Friday, December 09, 2022
Another Tory cock-up
The Independent reports on a surprising admission by the UK Culture Secretary, Michelle Donelan, that nobody with “the luxury of hindsight” would repeat the government’s £120m festival of Brexit project.
Donelan was speaking at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, where she was told that the event, officially known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, had been a “monumental cock-up”. In responding, she took the opportunity to distance herself from the project and admitted there were “shortfalls” and “lessons learnt”:
“As you know that that initiative was developed and thought of as a concept years ago, and it was drawing its conclusion when I entered the department. So it isn’t something that I have actively myself worked on,” she told the culture committee.
“In terms of the project itself, obviously now we’re viewing it from the luxury of hindsight aren’t we, we know the criticism that’s been waged against it; we know that the shortfalls, the lessons learnt, and we’re in a very different period of time, with the economy with the cost of living crisis and the challenge that we face today.”
Asked whether the government would run the festival again, she said: “I never did it in the first place. Obviously, this was a government initiative and I don’t think anybody would do it exactly the same.”
Pushed on whether she would have gone ahead with the festival again, Ms Donelan said: “No, because there are lessons that have to be learned from Unboxed. And I think everybody would recognise that in many ways it could have been improved and built upon.”
But Conservative MP Julian Knight, who chairs the committee, told the cabinet minister that there had been ample warning that Unboxed would be a failure.
He said the committee had been told the audience target for the event was 66 million but that in reality just 18 million people, around a quarter, had engaged with it and 3.8 million attended.
“When you say this is from the benefit of hindsight, this committee in its report, warned against Unboxed and saying basically we thought it would be a failure,” he said.
It's a shame that those who were responsible for this event didnt listen at the time. If they had we would have saved a lot of money.
Donelan was speaking at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, where she was told that the event, officially known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, had been a “monumental cock-up”. In responding, she took the opportunity to distance herself from the project and admitted there were “shortfalls” and “lessons learnt”:
“As you know that that initiative was developed and thought of as a concept years ago, and it was drawing its conclusion when I entered the department. So it isn’t something that I have actively myself worked on,” she told the culture committee.
“In terms of the project itself, obviously now we’re viewing it from the luxury of hindsight aren’t we, we know the criticism that’s been waged against it; we know that the shortfalls, the lessons learnt, and we’re in a very different period of time, with the economy with the cost of living crisis and the challenge that we face today.”
Asked whether the government would run the festival again, she said: “I never did it in the first place. Obviously, this was a government initiative and I don’t think anybody would do it exactly the same.”
Pushed on whether she would have gone ahead with the festival again, Ms Donelan said: “No, because there are lessons that have to be learned from Unboxed. And I think everybody would recognise that in many ways it could have been improved and built upon.”
But Conservative MP Julian Knight, who chairs the committee, told the cabinet minister that there had been ample warning that Unboxed would be a failure.
He said the committee had been told the audience target for the event was 66 million but that in reality just 18 million people, around a quarter, had engaged with it and 3.8 million attended.
“When you say this is from the benefit of hindsight, this committee in its report, warned against Unboxed and saying basically we thought it would be a failure,” he said.
It's a shame that those who were responsible for this event didnt listen at the time. If they had we would have saved a lot of money.
