The ‘Festival of Brexit’ is another failure we can blame government ministers for

The figures show that Unboxed has so far achived just 0.36 per cent of its ‘stretch’ target of 66 million visitors after it was politicised by government ministers, writes James Moore

Lumenators create a large-scale art work at the Giant’s Causeway as part of Unboxed (Brian Morrison/PA)

One does rather wonder what Jacob Rees-Mogg’s partners at Somerset Capital Management, the City hedge fund that decided it quite fancied the weather in Dublin when Brexit was landed upon us (although the move had nothing to do with the withdrawal from the EU), have made of his words around what he dubbed the “Festival of Brexit”.

Oopsie…

The problem facing Martin Green, the poor man tasked with running the thing, is that the name stuck. The event was thus politicised, and this has been cited as a major reason for the (dismal) relative failure of Unboxed – which was supposed to show off the best of Britain to the world – to attract visitors.

The £120m post-Brexit arts festival had a “stretch” target of 66 million visitors. Per The House magazine, it has emerged that government figures for four Unboxed events show a total of 238,000 people took part. That amounts to just 0.36 per cent of the stretch. Should we call it the squeeze target?

I believe this must count as one of the costliest branding foul-ups of all time. Rees-Mogg has mused that there are some functions the government should get out of now he has his hands on his political holy grail. Putting on Brexit arts festivals is clearly one of them. Business schools could run modules on it.

I’d put it roughly on a level with the Royal Mail’s inexplicable decision to to call itself Consignia. Or should that be Con-sick-nia? Because that is how that change went down. For those that don’t remember it – and for the executives who probably spent their bonus cash on getting hypnotised to forget it – the company for some reason decided to replace its well-established, and widely trusted, brand in the early 2000s.

It was memorably described by the BBC’s Mike Verdin as: “A duffer. A howling waste of money. The most ruinous decision since the biblical scam that saw Esau swap his birthright for a bowl of stew.” Even then, Verdin might have been under-playing it.

Letting everyone know that Unboxed was, in fact, the Festival of Brexit – however much it was political shorthand – is smack bang in the same ballpark. Except it might be even worse, because Con-sick-nia was eventually consigned to the toilet where it belonged in favour of a reversion to the traditional name.

Allan Leighton, the retail guru who had helped turn around Asda, fixed that one en route to saving the Co-op. That’s some CV.

Thanks to his intervention, Con-sick-nia is now recalled only when people write chuckle pieces concerning bad branding. Or when people like me look to find comparisons to painting an arts shindig in right-wing political colours and calling it Festival of Brexit.

But there’ll be no recovery for the festival. There’s no Allan Leighton out there to ride in on a fiery charger to save the thing. At a time when Britons are grappling with the dilemma of whether to heat or eat, and companies are wondering whether they’ll be able to survive uncapped energy prices, which have shot off into the stratosphere, the money is gone.

It really won’t be a good look if the government starts saying it can’t afford to help the hospitality sector – which is teetering on the brink thanks to unaffordable energy prices – when it managed to blow £120m on an event whose hospitality was shunned by just about everyone.

The pub’s gone bust, the cinema’s shut its doors and the local theatre has the begging bowl out, but, hey, what about Jacob’s joyful Brexit shindig? No? Can’t blame you. The iPlayer’s a better bet; Netflix if you can still afford the subscription. Hell, I might even go for back-to-back episodes of EastEnders as an alternative.

The festival commissioned on Brexit’s back has inadvertently become a near-perfect metaphor for the whole dismal project. Designed to show off the best of Britain, it has become a laughing stock.

And that’s Brexit all over, isn’t it? To listen to its advocates, we should right now be sitting in the “sunlit uplands” with the “bumps in the road” of customs and hold-ups in trade with Europe more than compensated for by a sheaf of super-trade deals with every other top economy. Britain PLC, chaired by Captain Boris, should have been incorporated to deliver the subsequent trading boom, with Britain having jumped ahead of the bally slow-footed continental nations in the economic league tables.

As it is, we’ve had a handful of cut-and-paste deals replicating what we had with the EU, a pair of antipodean agreements that seem destined put British farmers out of business, and lorry drivers spending days stuck in never-ending queues at Dover.

Yep, the festival’s dismal performance perfectly sums up the mess Bozza has delivered to the country, a mess that his successor looks set to compound. A tragicomedy? A farce? Who knows. It’s so bad, no one wants to watch. A bit like Unboxed.