Toby Young Toby Young

Nick’s a visionary – he deserves a second chance

His enemies called him ‘arrogant’ and ‘high-handed’, but British politics needs people as thoughtful and talented as Nick

I first met Nick Timothy in July 2015. He had just been appointed director of New Schools Network, the free schools charity I now run, and wanted to talk about the future of the policy. He has been portrayed in the media in the past week as a right-wing thug, as well as a swivel-eyed Brexiteer, but that wasn’t the impression he gave as he sipped his builders’ tea. On the contrary, he was trying to think of ways to weaken the association between free schools and the Tory party, particularly within the education sector. His mission, he explained, was to create cross-party support for the policy by setting up more free schools in disadvantaged areas.

He was in the job for less than a year before joining Theresa May in Downing Street, having worked as her special adviser from 2010-15, but in that short time he went some way to achieving his objective. He set up an outpost of NSN in Manchester to spread the gospel of free schools in the north. He launched numerous successful campaigns, including one to persuade teachers to set up their ‘dream school’. And he created an advisory council that boasts several Labour grandees. It’s also worth noting that NSN staff enjoyed working for him, as did many of his colleagues in politics — I only heard the words ‘arrogant’ and ‘high-handed’ from his enemies.

This ecumenical desire to reach out beyond the Conservative church was also evident during Nick’s stint at No. 10. In May’s first speech as Prime Minister outside Downing Street, which he helped to write, she pledged to fight against the ‘burning injustice’ of various forms of inequality and govern on behalf of ‘everyone’, rather than the ‘privileged few’. In the weeks that followed, Nick helped May to define herself as a ‘meritocrat’, which underlined the fact that she was only the second woman to become Prime Minister and was a way of putting some distance between her and her predecessor.

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