Toby Young - We’re Not Finished Yet

If the loathsome Toby Young thought that tendering his resignation from his appointment to the board of the new Office for Students would draw a line under the attack on gifting this deeply unpleasant being More And Bigger Taxpayer-Funded Paycheques For Himself Personally Now, he has another think coming. Because his departure merely dents his publicly funded income. So the questions will continue to be asked.

As Miles King urged, “let's look at the New Schools Network, where he is Director. This is a political project, designed to bring the US model of Charter Schools to the UK. Nevertheless, the New Schools Network is a charity … The New Schools Network had £2.48M income to 3/17. £2.13M was a department for Education grant. So this ‘charity’ is 86% funded by the Government. During 2016-17 1 staff member earned £70-80k & one earned £90-100k”. Who might those individuals have been?

“Theresa May's chief of Staff Nick Timothy was Director of New Schools Network until the 1/7/16, when he resigned (shortly after being sacked by Theresa May.) Toby Young took on the job on the 1st January 2017. we can guess which one is on the £90-100k salary”. So Tobes is trousering over £90k a year. And he’d been on the public payroll before.

King again: “Before Toby Young took up his full-time job at the NSN, he was in a unique position as CEO & Trustee of the West London Free School Academy Trust. For which he got a paltry £50-60k salary plus £10-15k pension payment. Almost all of their funding is directly from the DfE”. Tobes has been sponging off the taxpayer for some years now.

And there are questions to be asked about the WLFS, as King then notes: “the West London Free School Academy Trust received £10.1M from the DfE/agencies in the year to 31/8/2016, to provide a ‘classical liberal education.’ This is extremely political. If I wanted to set up a free school to provide a ‘utopian socialist education’ would DfE fund it?”

With Tobes’ pals Gove and Bozza around, maybe not. And King had a final thought this morning: “isn't there a safeguarding issue here? Young was a school governor, while spewing out a continuous, very public, stream of misogynistic, homophobic and other vile abuse. What did the school do; and what are the NSN doing?”

What indeed. And it’s not just about Tobes’ Twitter feed: there is the very public admission by the man himself of dealing in Class A drugs. How did he get hold of all that public money with that in his skeleton cupboard? Moreover, how did the purchase on behalf of the WLFS of that office block in Hammersmith pass muster, given it had next to no outside space, and would not have been considered for a local authority school?

On top of that, there is the still unexplained and sudden departure of WLFS’ second head teacher Sam Naismith, mid-term and midweek, along with two other individuals soon after, among allegations of financial misconduct. Remember, this is our money that is being spent on the WLFS - so we should have that explanation ponied up on request.

And it isn’t finished yet: as I noted earlier today, Tobes was still lying and smearing to order for papers like the Daily Mail less than a year ago - so when he was Director of the NSN. He was lying and smearing to order for the Mail and Sun when running the WLFS. He’s lied, smeared and spun in countless recent appearances on broadcast media.

Toby Young cannot have his cake and eat it here: he wants to write dishonest, slanted, partisan, smearing, abusive and allegedly “provocative” copy, fine - but not when in the position of being paid from the public purse. He can’t be head of an alleged charity, the NSN, or before that CEO of the WLFS, while peddling partisan opinions for hire.

That is why the outcry at Tobes’ continuing taxpayer-funded largesse continue. It is why Graham Davis has this morning asserted “I've written to Baroness Sally Morgan who is on the Advisory Council of the New Schools Network of which Toby Young is director suggesting she may not wish to be associated with it in the light of recent events. I thought it might be useful to send her one of his obscene tweets”.

He has helpfully sent the one making light of anal rape - the subject of the comment having already been leered at over the size of her breasts. The record of Tobes’ trying to get off with lesbians may soon follow. His advocating for eugenics, to help the lower orders “breed out the thicks” is a sure-fire candidate to follow that.

If Toby Young were gaining his remuneration from private sources, perhaps as a freelance, or as a staffer with the right-leaning press which holds him in such unexplained high regard, this would not be cause to go after him. But he has trousered, and continues to trouser, significant sums of money paid out of our taxes. And it is for that reason that his behaviour has, ultimately, to be accountable to We The People.

As Winshton might have said at Tobes’ departure from the board of the OfS, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. Why should we keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed?

Toby Young should resign from the NSN - or be caused to resign. That is all.