Polly Toynbee: A wily irritant to left and right
Polly Toynbee is one of a group of seasoned female writers whose journalistic principles were forged at the height of Seventies radicalism. Unlike many of her contemporaries — Germaine Greer, Rosie Boycott — she is not known principally for her opinions on women’s issues, more for her campaigning (her critics would say strident) approach to social affairs.
Nevertheless, as a proudly state-educated (Holland Park Secondary Modern) woman who has made her name in a business that until recently struggled to entertain seriously the views of anyone who was not male and educated at Oxford or Cambridge, Toynbee, 59, is something of an icon to younger women, even those who don’t agree with her. Indeed, she gets right up the noses of most male, Oxbridge-educated commentators, who mostly dislike bossy, socially liberal, confusingly pro-foxhunting atheists with quick wits and razor tongues.
She is forceful, forthright and more than a little terrifying, one of the few people who can smile benignly through a Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman. Which is precisely what she did earlier in the week when, in a bizarre turn of events, she suddenly found herself being described as a Conservative guru. The accusation came from Greg Clark, MP for Tunbridge Wells, who said that Toynbee’s vision of relative poverty was now perfectly in harmony with that of a modernising Conservative Party.
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Along with her Guardian-columnist image, this places her on something of a sticky wicket. Her left-wing credentials have never been particularly solid, because her background (despite Holland Park) is a touch grander than that of the standard-issue Guardian scribbler — both from an academic point of view (her father was the literary critic Philip Toynbee and her grandfather the historian Arnold J.) and an aristocratic one (she is a descendant of Gilbert Murray and the Earls of Carlisle). Her partner is the social commentator David Walker.
Her gracious response belied her breeding. “It can only be good news if the Tories are serious about poverty,” she wrote, adding that “it would be churlish not to rejoice if they are now using leaves out of my book.” The book in question is Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain, which she published in 2003. In it, she writes about society being a caravan in the desert — all may move forward, but the issue is, how far do the stragglers (the poor) have to lag behind before they cease to be a part of it altogether?
As ever, her stance is irritating both for the Left and the Right, who like their politics in neat, partisan packages. Toynbee is anything but straightforward, a wily operator who relishes the opportunity for a fight — and doesn’t necessarily care whose standard she has to bear to win it.