In my column in this week’s Spectator I’ve written about my astonishment on discovering that Peter Wilby, the ex-editor of the Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman who joined the pile-on against me when I was cancelled in 2018, has just been convicted of possessing indecent images of children. Here’s how it begins:
According to the ancient proverb, if you sit by the river for long enough you will see the body of your enemy float by. That happened to me earlier this week when I discovered the fate of Peter Wilby, a former editor of the New Statesman and the Independent on Sunday. In 2018, when I was forced to resign from a government job over old tweets, Wilby wrote an article saying my public humiliation had come as no surprise to him. Apparently, I’d made a career out of “denigrating women, homosexuals, disabled people, ethnic minorities and anybody on benefits”, and “disgraced” the memory of my dead father. “At one stage he was more or less addicted to both alcohol and pornography,” he said.
That piece cut me to the quick. If you’re in the process of being cancelled – I ended up having to step down from four more positions that year – you read all your press coverage, desperately hoping someone is going to stick up for you. When I saw my name in the headline of Peter’s diary column in the New Statesman, my spirits soared. In addition to publishing various pieces of mine over the years, he had written a sympathetic article in the Guardian about my efforts to set up a free school. At last, I thought, a senior media figure who’s going to give me a fair hearing. So reading his little sermon was a bitter blow. It wasn’t just because I liked and respected Peter. It was the fact he had known my father, who died in 2002. It was like receiving a judgment from beyond the grave, delivered by proxy. I had “disgraced” him.
You can imagine my astonishment, therefore, when I read last Saturday’s Times: ‘Peter Wilby: former Independent on Sunday editor sentenced over child sex images.’ The article said that 167 indecent images of children were found on his computer, 22 of which were “the most serious kind”. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years. In addition to having to carry out 40 hours of rehabilitation, he is subject to a ten-year sexual harm prevention order and has been placed on the sex offenders register for five years. According to Adam Sprague, of the National Crime Agency: “The material accessed by Wilby and recovered from his computer showed real children being cruelly and sexually abused.”
My initial reaction was one of complete bewilderment. How could this eminent liberal journalist who regularly denounced right-wing sinners from his pulpit in the left-wing media have been harbouring such a shameful secret? When writing about the mote in my eye, why didn’t he pause to examine the beam in his own? It seemed extraordinary that he could have thundered away with such moral righteousness on the very same keyboard he’d been using to access child pornography. I was reminded of Christopher Hitchens’s famous quote about the hypocrisy of conservatives who condemn homosexuality: “Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.”
Perhaps the reason for my surprise is because at some level I still take the left’s virtue-signalling at face value. As Hitchens says, the evangelical preacher who turns out to be a sexual degenerate is a stock character in the pantomime of public life. But for secular holy men like Wilby to have feet of clay always comes as a shock. Not because it’s such a rarity – it isn’t – but because of their elevated social status. As far as the metropolitan elite is concerned, these are the people we’re supposed to take moral instruction from. When they tell us we should have voted Remain or have a moral duty to welcome illegal immigrants, they’re not just demonstrating their superior knowledge but their status as semi-official custodians of public decency.
Worth reading in full.
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Oh, come come, Toby. You should know well enough by now that the Left and hypocrisy go together like Marx & Engels. It’s the chief part of their nature.
It’s not just the left on this one.
Whenever there is a pile on, public or otherwise, all I see is people covering up their own sin.
Conservatives are not immune to this very distasteful human behaviour.
My only doubt on this occasion is whether Toby Young really is as surprised as he would like us believe, so apparently innocent that he actually trusts preachy establishment figures or whether it’s just the rhetorical style he’s adopted to dig the knife into his erstwhile tormentor.
I hope the latter. The more that mainstream people can stop trusting the establishment, the better.
Not sure why this posting contrasts the left with Conservatives. Look more carefully and you will see they abandoned any pretence of being in the middle ground of politics a couple of decades ago.
I think stewart meant conservatives with a small c, just that he started the sentence with it so it is capitalized. I think if he’d been referring to members of the Conservative Party he would have written “The Conservatives….”
That’s exactly right. I was using the word conservative in exactly the same way that Toby Young used it in his article.
Well Toby Young wasn’t the one who was caught with child torture porn on his computer and this was a guy who he knew from childhood who he assumed was a straight up largely harmless pious leftie toss pot, so I’d say Toby Young was as pretty damn surprised as anyone would be. And it’s pretty presumptuous of you, knowing nothing about this apart from what Toby Young has written, to assume otherwise.
Clearly he was projecting.
Accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty, or something like that. Goebbels.
We’ve got your back here, Toby. Thanks for everything you’ve done.
Seconded
“According to Adam Sprague, of the National Crime Agency: “The material accessed by Wilby and recovered from his computer showed real children being cruelly and sexually abused.”
This suggests that a suspended prison sentence means he has got off lightly. A period in prison would have been more appropriate and salutary. It would have allowed for a time of reflection given that kiddy fiddlers have to be kept in solitary for the duration in order to keep them from other prisoners.
As usual the establishment looking after its own.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/24/the-road-to-totalitarianism-part-3/
An update from CJ Hopkins, on the CJ Hopkins case. Sadly we do not get a name check because, unfortunately, we “lack significant reach.”
Still, I wish him well.
Germany is certainly reinventing its days of old. Leopards and all that.
A special place is reserved for those who harm children. As Jesus said, “it would be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his head, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones”. I have no time for them. They are the betrayal of the Christ impulse and thus they betray their own humanity and deserve to be treated in accordance with their abasement. In some prisons there is an order to kill on sight a child rapist and if you don’t carry out the edict you can be killed yourself.
The bigger the front, the bigger the back.
It’s a pity he only got a suspended sentence, he is a disgusting perverted man. I am not perfect but I do believe that “ He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword”. It’s great that his pictures and videos were discovered, what goes round comes round
” 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.”
Disgraceful sentence. The Judge was obviously a lefty, protecting one of his own.
The Judge appears to have ignored that which he said about others, ie Toby. The do as I say, rether than do as I do, lobby is clearly in control now!
This runs deeper than we think. Everyone should watch Sound of Freedom.
You were astonished – I’d be delighted.
“As Hitchens says, the evangelical preacher who turns out to be a sexual degenerate is a stock character in the pantomime of public life. “
Elmer Gantry. One of Burt Lancaster’s finest performances, nails such a character perfectly. What is it about the Left and porn and paedophilia?
https://timetostartcaring.wordpress.com/the-labour-partys-convicted-paedophile-list/
1. Liam Temple Labour Councillor Inciting a child into ‘gross’ indecency
2. Stewart BrownLabour Party Lord Mayor Child Pornography
3. Sam Chaudry Labour Party Lord Mayor Elect & Labour Party Councillor Child Rapist
4. Nicholas Green Labour Party Lord Mayor Labour Party Councillor 13 rapes & assaults on Children
5. Keith Potts Labour Party Councillor Junior School Governor
6. Alan Prescott Labour Party Councillor Molesting Children in a ‘Care-Home ‘Where he worked
7. Terry Power Labour Party Councillor Sex attacks on boys
8. Joseph Shaw Labour Party Councillor Child Pornography
9. George Harding Labour Party Councillor Indecent assault on a child
10. Lee Benson Labour Party Councillor Child Pornography
11. Raymond Coates Labour Party Councillor Child rape
12. Les Sheppard Labour Party Councillor Sex attacks and rapes on Children
13. Martyn Locklin Labour Party Councillor Rape & Indecent assault on boys
14. Nelson Bland Labour Party Councillor Child Pornography
15. Greg Vincent Labour Party Councillor Child Pornography Films
16. Alec Dyer Atkins Labour Party Councillor Member of the ‘Shadows Brotherhood ‘Peadophile Ring. 42,000 images of Children being abused
17. Keith Rogers Labour Party Councillor 2,000 images of child pornography
18. Paul Diggert Labour Party Councillor Grooming children & child pornography
19. Peter Tuffley ( worked also for NSPCC & Barnardos ) Labour Party Personal assistant to Hazel Blears Caught in bed with a 13 year old boy
20. Mark Trotter Labour Party Member & Super Activist Child rapist with Aids
21. Yusef Azad Labour Party on the Greater London Assembly Computer seized in anti-Child Porn Operation
22. Gilbert Benn Labour Party Councillor Molesting a boy
23. David Spooner Labour Party Councillor Master…ed in front of Two little Children
24. Mark Tann Labour Party member & Activist Repeatedly raped Two girls under Eight years old.
25. Iestyn Tudor Davies Labour Party Councillor Repeatedly raped a Child
PLUS+
26. John Friary Labour Party Councillor Grooming a child on facebook
27. Steve Carnell Labour Party Councillor Downloading Child and Animal Porn
28. Toren Smith Labour Party Councillor Found Guilty of 94.000 Images of Children Being Abused
29. Johnathan Phillips Labour Party Councillor Downloaded Child Porn on His Memory Stick. It Was Found in The Town Hall After a Labour Party Meeting
30. Phillip Lyon Labour Party Aide to Tony Blair His House of Commons Office Was Searched And He Was Found Guilty of Child Pornography
31. Mark Burton Labour Party Councillor Sexual molestation of child. Trial continues..
32. Neil Redrup Labour Party Councillor Found Guilty of opening sexually explicit content in front of child.
33. Timothy Edmeads Labour Party super activist and events organiser to Labour Lord Mayor guilty of sex assaults on 3 children.
34. Adrian Cirket Labour Party councillor and GMB union official downloading hundreds of sickening images of child abuse in his family home where he lived with his wife and three children..35. Darren Geoffrey Pedley Labour party councilor and chairman of the board of governors at Sandbrook primary school found guilty of downloading and distributing child pornography…36. Labour Councillor for Leicester Manish Sood found guilty of Grooming School kids for sex.
37. Evil Labour Party Councill Candidate & Junior School Governor Richard Harris Found guilty of offering Junior school children £500 for sex.
38. Ex Deputy Labour Party Lord Mayor John Johnson was charged with downloading hundreds of images of child molestation. Some of the images depicted sadomasochistic rituals with children being tortured and raped by multiple adults.
39. Labour Councillor for St Martins Ward & Lambeth Council Susan Smith along with her transvestite partner abducted and subjected a child to a three week rape ordeal.
40. North-west London councillor for the West Harrow ward and school governor Brian Gate resigned following his arrest over pornographic images of children.
41. Labour Party spin doctor and advisor Samuel Gamlin charged with making and distributing child rape videos.
42. Labour Party super activist and Council Candidate Ian Rankin was jailed for having in his possession video material containing some of the vilest kinds of child sexual abuse. Police say it was some of the worst paedophile material they had ever come across.
I do get fed up with Toby always being suprised at leftists being immoral … get with the program Toby as you are not a spring chicken.
I know that there are plenty of reprehensible characters on the ‘right’ but you generally have a clue because they are most often obviously horrible.
With leftists it’s the trumpeting about their moral superiority that irks, and alerts, me.
Beware people who tell you how good they are and how bad you are.
If you are good then you don’t have to tell anyone.