Bald Toff Out In The Sun Too Long

If Maurice Glasman had agreed to write that column in The Sun on Sunday, then I'd have been a weekly purchaser. As it is, I have never bought a copy. Today, however, I did see one. Among the columnists is an idiotic bimbo, overexposed in more ways than one.

Thankfully, Toby Young's column is balanced by that of Katie Price. I am not joking. She is clearly one smart cookie. No less clearly, he isn't. His employment goes against everything for which most of the big names from the glory days of The Sun at least affected to stand. Kelvin MacKenzie, Garry Bushell, Richard Littlejohn: none of them really was a barrow boy, nor was MacKenzie even lower-middle-class made good; but they all made a certain statement by at least pretending to be. (Trevor Kavanagh just never bothered, like Princess Margaret.) Exactly the opposite statement is being made in this case.

Today, Young expresses himself in favour of same-sex "marriage" while more than hinting that he intends to vote for UKIP, which, it is true, has been statistically tied with the Lib Dems for well over a year. But UKIP is the only party of any note to have declared itself in favour of the traditional definition of marriage. I know that. You probably knew that. Yet Young (my mother's maiden name, although somehow I doubt that there is any connection) obviously does not know that.

He goes on to fantasise about a Conservative-UKIP Coalition after 2015, with Nigel Farage as Foreign Secretary, and he asserts that a Labour-UKIP Coalition would be impossible. Now, don't get me wrong. UKIP is a ramshackle operation which enjoys a completely undeserved free pass from the media. But at least half of its vote for the European Parliament must be Old Labour or, especially in the West Country, Old Liberal rather than Old Tory. Add together the Conservative and UKIP votes for Strasbourg in London, or the South West, or either Midland region, or any Northern region, or Wales. The result is far too high a figure for the number of "natural Tories" living there. Where are they the rest of the time?

At the last European Elections, UKIP topped the poll in places ranging from Hull, which has returned three Labour MPs out of three since time immemorial, to Cornwall, which returned no Conservatives at three successive General Elections until 2010 and where the Lib Dems were at that point the first past the post in every constituency. While I realise that the money in question is not only private but foreign, yet I feel bound to ask how much of it Young is being paid for this rubbish. Dare one add that The Honourable Toby is independently wealthy? Somehow, I doubt that his taking of the rate for the job is because, like many a very posh hack before him, he is a committed trade unionist. It never ceases to amuse me that his father satirically invented the word "meritocracy".

In point of fact, a coalition between UKIP and Ed Miliband's, or Maurice Glasman's, Labour Party would be perfectly plausible, even if UKIP would not necessarily be the ideal partner for what might politely be termed organisational reasons. Buy British, for example, could only be given effect within the fiercest Euroscepticism of any governing party since Harold Wilson's first occupancy of 10 Downing Street, which was before the United Kingdom had joined the Eurofederalist project. UKIP also has an honourable record of opposition to American domination and to the neoconservative war agenda. Its views on immigration or education could at least expect a hearing from Miliband, and to be taken on board to some extent in the formulation of an eventual policy. There is not the slightest hope of that from the Heir to Blair.

As I confidently suggest that anyone in UKIP would tell you. Or would have told Toby Young. If he could have been bothered to ask. That's called "research", dear. Plus "critical thought". The latter may be a bit beyond you. But you should at least try the former sometime.