The BBC has got it wrong: Toby Young resigning is not the biggest story of the day

There is a fair bit of news around. President Macron is in China as he emerges as the new General de Gaulle, leading Europe into new areas of foreign policy. The North Koreans have announced their Winter Olympics diplomatic initiative, sending skiers and fans to meet and mingle with American downhill racers in an echo of the famous ping-pong diplomacy that opened the way to the China-US rapprochement in the 1970s.

In the House of Commons, there was a major Brexit win for the Government as only 265 MPs voted in favour of the EU’s Customs Union. There are 312 Labour, SNP, and Lib-Dems MP plus a few others, but 40 of them did not turn up to vote and defend the idea of staying in a Customs Union with Europe – a key point for ensuring peace and stability in Ireland.

Yet on Radio 4 and on the Today programme this morning, the only story that seemed to matter is the fact that Toby Young has resigned from the board of a new university regulator after criticism over controversial comments.

There are good arguments on both sides of the Toby Young debate, but the entire thing has now been blown out of proportion.

Young is not my cup of tea, but he courteously agreed to debate Brexit with me and argued the hard Brexit line with wit and vigour.

Yes, his tweets are pretty horrid but so are many of Boris Johnson’s, and no-one has come forward to accuse Mr Young of the “#MeToo” allegations that have cost ministers their jobs, one Welsh minister his life, and placed other MPs and figures in public life under investigation for past bad behaviour.

There are plenty of other writers who like to shock. Rod Liddle and Jeremy Clarkson spring to mind. My late and beloved friend, Chris Hitchens, used to do the same from a left point of view. He famously wrote a column that Ronald Reagan was doing daily to America what he was unable to do nightly to his wife.

In the 1980s, that was shocking. Today, it would have got Christopher fired.

On the other hand, there is no clear reason why one of the Spectator stable of right-wing polemicists – which gives the weekly much of its edge – should be appointed to some quango job by his chums now in government.

I am not convinced that Young is one of the holy apostles of education. I have friends and family members who have set up and ran small schools, and the notion that only an academy school set up by Mr Young can provide good education for children from poor or disadvantaged families is far-fetched.

Zoopla prices semi-detached houses in Acton where Mr Young opened his school in the £750,000 – £1 million range, and the west London borough has moved rapidly upmarket this century – so Mr Young’s school is serving a well-off community.

Where is the legendary Sue Gray – the Whitehall warrior  who destroyed Damian Green, when you need her?  If she and her subordinates in charge of Whitehall morality were half awake, surely a quick flick though Mr Young’s tweets would have sent alarm signals to Jo Johnson and his brother, who leapt to Young’s defence, that it might be better not to offer him the job? It would have saved Mr Young from the kind of week of torrid headlines normally reserved for errant politicians.

But the real question is why the Today programme editors think the whole Toby Young saga is the most important world, or even domestic, event in its morning bulletins.