Everything about Polly Toynbee totally explained
Polly Toynbee (born
Mary Louisa Toynbee on
December 27 1946) is a journalist and writer in the
United Kingdom, and has been a
columnist for
The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a
social democrat and broadly supports the
Labour party, while urging it in many areas to be more progressive. She was appointed President of the
British Humanist Association in July 2007.
Biography
She was born on the
Isle of Wight. After attending
Badminton School, a girls'
independent school in
Bristol, followed by the
Holland Park School, a state
comprehensive school in
London (she had failed the
Eleven Plus examination), she read
history at
St Anne's College, Oxford, but left before completing her degree to work in factories and schools to document the lives of poorer people for a book. She then went into journalism, working for many years at
The Guardian before joining the
BBC where she was social affairs editor (1988–1995). At
The Independent, which she joined after leaving the BBC, she was a columnist and associate editor, working with then editor
Andrew Marr. After Marr's principal spell as
Independent editor she rejoined
The Guardian. She has also written for
The Observer and the
Radio Times; at one time she edited the
Washington Monthly USA. Currently Toynbee serves as President of the Social Policy Association.
Polly Toynbee was married to the late
Peter Jenkins, also a journalist. Both she and Jenkins were supporters of the
Social Democratic Party breakway from Labour in
1981 – both signing the
Limehouse Declaration. Toynbee stood for the party at the
1983 General Election in
Lewisham East, garnering 9351 votes (22%). She later became something of a rarity in refusing to support the subsequent merger of the SDP with the Liberals (to form the
Liberal Democrats), reacting instead by moving back towards Labour when the rump SDP collapsed.
Although she's been consistently critical of many of
Tony Blair's
New Labour reforms and especially of his foreign policy, she's stated that he and
Gordon Brown have led "the best government of my lifetime".
During the
2005 General Election, with dissatisfaction high among traditional Labour voters Toynbee wrote several times about the dangers of
protest voting, "Giving Blair a bloody nose". She urged
Guardian readers to vote with a
clothes peg over their nose if they'd to, to make sure
Michael Howard wouldn't win from a
split vote. "Voters think they can take a free hit at Blair while assuming Labour will win anyway. But Labour won't win if people won't vote for it".
In December 2006, an advisor to Tory leader
David Cameron claimed Toynbee should be an influence on the modern
Conservative Party, causing a press furore. Cameron later clarified this to say he was impressed by one metaphor in her writings - of society being a caravan crossing a desert, where the people at the back can fall so far behind they're no longer part of the tribe. He added, "I won't be introducing Polly Toynbee's policies." Toynbee expressed some discomfort with this embrace, adding, "I don't suppose the icebergs had much choice about being hugged by Cameron either."
Toynbee was awarded an Honorary Degree by
London South Bank University in 2002. In 2005, she was made an Honorary Doctor of
The Open University for "her notable contribution to the educational and cultural well-being of society". She is chair of the
Brighton Festival.
Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain
Following in the footsteps of
Barbara Ehrenreich's '
Nickel and Dimed' (
2001), she published in 2003
Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain about an experimental period voluntarily living on the
minimum wage, which was £4.10 per hour at the time. She worked as a hospital
porter in a
National Health Service hospital, a
dinnerlady in a
primary school, a nursery assistant, a
call-centre employee, a cake factory worker and a
care home assistant. The book is critical of conditions in low pay jobs in the UK.
She also contributed an introduction to the UK edition of Ehrenreich's,
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
Views on religion
An
atheist, Toynbee is an Honorary Associate of the
National Secular Society, a supporter of the
Humanist Society of Scotland and was appointed President of the
British Humanist Association - a claim she strongly contested. She pointed out she's simply a consistent atheist, and is just as critical of
Christianity and
Judaism. She wrote:
The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions (and most others) are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women's bodies.
Criticism
Toynbee is a polarising figure, attracting both praise and criticism. She recently topped a poll of 100 "opinion makers", carried out by Editorial Intelligence. She was also named the most influential columnist in the UK.
Richard Littlejohn of the
Daily Mail has called Toynbee the "Guardian's resident madwoman" amongst other less appealing epithets. In a verbal tussle recorded on the
BBC's
Question Time of 1 May 2008, Littlejohn attacked panellists, including Toynbee, for suggesting that concerns over
climate change should take precedence over the concerns of Britons suffering from high fuel costs. Littlejohn accused Toynbee of living a rarefied existence divorced from the real world, adding 'Do you think about global warming when you fly to your villa in Italy?' Conservative MP and journalist,
Boris Johnson, wrote that she, "incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair's Britain. Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and
'elf 'n' safety fascism".
Family
Toynbee was the second daughter of the literary critic
Philip Toynbee (by his first wife Anne), granddaughter of the historian
Arnold J. Toynbee and great-great niece of philanthropist and economic historian
Arnold Toynbee after whom
Toynbee Hall in the
East End of
London is named.
Her partner is
David Walker, the social affairs editor of
The Guardian, with whom she's co-authored two books reviewing the successes and failures of New Labour in power.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Polly Toynbee'.
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