Whatever happened to expertise in policymaking?

The government is choosing celebrity academics like Roger Scruton over experienced professionals to advise it on matters most urgent to the electorate

The philosopher is facing calls to resign after comments he made about date rape came to light (Rex)

Among the more amusing moments working on a newsdesk are those that occur when a breaking story is greeted not with murmurs of shock, gasps of anger or peals of laughter, but with two raised eyebrows and the question: “Err, what?”

That was my reaction upon hearing of growing pressure on the prime minister to sack her newly appointed housing tsar, the academic Roger Scruton, following concern about potentially sexist and racist remarks he had made in the past.

What caused my own brows to lift skyward here was not the suggestion that Scruton’s views on date rape made him unsuitable for this particular public office – as my colleague Kuba Shand-Baptiste argued only this week, it’s quite right that public bodies including government are held to the highest standards on the messages their figureheads send out – but the idea that he had been the right appointment to that job in the first place.