Festival of Brexit was ‘monumental cock-up’, MPs tell culture secretary

Nobody with “the luxury of hindsight” would repeat the government’s £120m festival of Brexit project, the culture secretary has admitted.

Speaking at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Michelle Donelan was told that the event, officially known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, had been a “monumental cock-up”.

Ms Donelan, who was appointed to her role by Rishi Sunak in September, 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.

Describing the project as “literally just a splurging of money”, the committee chair added: “People still talk about things like the World War One commemoration, they still talk about the 2012 Olympics, they still talk about the jubilees that we have had for her late majesty.

“But you have got to recognise as secretary state coming in – and we take it, this is not your fault – that this was a monumental cock-up of gargantuan proportions, and this should never have been allowed to come to fruition.”

In March, ahead of the event, a scathing report by the culture committee said the project was a £120m waste of money and heading for failure, with government handling characterised as “irresponsible”.

The festival was first proposed in 2018 under Theresa May as a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg describing it as a “festival of Brexit”.

After a number of name changes the event became known as “Unboxed: Creativity in the UK”, with all mention of Brexit deliberately avoided.

It ran from March to November 2022, with 107 locations across the UK hosting a series of unrelated arts and creative projects.