A person should have the right to spend his own money for whatever lawful purpose he wishes, and in particular, to hire and fire whomever he likes and not give any reasons except as required by the relevant contracts. The reasons may be arbitrarily whimsical or hypocritical or base or evil, so long as they are not unlawful. He also has the right to require, as a condition of employment, that his employees not reveal the extent of his wickedness or hypocrisy.

The European Commission does not have any of those excuses or rights. It is not a person or company but an arm of government whose legitimacy depends in part on its being impartial between legitimate political opinions. In particular, it is not permitted to use its spending power, including the power to hire and fire employees, to encourage or discourage the expression of any legitimate political opinion. It is not using its own money, but exclusively other people's, which it obtains by force with the legitimacy of government action. This legitimacy depends in part on its not being whimsical, hypocritical, base or evil: obeying the letter of legal constraints is not enough. It also has to have 'transparency' – i.e., unlike a private citizen or company, it has an obligation to keep everything it does open to public scrutiny except where there is a publicly-justifiable reason to keep it secret.

These are some of the reasons why I think firing Connolly was wrong.