Edinburgh books festival has a few questions to answer

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

'Fury over £300k for Sturgeon book fest' was the splash headline over pictures of the former First Minister and her ex-aide Liz Lloyd. Ms Lloyd was appointed a director of the Edinburgh International Books Festival in May, the paper reported. In June, the Scottish Government announced it had given the festival £300,000. Meanwhile, Ms Lloyd's old boss had been given a plum spot at the festival to publicise her new memoir, Frankly.
My nose twitched. The eyebrows went skywards, but why?
Here's the Sunday Mail again: 'The book festival said it would be 'spurious' and 'misleading' to suggest any link between Lloyd's appointment and the announcement of the cash, which it said had been planned for months.'
Interesting choice of words there, particularly 'spurious'. It's the kind of ten-dollar word a lawyer might use when a simple 'wrong' would have done. It is there to send a message: nothing to see here folks, so let's all just shuffle on.
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It is true. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong. As the festival said when news of Ms Lloyd's appointment emerged, she was appointed following 'a fully advertised recruitment process'. I could have applied, you could have applied, but we didn't. Moreover, she would bring 'valuable experience in communications, leadership and public affairs'.
It has been more than the regulation two years since Ms Sturgeon and Ms Lloyd held positions in public life, the former as FM and the latter as her strategic adviser. Ms Sturgeon has carried on as an MSP, controversially as she has not been seen much in the Scottish Parliament. Those memoirs won't write themselves, you know.
But Lloyd is different. She is a free agent, able to do what she wants, no permission required or sought. She has every right to earn a living by selling her skills wherever she pleases. Hence the application to the books festival.
The same goes for her appointment to a firm called Flint. On its website, Flint says it 'helps businesses and investors succeed in an increasingly complex world'. Its CEO is James Purnell, former Labour MP, former minister under Blair and Brown, ex-BBC and think-tanker.
Click through and you will eventually meet the Flint team, which now includes Ms Lloyd. Listed as a specialist partner with expertise in devolved administrations, operations team, policy and political analysis, her work for the FM is outlined in glowing terms. It's impressive stuff. She's an impressive woman.
Once again, she's doing nothing wrong. Countless former aides, and elected representatives, have gone the same route, using what they learned in the public sector and applying it in the private. Put your knowledge and experience to work. Everyone who ever progressed in a career has done likewise.
To summarise, Ms Lloyd was appointed a director at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Nothing wrong in that. She advises businesses and investors using the expertise acquired while working for the First Minister. Nothing wrong in that.
As for her book festival appointment coinciding with the award of a £300k Scottish Government grant, remember the latter had been 'planned for months', according to the event organisers. The Scottish Government said the same thing when it announced the money at the end of June: the deal had been signed off months before by ministers but was not publicised.
What I would like to know, as a taxpayer if nothing else, is exactly when Ms Lloyd was appointed books festival director, and whether anyone at the festival knew that the £300k was in the pipeline.
Why was the Government announcement held back? The money is part of a larger package of help given to the event by the Scottish Government, and there is a lot more to come. Again, were those involved in the appointment of Ms Lloyd aware of this? It's a matter of public record, after all.
Once again, nobody has done anything wrong. That happens a lot in Scotland, particularly when the Scottish Government, and the current administration in particular, is involved. You can pass any number of faces on the stairs, familiar ones like John Swinney, and swear they had a case to answer for something or other, but when it comes to holding them to account, there is nobody there. Ferries, education, NHS waiting times, growth - you name it, no one is taking the blame for failure any time soon.
You will never see any of these faces take the sort of pasting handed out last week to Professor Iain Gillespie, former principal of the University of Dundee, by the Education Committee. Yes, ministers have been questioned, but not like that.
One of the unfortunate principal's mistakes was to fail downwards when the done thing in Scottish public life is to fail upwards. Move on, move up, take the rewards but accept zero blame unless there is no other option. It was and is the Westminster way and it has transferred to the Scottish Parliament.
We'll be seeing it a lot more of this moving on as the elections approach. Get ready to hold your nose as departing MSPs, and their aides, compete for jobs in the public and private sectors. And if the SNP should win a majority again, despite their record, the failing upwards can carry on as normal.
I wonder if Ms Sturgeon will address the subject of failure when her much-anticipated session at the books festival comes to pass. If she is up for it, I would like to hear Ms Lloyd's thoughts as well. Now that she is a festival director and in what they call 'a public-facing role', there shouldn't be a problem. John Swinney too - all are welcome. Until then, I'll keep wrinkling my nose. Bewitched, no. Bothered, plenty.
Alison Rowat is a Herald feature writer and columnist