Must Toby Young’s role in creating schools now be held against him?

The furore over Toby Young’s appointment to the board of the Office for Students (OfS) shows no sign of dying down. The Mail on Sunday splashes on a series of ‘sexist and obscene tweets’ sent by Young – reporting the Prime Minister’s apparent ‘distaste’.

Now it seems that some can’t even accept Young’s work in education which contributed to his appointment. Appearing on the Andrew Marr show this morning, the Guardian‘s Polly Toynbee came up with a new line of attack. Toynbee complained that Young had only founded the free school that led to his OfS appointment because ‘he wanted to create a school for his kids’.

Happily, Mr S’s colleague Fraser Nelson was on hand to point out that this is more than most journalists tend to do:

FN: He is a journalist like you and me Polly, the difference between him and us is that he actually went out there to shape, to improve a situation

PT: … because he wanted to create a school for his kids, that was his motivation.

FN: Better than sending them private, like some columnists I could mention. And it’s not just for his kids but for 2,000 other children as well.

And which columnists could they be? Well, when it comes to private education, Toynbee sent two of her three children to public school…