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

8 May 2010

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

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.’ One friend told me that several of our mutual acquaintances are deeply shocked, particularly as my late father was the author of Labour’s 1945 manifesto. ‘What would Michael have thought?’ is a common refrain. There is a suggestion that by coming out I haven’t just embarrassed myself, I’ve brought shame on my family.

Naturally, my reaction to this is one of anger — anger with myself for not having been more honest about the way I am. By remaining closeted for so long I have been tacitly accepting that society is right to disapprove of people like me. After all, if I didn’t think that being blue was something to be ashamed of, why keep quiet about it? By pretending to be ‘normal’, not only did I fail to confront society’s prejudice, but I was making life harder for those of a similar disposition.

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Christopher Chantrill

May 6th, 2010 8:53pm Report this comment

For a coming-out present I'd recommend a bound set of Disraeli's political novels. In them the newly-admitted Tory can find out that Eton ain't so bad after all, that Chartist babes are divine--and very good singers--and that Whigs are thieves and robbers that got their money from the dissolution of the monasteries.

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