Scruton scandal shows that British public life can’t handle difficult ideas

The appointment of Roger Scruton, knight of the Realm and Fellow of the British Academy, to an obscure government job has caused an outpouring of indignation and approbation, tendentious defences of free speech, and on what is otherwise a quietish domestic news day, has provided some useful copy for newspapers and filled some air time for the broadcasters.

Sir Roger is a distinguished academic and philosopher. He is also a Conservative. His life’s work revolves around debating thoughts and ideas. This necessarily involves provocation and challenge. The first thing to note is that we live in an age that is not comfortable with ideas. Our age demands a consensus around bland and unchallenging thought in general, and public policy in particular.

Scruton is not a household name, but he is well known in the academic, media, and political circles in which he moves. Unlike the journalist and free schools pioneer Toby Young, who recently accepted and was then denied a public appointment, Scruton has built his life’s work in the Academy, not in the media – social or otherwise.

It is wrong to compare the Scruton and Young cases. As Young admits, he repeatedly made oafish and inappropriate comments about women on Twitter, which he subsequently deleted. He was a difficult political appointment – and he should have had the nous to know it. Scruton is a figure with a huge body of academic work which has attracted worldwide praise. The issue here is not one of free speech. It is one of whether a person who has spent an academic career dealing in ideas can then hold a public appointment.

In one sense of course anyone holding any sort of public appointment can now expect to be subject to intense public scrutiny. Politicians regularly attack one another for what they have done and said, sometimes going back years. That’s one thing. Politicians know what they’re getting themselves into. Politics has always been full of rough and tumble. We need also though to be able to attract and retain into public life people who may not want to seek elected office but who are willing to render public service.

The question we now face is not one of free speech, an argument that is all too often the recourse of lazy comment editors and columnists short of a good idea, but one of whether our public square can hold within it distinguished academics and thinkers or not. As a country is our public life strong and vibrant enough to contain within it those whose views we may disagree with, but whose good faith we do not question? Or are we now in an age where only the mediocre and idea free can hold public office?