This is what the left in this country has been reduced to — online metal-detectorists searching the internet for material they can pretend to be shocked by. Sir Roger Scruton is one of the great intellects of our age and these commissars of political correctness aren’t fit to tie his boots.
Scruton’s official statement is correct but unfortunately irrelevant, as the truth usually is in these manufactured dramas. His real crime is to have been appointed to a government commission on housing due to his expertise on architecture. Anodyne enough, you might think, but his opponents consider influential positions within government and media to be their territory by birthright, and are thus outraged by this defilement. The idea that MPs in a party led by Jeremy Corbyn are appalled by anti-Semitism is too brazen to even be funny. As Theodore Dalrymple noted, the entire purpose of such propaganda is to demonstrate their contempt for the audience in a menacing way. Yes, we’re lying to your face. Are you going to do anything about it? We didn’t think so. It’s a bitter irony that a man who did so much at great personal risk to help undermine tyranny by establishing underground academic networks in Eastern Europe in the 1980s should find himself facing a similar dynamic at home.