as a judge on Hell's Kitchen. Young is an associate editor of The Spectator, where he writes a weekly column, the editor of Spectator Life and a regular contributor to the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. His Telegraph blog was long-listed for the 2012 George Orwell Prize for blogging. He was a political columnist for The Sun on Sunday for its first 11 months. During the 2015 Labour leadership election, he encouraged readers of the politically conservative Daily Telegraph to join the Labour party and support Jeremy Corbyn, who Young thought was the weakest candidate. In February 2020, Young co-founded the Free Speech Union. In November 2021 he was awarded the 2021 Contrarian Prize. In 2019, Young supported Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party. In 2020, he said he was wrong to back Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party. In 2022, he backed Boris for the leader of the Conservative Party again. Free schools advocate Young was a proposer and co-founder of the West London Free School, the first free school to sign a funding agreement with the Education Secretary, and is now a trustee of The West London Free School Academy Trust, the charitable trust that manages the school. The school was founded at Palingswick House, which displaced over 20 voluntary organisations previously located there. He stood down as CEO of the school in May 2016 after admitting that he did not realise how difficult it was going to be to run. The national press coverage of the school having four headteachers in the space of six years was linked to the higher profile for the school engendered by its links to Young. The trust opened a primary school in Hammersmith in 2013, a second primary in Earls Court in 2014 and a third primary in Kensington in 2016. Young is a follower of the American educationalist E. D. Hirsch and an advocate of a traditional, knowledge-based approach to education. In 2012, Young wrote an article in The Spectator criticising the emphasis on "inclusion" in state schools, saying that the word "inclusive" was "one of those ghastly, politically correct words that have survived the demise of New Labour. Schools have got to be 'inclusive' these days. That means wheelchair ramps, the complete works of Alice Walker in the school library...". Young denied that he was attacking the provision of equal access to mainstream schools