ALBERT CAMUS asserted that “an intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself”. There are few more ostentatiously intellectual individuals in their chosen fields than Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, a person more at home with the novels of Graham Greene than Dixon of Dock Green, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, a professor of theology turned Primate of All England.

Their performance, alas, is likely to stoke the sentiment that intellectuals should never be put in charge of any important organisation in Britain.

Of the two men, Sir Ian’s plight is the more obvious. He is on his own version of death row, condemned to await the official report into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an event that will surely trigger his resignation.

There is now an indelible impression left of a Commissioner too distant from the police officers on the front line, who has lost (if he ever had) their respect and whose only defence for his conduct on the day of Mr de Menezes’s death is that those who were nominally under his command did not inform him of what happened.

The fate of Dr Williams is, ironically, more unappealing. He would surely love to be released from the burden of being Archbishop of Canterbury. But he is instead condemned to stay in place until the Lambeth conference of 2008, at least, caught between his liberal conscience and the conservative obligations that come with seeking to prevent the Church of England sliding into schism. His time on the Archbishop’s throne has become a personal torture.

Sir Ian and Dr Williams have long struck me as almost interchangeable figures. Stick a beard, a pectoral cross and a dog-collar on the Commissioner and he would be an entirely plausible member of the Anglican hierarchy. Shave off Dr William’s facial fur (a lengthy enterprise admittedly) and he would fit in fine with the legions of humanities graduates who today constitute the top table of the old thin blue line.

The Church of England and the Metropolitan Police were each once largely instruments of social control. Both of them have since become branches of social work. One no more needs to be an exceptional crimefighter to be appointed a chief constable than a compelling preacher to be recruited as an Anglican bishop. In either case such talents would probably be a career handicap.

The two men personify this shift perfectly. They are decent, scholarly and well intentioned. One quickly established himself as The Guardian’s favourite policeman. The other is that same newspaper’s preferred clergyman. Yet the brutal and harsh truth is that both have failed in office. Why? It seems to me that they share two traits.

The first is an inability to communicate in a fashion that others find comprehensible.

This, for example, is Dr Williams discussing God in a recent address. “We need, not human words that will decisively capture what the Word of God has done and is doing, but words that will show us how much time we have to take in fathoming this reality, helping us turn and move and see, from what may be infinitesimally different perspectives, the patterns of light and shadow in a world where the Word’s light has been made manifest.” Er, yes, I suppose.

Not that Sir Ian is much clearer. In his Dimbleby lecture in November, he cited the awarding of the Olympics to London in 2012, the bombings in the capital city just a day later and the loss of Mr de Menezes, to answer the question: “What kind of police service do we want?”

Sir Ian mused that “We want a 6 July police service, not a 7 July police service. However, we can’t have that to which 6 July aspired without understanding 7 July. Moreover . . . I believe that we can’t now have either 7 July or 6 July without risks like that of 22 July.” At the conclusion of this confusing account, he stated: “I believe it should be you, not me, who decides what kind of police we want.” Thanks a lot, Sir Ian.

The second trait is an inability to distinguish between having admirers and winning allies. There are plenty of politicians, journalists and other commentators who esteem Sir Ian greatly. They are not, nevertheless, a substitute for the support of police officers. It is fair to say that his predecessor, Sir John Stevens, was never the darling of the chattering classes. His personal standing was somewhat higher, though, where it counted — in the police canteen.

Dr Williams is similarly fêted by those who have read his numerous books about the Almighty. This matters less than the unfortunate reality that he is viewed as weak and inconsistent by factions that threaten to tear the Church asunder.

It was rarely said of George Carey when he served as the Archbishop of Canterbury, that he had the finest brain in Christendom. He did, however, hold 90 per cent of his flock together when they could have fallen apart over the vexed question of women priests. The institutional compromises which Dr Carey invented at that time — “flying bishops” etc — have little to commend them intellectually or theologically. They do have the redeeming merit of having endured in practice.

The demise of Sir Ian and the eclipse of Dr Williams will doubtless be indignantly cited as further evidence of the persistent “anti-intellectualism” of British culture. This is not a fair charge. Intellect, like anything else, has to be applied to be of true value. As matters stand, Sir Ian and Dr Williams will soon have more time to spend with their fine minds.

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