EUAN MCCOLM: The relentless march of Scotland's new puritans

It's difficult to imagine a more disastrous collision between piety and self-interest.

When righteous authors and activists began demanding Edinburgh’s International Book Festival sever its relationship with its principal sponsor, the fund managers Baillie Gifford, they may have seen themselves as the heroes of the piece.

But since they succeeded, it’s become increasingly clear these protesters are very much the villains.

A growing number of authors told organisers of the Festival, held in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square each August, they would not appear this year if they did not bow to their demands.

Around 800 writers, including best-selling Sally Rooney, climate activist Greta Thunberg, and stand-up comedian Frankie Boyle, have demanded that Baillie Gifford divest from investments in fossil fuels and in companies with links to Israel.

The activist organisation ‘Fossil Free Books’, which is pressuring – or, perhaps more accurately, hounding – book festivals, publishers, and writers over their environmental credentials has the support of big names such as Charlotte Church and Nish Kumar.

Doubtless those who back this campaign were delighted when the book festival and Baillie Gifford agreed the end of their long relationship.

But there was something deeply sinister about that victory. In a statement announcing their capitulation to the mob, festival officials spoke about ‘safety’ concerns.

There’s a lot of meaningless talk about safety these days.

University lecture halls often seem to be filled with discussions not of ideas but about whether ideas are safe.

However, the violent and intimidating behaviour of a new generation of activists is well documented.

One cannot simply dismiss the festival officials’ explanation.

In fact, it is all too easy to imagine the chaos that might have ensued at the festival had Baillie Gifford remained involved.

If you wish to expose your own hypocrisy, then demanding others meet your personal moral standards is a very good way to go about it.

This is something those righteous activist-writers are now learning.

Why, for example, is it so important that the book festival cuts ties with Baillie Gifford but perfectly okay for their books to be sold in Waterstones, a chain of shops owned by a hedge fund with interests in fossil fuels?

Bleakly entertaining was the sight of Green MSP Maggie Chapman crowing about the campaigners’ victory in Edinburgh only for it to be pointed out to her that MSPs’ pensions are managed by Baillie Gifford.

The success of these radical activists does not end with Edinburgh.

Thanks to their threats, Baillie Gifford last week announced it was withdrawing support from all book festivals across the United Kingdom.

What a miserable end to this pitiful business.

While those who backed the campaign crow over this victory, perhaps toasting their success with a glass of something fancy produced by a company failing to reach its carbon footprint reduction targets, Baillie Gifford will carry on as it did before.

It will continue to be a mainstream, respected company with a fine record of support for the arts and investment in cutting edge companies at the forefront of scientific and medical research.

Of course, the people who’ll suffer are writers – for whom book festivals are a crucial part of building and maintaining their careers – and readers, who relish the chance to meet favourite writers and discover fresh talents during an afternoon flitting between a festival’s tents.

Unless new, equally generous, sponsors can be found, book festivals the length and breadth of the country stand to be greatly diminished going forward.

The wide-eyed and angry activist might think the solution is straightforward – simply find sponsors that live up to the standards they demand.

Well, good luck to anyone who thinks that’s going to be easy.

What company exists that is so pure – at least, on the terms of the activists – that its presence in our cultural life would be tolerated?

There will always be something for the angry activist to fixate on, an investment in an ‘unsafe’ company, a deal with a ‘problematic’ country.

What is it, I wonder, that these activists think they achieve with campaigns such as the one against Baillie Gifford? There is no practical positive outcome.

What will happen is that book festivals, with greatly reduced budgets, will resort to booking tried and tested best-selling authors who can be guaranteed to sell tickets.

Without the support of sponsors such as Baillie Gifford, organisers will have less freedom to take chances on lesser known writers.

Their programmes will shrink and, ironically, only those who sell enough books without the support of festivals will be invited to appear.

But, then, perhaps that doesn’t matter to the sort of narcissist keen to be seen at the front of such protests.

All that’s important is that we all hear their very pure and morally unimpeachable views about the world and, ideally, that someone else suffers for failing to agree.

The self-obsession of these new puritans was perfectly captured in remarks that were made by Ms Chapman after the announcement of the end of the Edinburgh Book Festival’s relationship with Baillie Gifford.

‘We should not,’ she said, ‘be greenwashing our cultural festivals.’ Does she really think that’s what Baillie Gifford was up to?

Does she believe, perhaps, there was a senior board meeting at which an executive persuaded her boss that what the company needed was a bit more of that Maggie Chapman magic?

We should not be surprised that the campaign to oust Baillie Gifford as sponsors of the Edinburgh Book Festival was so widely supported among members of Scotland’s ‘cultural sector’.

Scotland has led the way in a new era of puritanism over recent years.

A rise in identity politics – enthusiastically encouraged by the SNP – has fostered a culture of intolerance.

The nationalists have captured organisations such as Creative Scotland so that only those artists who can be relied upon not to rock the boat can expect any success when it comes to funding.

But, of course, these new thought police do not merely patrol the relatively small arts sector. They are also running our government. Look at the SNP’s track record in power over the past 17 years.

Time and again, the party has attempted to legislate to make people what it wants them to be.

Who can forget the Named Person Act, an attempt to impose a ‘state guardian’ on every Scottish child, an official with the right to interfere with the way parents raise their kids.

That was a badly thought-through piece of legislation that ended up being scrapped on the grounds that it broke human rights legislation on the right to privacy.

And then there was the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, another authoritarian attempt to impose ‘values’ on an electorate desperately in need of education in right-think.

This – also doomed – law made it a crime to say something that might be considered offensive to someone even if nobody who overheard it was in any way offended.

Some of that failed law is back on the statute books in the shape of Scotland’s Hate Crime Act, an entirely unnecessary piece of legislation.

It was already, before the recent introduction of this new law, a crime to attack – or incite attacks upon – anyone based on some specific characteristic such as their sexual orientation or religious faith.

In fact, when we get to the nub of it, it has been illegal to attack anyone for any reason for a very long time, indeed.

The Hate Crime Act is not about plugging some gap in the criminal justice system. It is about placing into law certain ‘values’.

It doesn’t matter that the MSPs passing this legislation were recreating and replicating existing laws, what was important to them was that they got to stand up in Holyrood and describe the many and various ways in which they were people of extraordinary virtue.

This is the same instinct that drives those who campaigned against Baillie Gifford’s involvement with the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

It doesn’t matter that the Act won’t change anything, all that matters is the act – and being seen to perform it – itself.

Under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP widened its interest in identity issues beyond nationality. Ms Sturgeon’s SNP government became gripped by trans ideology, pushing for unworkable reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and rejecting the concerns of anyone who thought there might be a problem with, for example, placing a rapist in a female prison merely because he says he’s changed gender, as the scaremongering of bigots.

Ms Sturgeon was every bit as unthinking as a ‘Fossil Free Books’ activist when it came to her pet obsession.

She denounced feminists, with decades-long track records in fighting for women’s rights, who opposed her plans and cut adrift colleagues who dared question the party line as dictated by her.

And what did Ms Sturgeon achieve? Well, she pushed through a law so badly written that Scottish Secretary Alister Jack was forced to block it on the grounds that it smashed into the protections afforded to women by the Equality Act.

In acting as she did – chasing accolades rather than thinking of consequences – Ms Sturgeon has, I think, set back the cause of trans rights.

No politician, having witnessed the public backlash against Ms Sturgeon’s inept and arrogant handling of the matter, will choose any time soon to return to it.

But does it really matter that the law wasn’t workable and thousands of people were promised something by politicians that they couldn’t deliver?

Don’t be naive. Of course it doesn’t.

What matters is that Nicola Sturgeon and Maggie Chapman and assorted nonentity backbench MSPs got to appear on our TV screens, telling us how compassionate they were.

And when, as every lawyer with a passing acquaintance with equality legislation said it would be, the GRA reform was blocked, those same politicians got to play the martyrs.

They had fought with all of their pure and noble hearts to do something good, and bad people had stopped them.

Imagine if those same politicians who spent tens of thousands of hours on unnecessary hate laws and unworkable gender reforms had devoted that time to addressing the real and pressing needs of voters.

What improvements might they have made in our schools and hospitals if they had focused on those priorities rather than wasting time in the pursuit of moral purity points?

If you ask any SNP politician what the greatest achievement of their party has been in government, many will say the introduction of ‘free’ prescriptions, while others might say the introduction of a more ‘progressive’ tax regime or cite the ‘baby box’.

The thing that unites all of these policies – these central planks of the SNP’s very identity – is that they are all surface and no substance.

None of them changes a damned thing.

Before the SNP’s prescriptions policy was enacted, those who could not afford to pay did not do so; the increase in income tax for Scots workers has hammered families during a cost of living crisis while providing no tangible benefits in terms of improved services (but with the government wasting millions on independence plans when no referendum is in sight, we can hardly be surprised by that); and the baby box, useful though the freebies it contains (nappies and so on) may be, has precisely no impact on the life chances of any child.

All of these things and more show a Scottish Government that cares more about the power of the symbolic act than about the difficult business of reforming services.

Just like the activists who’ve achieved nothing by forcing Baillie Gifford out of the book festival sponsorship game, these politicians crave the quick hit of righteousness.

For all its understandable reasons, the Edinburgh International Book Festival should not have given in to activists who put their selfish demands before the good of everyone else.

And we should not accept the actions of politicians who treat policy-making the same way, demanding that we agree with their positions rather than trying to make the changes we need.

I am reminded of a simple old truth: You don’t deal with spoilt children by giving them what they want.