Meet the Tory pro-incest campaigner

The Times used the evening of the end of the Conservative conference to showcase some of the hip young gunslingers taking the party into an exciting new future – but did they do their due diligence?

Under the headline ‘Meet the young Tories dreaming of a bright blue future’, politics reporter Daisy Eastlake profiled a number of promising young Conservatives, including Rhys Benjamin, Daniel Campbell and a chap called Charles Amos.

Alas, a quick Google search by Eastlake would have revealed that 26-year-old Amos – illustrated in a Times portrait clad in Cordobés hat, checked jacket and with the sort of moustache favoured by Dad’s Army’s Private Walker – has made the headlines before: advocating the legalisation of incest.

Last year Amos appeared on GB News to argue that “I don’t think it is wrong on every level. Individuals should be free to pursue their own good in their own way and that includes the freedom to marry and have children with whoever they want.”

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When questioned by presenter and former Tory MP Miriam Cates whether that freedom should extend to siblings, Amos responded: “I would include siblings in that. If you look at the number of birth defects amongst individuals that are father and daughter or brother and sister it’s about 57%.”

After getting online abuse from GB News viewers who took exception to his esoteric views, Amos doubled down, writing an article for the Spectator in which he said that “I’ve been called a pervert thousands of times over. It’s water off a duck’s back to me. What is extraordinary is the absence of decent arguments against my liberal position. If reproductive and non-reproductive incest are so bad, why do people resort to personal attacks as opposed to moral arguments?”

Now he’s in the Times, fretting as a loyal Tory that “Farage is just so much fun and very laddish in a way that Kemi isn’t. I think young men connect with him on a vibes basis.”

Elsewhere, the piece quotes 15-year-old Rhydian Lloyd-Francis explaining his politics come from “looking at the Conservative Party and seeing the best party to provide the change that Britain needs” (the Tories have been in power for all but one year of Lloyd-Francis’s time on Earth), while 19-year-old Danny Mosley is pictured wrapped in a Union flag while clutching, somewhat incongruously, a can of cherry Dr Pepper. Meanwhile one member boasted that Keele University Conservative Society now had its biggest membership in a decade. “We now have 11 members,” he said.

Under the article, however, Times subscribers were unconvinced by those selected to showcase the future of the Conservatives. The members were variously described as “like characters from Viz”, “caricatures of themselves”, “an audition for the new series of The League of Gentlemen”, “the sort of cast who turn up at a low-end murder mystery event” and “surely AI”.