Fury as ‘hypocritical’ Labour MPs force Toby Young to resign

LABOUR MPs have been accused of hypocrisy after hounding Toby Young out of his job for making offensive comments, despite tolerating similar behaviour in their own party.

Mr Young resigned from the board of the Office for Students (OfS) yesterday following a furore over inappropriate remarks he made several years ago.

It came as Jo Johnson lost his job as universities minister after his botched appointment of Mr Young. He was moved to transport minister just a day after he publicly backed the beleaguered OfS board member.

The Young row erupted after sexist jokes made on Twitter about female celebrities’ breasts came to light, as well as controversial statements about working-class and disabled students.

Mr Young, a Spectator columnist and founder of the West London Free School, had apologised for the ‘silly’ and ‘ sophomoric’ comments – and promised they would not be repeated.

But numerous Left-wing MPs, activists and trade union leaders said it set a bad example for the country and called for him to be sacked. Leading the campaign was shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, who urged Theresa May in a letter last week to fire him over what she called ‘bigotry’ and ‘misogyny’.

But critics say she is a hypocrite because only three months ago she defended Labour MP Jared O’Mara over his sexist and homophobic comments.

Announcing his resignation, Mr Young said: ‘My appointment has become a distraction from [the OfS’s] vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom. Education is my passion and I want now to be able to get on with the work I have been doing to promote and support the free schools movement.’

The episode resembles the row over Mr O’Mara, who was eventually suspended from Labour over an online joke about having an orgy with the band Girls Aloud and using the term ‘poofter’.

Mrs Rayner said at the time that she was ‘ happy’ to sit alongside him, and added: ‘Jared has said he held those views 15 years ago, but he changed those views and that is the important thing.’

Mrs Rayner and other Labour MPs were also silent when Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell refused to apologise for calling Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey a ‘stain on humanity’ and talking about her being ‘lynched’.

In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn promoted Labour peer Lord Watson to education spokesman, despite him having served eight months in prison for starting a fire in a hotel in 2004.

Yesterday, Tom Slater, co-ordinator of the Spiked Free Speech University Rankings, said: ‘The hounding out of Toby Young is a victory for the joyless, censorious Twitter mob. That small groups of incensed commentators and Labour MPs can force someone out of pub- lic life because he has a fondness for un-PC jokes is deeply worrying.

‘It’s also hypocritical. The very same people who not too long ago were preaching forgiveness for Jared O’Mara… are now celebrating Young’s resignation.’

Radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer agreed and said anyone who thought Mr Young was ‘ unfit’ because of his tweets was an ‘idiot’ if they also supported controversial figures in Labour. -

But Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: ‘Toby Young has at last recognised what was so obvious to so many – he is not fit to hold a position in government.’

Vince Cable has criticised the appointment of a universities adviser who lobbied against a former Archbishop of Canterbury over his views on gay marriage.

Benjamin Hunt has been made a member of the student panel of the new Office for Students (OfS), which will be tasked with making sure universities enshrine free speech.

But in 2016, Mr Hunt was accused of suppressing free speech for demanding his university, King’s College London, remove former student Lord Carey of Clifton from a poster.

He said it was not right to ‘celebrate’ someone with his views – and the poster was taken down. He was referring to quotes from Lord Carey suggesting that same-sex relationships ‘should not be put on the same level’ as heterosexual unions.

Mr Cable said: ‘I’m totally opposed to censorship in university. It is unacceptable.’

THE Mail doesn’t seek to defend the puerile tweets and articles written in the past by the journalist and free school champion Toby Young. But the storm of virtue signalling outrage whipped up by shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and the Labour hate mob reeks of hypocrisy.

Yes, Mr Young was guilty of sexist language and paid for it yesterday with his job at the Office for Students – a new university watchdog. But his juvenile outpourings pale into insignificance beside the truly disturbing and sustained misogyny of Mrs Rayner’s Labour colleague Jared O’Mara.

On various internet sites the Sheffield MP has referred to women as ‘slags’, fantasised about orgies with the pop group Girls Aloud and said ‘fat women’ don’t deserve respect. He was also accused of calling a woman a ‘bitch’ in a night club, which he denied. So does Mrs Rayner condemn this shameful conduct? Not a bit of it. Indeed she said she was ‘happy’ to sit alongside Mr O’Mara in Parliament. Could there be a more egregious case of double standards? Meanwhile, new Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey was bombarded with a torrent of vile abuse by Laboursupporting trolls. For the crime of supporting Government welfare reforms, she was branded a murderess, a witch, the grim reaper and a whore. So much for Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘kinder, gentler politics’.

The fact is that Labour is riddled with bigotry and sexism from top to bottom. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell – who once said he wished he could have assassinated Margaret Thatcher – should be setting an example. Yet he was one of the first to attack Miss McVey, saying she should be ‘lynched’. And while Theresa May was busy yesterday promoting women and ethnic minority MPs to increase diversity in her government, Labour sneered and hurled abuse at every new appointment.

Ironically, it was Mrs May who once dubbed the Tories ‘the nasty party’. There’s no doubt where that mantle rests today.