How Toby Young failed to make the grade

Right wing rentagob Rod Liddle used his weekly Spectator column to gloat over the Oxford Union’s vote to remove its president, George Abaronye, following comments Abaronye made after Charlie Kirk’s murder. Liddle was gleeful, describing Abaronye as a “semi-literate dreadlocked leftie” who “deserves his downfall”.

Liddle went on to note that Warwick University “had turned [Abaronye] down for a place, either on the strength of his grades (A, B, B) or because they had met him,” before adding that “woke Oxford, supposedly a superior university… took him on, and we all know why”.

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George Abaronye is, however, not the only person to have got into Oxford without straight A grades. Another example, closer to home for the Spectator, is Liddle’s colleague Toby Young, who received a reduced offer of three Bs as part of a scheme to widen access for pupils from comprehensive schools.

Sadly, Young still failed to meet even that lowered offer, managing only B, B and C at A-Level. No matter: his father, Baron Young of Dartington, placed a helpful call to the admissions tutor, and the problem was swiftly resolved. And what, one might ask, did Lord Young earn his peerage for? His distinguished career as a sociologist, during which he coined the term meritocracy. One can only imagine what Rod Liddle would make of that.