excellent” or “good,” compared with 60 percent who said the same about 1976, the bicentennial year.

dream

Friday

Toby Young

The noble work of chairlift diplomacy

In 1956, three British MPs encountered a group of Swiss politicians in the bar of the Hotel Flüela in Davos and after a few drinks challenged them to a ski race. A timed slalom contest took place the following day, with the three-person Swiss team beating the Brits by a combined four seconds. Not willing to take this lying down, the MPs insisted on a rematch the following year and thus was born the Anglo-Swiss Parliamentary Ski Week, which celebrated its 70th anniversary earlier this month. I heard about it from my friend Dan Hannan shortly after I became a peer, and immediately put my name down, imagining it to be a massive freebie. Not so.

chairlift diplomacy

Thursday

Toby Young

White working-class boys are being left behind in Britain

Late March marked the fifth anniversary of the publication of the report of Lord Sewell’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (CRED). In spite of a suitably diverse group of commissioners (or perhaps because of that), it refused to blame “systemic racism” for the underachievement of certain ethnic minorities in the UK. It didn’t dismiss that hypothesis entirely, but concluded that other factors – class, geography and family background – were more important. This analysis (supported by lots of data) did little to protect the commissioners from the fury of the woke left, who denounced them for ignoring historical injustices.

white british boys

Saturday

Toby Young

Am I an extremist?

The Communities Secretary Steve Reed recently rose in the House of Commons to unveil “Protecting What Matters,” the British government’s new “action plan” to “strengthen social cohesion” and “tackle division.” According to the accompanying press release: “Millions of families, friends and neighbors will feel a stronger sense of community, unity and national pride thanks to renewed efforts to stamp out extremism, hate and division announced today.” I was not among those millions. Conspicuous by omission in the announcement was any mention of Islamist extremism.

extremist

Thursday

Toby Young

Why I’m a proud Zionist

The bomb shelter reserved for ‘volunteers’ at Kibbutz Dafna near the town of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel was definitely substandard. It was damp and smelly, more like a lavatory than a fortified bunker, and not considered fit for the kibbutzniks: a pampered species compared to us. But when the Soviet-built ordnance started raining down on us, it did its job. We emerged, unharmed, the following morning, blinking into the dawn light. The terrorists had not succeeded in hitting the kibbutz with a single Katyusha rocket. No, I’m not embedded with the Israel Defense Forces on the Lebanese border, although the area surrounding Kiryat Shmona was under fire from Hezbollah earlier this week. This was in 1981 and I was just 17.