Toby Young has stepped down from the Office for Students less than 24 hours after the universities minister issued a robust defence of his position, amid a backlash over the free schools champion’s 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.”
The resignation exposed a rift between the Office for Students (OfS) and the minister who has championed it, Jo Johnson. The watchdog’s chair, Sir Michael Barber, said he welcomed the news, which came after a week of heavy criticism. He said Young had “reached the right conclusion”.
Barber added: “Many of his previous tweets and articles were offensive, and not in line with the values of the Office for Students. Mr Young was right to offer an unreserved apology for these comments and he was correct to say that his continuation in the role would have distracted from our important work.”
The universities minister, however, did not backtrack after learning of Young’s resignation on Tuesday morning.
“Toby Young’s track record setting up and supporting free schools speaks for itself,” he tweeted. Instead of welcoming news of his departure, he said Young’s decision to resign “reflects his character better than the one-sided caricature from his armchair critics”.
Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, had strongly criticised Young’s OfS appointment in a letter to the prime minister on Friday..
“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 Tuesday.
Dawn Butler, the shadow women and equalities minister and a co-signatory of the letter sent on Friday, echoed Rayner’s comments about Theresa May’s judgment and her “weakness in refusing to sack him”.
She said: “She should have removed him from his post, not personally backed him at the weekend and sent a minister out to defend him in parliament yesterday.”
The University and College Union backed Young’s resignation but said he never should have been appointed in the first place.
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