Nobody with “the luxury of hindsight” would repeat the government’s £120m festival of Brexit project, the culture secretary Michele Donelan has admitted
It was Jacob Rees-Mogg who christened it a festival of Brexit – a moniker that might well have cursed it from the beginning.
Announced by Theresa May in the aftermath of Britain’s referendum on EU membership, and supposedly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition and 1951’s Festival of Britain, the then prime minister heralded a programme of events to be held this year to “showcase what makes our country great today”.
But four years on – and after two re-brandings – the public spending watchdog is to investigate what became known as Unboxed: Creativity in the UK, amid concern that visitor numbers have been less than 1% of early targets.
The National Audit Office (NAO) will examine how the £120m project was managed. About 240,000 visitors are reported to have visited events, in contrast to an early target of 66 million.
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