Sturgeon's legacy lives on

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon with her chief of staff Liz Lloyd

I use the phrase deliberately, because that’s exactly what seems to have happened with the bumper package revealed last week for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Last year its spineless management caved into pressure from climate change extremists, encouraged by a handful of high-profile authors, to end its association with venerable Edinburgh fund managers Baillie Gifford for the crime of having a miniscule proportion of its investments in oil companies, and other legitimate firms doing business in Israel.

It was a needless panic reaction under the pretext of staff safety, preferring to risk jobs than offending any trendy left-wing sensibilities, and leaving the event not just with a funding gap but a disincentive for other potential sponsors. But last month in stepped the Scottish Government with a “one-off” £300,000 package to bankroll the festival’s schools programme. God bless the SNP for looking out for our children’s reading abilities now the Programme for International Student Assessment shows literacy levels are at their lowest since the first measurement 25 years ago.

It’s very hard to understand why the SNP saw fit to hand this supine organisation another £300,000 when the value of the Baillie Gifford sponsorship was only about £35,000 a year, unless we are not being told the full story about its financial management. What’s even more difficult to fathom is why SNP ministers didn’t tell festival chief executive Jenny Niven that the £1,880,000 she was already receiving from the government’s Creative Scotland agency to cover the next three years was all she was getting. Only in the SNP’s Scotland can a publicly funded event already handed £2 million of taxpayers’ money blow a hole in its own budget and be rewarded with another grant twice as big as the amount it had thrown away.

Which brings us to the friends connection. Of course, it’s a coincidence that earlier this year the book festival’s board was joined by one Liz Lloyd, Nicola Sturgeon’s most senior adviser throughout her time as First Minister. And who is top of the book festival bill this year? Why Ms Sturgeon herself, with a book to punt while still taking public money for her day job as an MSP. And, no I’ve not seen much of her around Holyrood this past year.

Surely to goodness someone in government should have realised just how bad it might look and said no. It was agreed months ago but not officially announced, claimed the Scottish Government. In the words of another literary event, aye right. This tawdry episode could be a metaphor for Sturgeon’s Scotland, where political patronage mattered more than prudence. It’s been two years since she resigned, but her legacy lives on.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian