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| Toby Young resigns from the Office for Students after backlash | |
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| Toby Young has stepped down from the Office for Students after a huge backlash to his appointment. | Toby Young has stepped down from the Office for Students after a huge backlash to his appointment. |
| In a statement posted on the Spectator website on Tuesday morning, Young said: “My appointment has become a distraction from its vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom.” | In a statement posted on the Spectator website on Tuesday morning, Young said: “My appointment has become a distraction from its vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom.” |
| Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow education secretary, had strongly criticised Young’s appointment in a letter to the prime minister co-written with her colleague Dawn Butler, the shadow women and equalities minister. | |
| “The Toby Young saga has cast great doubt on the judgment of the PM who failed to sack him in the first place. Then yesterday we had the spectacle of government universities minister defending his appointment in parliament, he had to go. Tory cronyism could not save his job,” Rayner wrote on Twitter. | |
| On Monday afternoon, just hours before Young announced his decision to resign, the universities minister Jo Johnson defended the free schools champion’s position in the House of Commons. | |
| On Tuesday morning, having learned of the resignation, he said: “Toby Young’s track record setting up and supporting free schools speaks for itself. His decision to stand down from the OfS board and repeat unreserved apologies for inappropriate past remarks reflects his character better than the one-sided caricature from his armchair critics.” | |
| Young’s appointment to the board of the OfS, which is meant to help uphold standards at universities, caused a storm after a string of offensive tweets directed at women, and controversial writing about working-class students, were highlighted by critics. | Young’s appointment to the board of the OfS, which is meant to help uphold standards at universities, caused a storm after a string of offensive tweets directed at women, and controversial writing about working-class students, were highlighted by critics. |
| Young, whose professional life has increasingly turned from his work as a journalist to the field of education, has cast his previous comments as remnants of a former life, for which he should not be judged too harshly now. | |
| However, his critics have insisted they constitute a decades-old record of behaviour that is discriminatory towards many people. | |
| Writing on Tuesday, Young said: “The caricature drawn of me in the last seven days, particularly on social media, has been unrecognisable to anyone who knows me.” But he conceded: “Some of the things I said before I got involved in education, when I was a journalistic provocateur, were either ill-judged or just plain wrong – and I unreservedly apologise.” | |
| Critics have pointed to a number of publicly posted lewd comments about women’s breasts made by Young. During prime minister’s questions in 2012, he tweeted: “Serious cleavage behind @Ed_Miliband’s head. Anyone know who it belongs to?” | Critics have pointed to a number of publicly posted lewd comments about women’s breasts made by Young. During prime minister’s questions in 2012, he tweeted: “Serious cleavage behind @Ed_Miliband’s head. Anyone know who it belongs to?” |
| Pamela Nash, the former Labour MP referred to in the tweet, told the Guardian: “This is not about the odd tweet or stray comment. This is about a sustained, twisted view that has been expressed over many years.” | Pamela Nash, the former Labour MP referred to in the tweet, told the Guardian: “This is not about the odd tweet or stray comment. This is about a sustained, twisted view that has been expressed over many years.” |
| In an interview with Andrew Marr on the BBC on Sunday, Theresa May appeared to back Young, saying he had done “exceedingly good work in relation to free schools” but warned that any future offensive language would result in him being “no longer … in public office”. | In an interview with Andrew Marr on the BBC on Sunday, Theresa May appeared to back Young, saying he had done “exceedingly good work in relation to free schools” but warned that any future offensive language would result in him being “no longer … in public office”. |
| In a blogpost announcing his resignation, Young thanked the prime minister “for standing by me, and drawing a distinction between my earlier life and my subsequent record in education”. | |
| Young’s departure came just hours after the education secretary, Justine Greening, left the government. She was replaced by Damian Hinds. | |
| On Monday, Johnson told MPs Young’s transgressions were “foolish and wrong” but insisted it should be taken into account that “some of [them] go back to the 1980s”. | |
| He echoed May in saying Young had been “doing ‘exceedingly good work’ in our education system”, adding that it was “for that reason that he is well placed to make a valuable contribution to the work of the board of the Office for Students, where he will continue to do much more to support the disadvantaged than so many of his armchair critics”. |