Toby Young has announced he is standing down from the universities regulator
Toby Young has announced he is standing down from the universities regulator after just eight days, saying his appointment has ‘become a distraction’.
His position at the Office For Students watchdog was put into jeopardy over a string of sexist and obscene tweets, including a sick sexual ‘joke’ about starving children on Comic Relief.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister voiced her ‘distaste’ for Mr Young’s online posts.
The campaigner’s misogynistic Twitter messages threatened to undermine Theresa May’s attempts to rebrand the Tories as a women-friendly Party with the promotion of several female MPs to the Cabinet yesterday.
The Prime Minister was under growing pressure to scrap Mr Young’s appointment after two senior female Conservative MPs said his position was now ‘untenable’.
But today, Mr Young announced he is stepping down himself, saying that his appointment had ‘become a distraction’.
Writing on The Spectator, he said: ‘I have decided to stand down from the Office for Students. My appointment has become a distraction from its vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom.
‘The caricature drawn of me in the last seven days, particularly on social media, has been unrecognisable to anyone who knows me.
‘But 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.
‘I would like to thank the Prime Minister for standing by me, and drawing a distinction between my earlier life and my subsequent record in education.’
Mr Young – a close friend of Cabinet Ministers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – was a self-confessed pornography addict who had watched thousands of adult films.
But his tweet ‘joking’ about masturbating over scenes of starving African children in a BBC Comic Relief segment fronted by Simon Cowell proved to be the final straw for some.
Before his announcement this morning, former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: ‘In continuing to defend Mr Young when the Party needs to appeal to women and young people, we risk alienating those we need to re-engage with to win the next Election.’
Some of the tweets which sparked calls for Toby Young to step down from his role
Fellow Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, added: ‘I feel deeply uncomfortable about someone who says things like this being appointed to a high profile public role.’
The tweet that threatened to end Mr Young’s appointment stemmed from 2009, when Cowell was filmed in Kenya with children scavenging from a rubbish dump to survive. The pop mogul called it ‘hell on Earth’.
A female Twitter user tweeted she had ‘gone through 5 boxes of Kleenex’ watching the harrowing scenes. Minutes later, just after midnight, Young tweeted a sarcastic and sick response, saying: ‘Me Too, I havn’t [sic] w***** so much in ages.’
Mr Young told The Mail on Sunday he had ‘no recollection’ of posting the tweet.
He said he had been a ‘provocative journalist’ for 30 years, whose stock in trade was saying ‘controversial, sometimes outrageous things’ so it was no surprise people were able to ‘dredge up’ material to embarrass him.
Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said Mr Young’s appointment risked alienating voters
All the offending messages date back at least five years and most much longer. Mr Young insisted he was a changed man, saying: ‘I’m a more serious person now.’
He spent three months in Kenya in 2013 to help a friend who was trying to establish a primary school and added: ‘I’ve helped set up four free schools and have been running a charity for more than a year, helping other people set up schools.’
If ‘anyone who has said anything offensive on Twitter’ was to be banned from public life, it would ‘become even more homogenous and anaemic than it is at present,’ said Mr Young.
But Ms Morgan disagreed, saying Mr Young seemed ‘determined to live up to the title’ of his comedic memoir, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.
She said: ‘More seriously, many people will find it hard to understand how someone who expresses the kind of views in Mr Young’s tweets can be appointed to a body responsible for universities.
‘There must be someone else better suited to the position.’
Ms Wollaston added: ‘Initially, I thought this was a confected explosion of rage against Toby from people opposed to him for political reasons over free schools. But it is increasingly clear that someone did not do due diligence when they appointed him to this post.
‘His Trump-esque tweets are wholly inappropriate.’
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘These tweets are revolting and impossible to defend. But I am a huge admirer of Mr Young’s pioneering work in free schools and do not believe he is unsuitable to work with young people in universities.’
Labour Equalities Spokesman Dawn Butler said: ‘To mock children in desperate need with a sexually explicit joke is truly beyond the pale. The spotlight should also turn on his chief defender Boris Johnson whose own misogynistic fantasies make him unfit for high office.’