Toby Young

Toby Daniel Moorsom Young, Baron Young of Acton (born 17 October 1963), is a British social commentator and Conservative life peer. He is the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, an associate editor of The Spectator, creator of The Daily Sceptic blog and a former associate editor at Quillette. A graduate of the University of Oxford, Young briefly worked for The Times, before co-founding the London magazine Modern Review in 1991. He edited it until financial difficulties led to its demise in 1995. His 2001 memoir, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, details his subsequent employment at Vanity Fair. He then went on to write for The Sun on Sunday, the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He also served as a judge in series five and six of the television show Top Chef. A proponent of free schools, Young co-founded the West London Free School and served as director of the New Schools Network. In 2015 Young wrote an article in advocacy of genetically engineered intelligence, which he described as "progressive eugenics". In early January 2018, he was briefly a non-executive director on the board of the Office for Students, an appointment from which he resigned within a few days after Twitter posts described as "misogynistic and homophobic" were uncovered. In 2020, press regulator Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) found Young to have promoted misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic in a Daily Telegraph column.