A piece in today’s Times by Kate Devlin, Chief Political Correspondent:
The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton has received an apology from the cabinet minister who sacked him as a government adviser earlier this year.
James Brokenshire, the housing and communities secretary, said in a letter published on the Spectator magazine website that he was sorry and regretted his decision. Last night sources said that it was “not out of the question” that Sir Roger could return to his old role as an adviser on architecture.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have both called for the 75-year-old writer to be reinstated. He was fired after he was judged to have made inflammatory remarks in an interview with New Statesman magazine.
The publication also apologised to Sir Roger last week. Among other things, he was quoted as saying of China: “They’re creating robots of their own people . . . each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.”
New Statesman later clarified that Sir Roger’s criticism “was not of the Chinese people but of the restrictive regime of the Chinese Communist Party”. The magazine published his comments in full and said it acknowledged that in social media posts “the views of Professor Scruton were not accurately represented . . . We apologise for this, and regret any distress that this has caused.”
The philosopher Sir Roger Scruton has received an apology from the cabinet minister who sacked him as a government adviser earlier this year.
James Brokenshire, the housing and communities secretary, said in a letter published on the Spectator magazine website that he was sorry and regretted his decision. Last night sources said that it was “not out of the question” that Sir Roger could return to his old role as an adviser on architecture.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have both called for the 75-year-old writer to be reinstated. He was fired after he was judged to have made inflammatory remarks in an interview with New Statesman magazine.
The publication also apologised to Sir Roger last week. Among other things, he was quoted as saying of China: “They’re creating robots of their own people . . . each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.”
New Statesman later clarified that Sir Roger’s criticism “was not of the Chinese people but of the restrictive regime of the Chinese Communist Party”. The magazine published his comments in full and said it acknowledged that in social media posts “the views of Professor Scruton were not accurately represented . . . We apologise for this, and regret any distress that this has caused.”
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