“We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface,” Humza Yousaf told the annual reception for Scotland’s consular corps on Monday evening (April 15) in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle. The First Minister was talking about Scottish international policy, including its growing links with European, African and other countries.
Lord (David) Cameron, reinvented as Foreign Secretary, and Alister Jack, Scottish Secretary, regularly – and wrongly – chastise the Scottish Government’s internationalist ambitions which are entirely appropriate. The real problem is that these are not matched by policies and actions in the diplomatic field.
Take the consular reception. It was the most parsimonious event of its kind I have attended in 55 years of professional life as a journalist, including periods as a foreign correspondent or visiting fireman around the globe. What kind of misert message did Yousaf want to send to the world?
The consuls plus associated guests were served sparkling elderflower cordial in flutes. Alcohol was absent/banned. “It’s a cultural thing, probably,” a Scottish Government official whispered in my ear, referencing Yousaf’s alcohol-free preferences in his private life as a practising Muslim and in his policy choices too.
Perhaps, in this case, he was also responding to the (synthetic and laughable) “outrage” over Scottish Government spending on “lavish parties” for diplomats, hacks and others – all of £86,000 “splashed out” over three years. Or the message was: Humza runs a tight ship. Or: we’re skint and it’s all the fault of UK Treasury-imposed austerity.
More likely is that Yousaf was making a point. He wants to revisit the ban on alcohol advertising (in stores and at sports gigs or on branded glasses and beer mats (sic!) for instance) after an earlier version was abandoned last year after a backlash from the hospitality industry. And this temperance event at the castle underlined his commitment to ending the scourge of alcohol-related deaths in Scotland – 1276 in 2022 or the highest in 14 years. This was underscored in the recent rise in the minimum alcohol price to 65p per unit.
But none of this intention was spelled out in advance to attendees, including representatives from one of Scotland’s biggest export industries – whisky whose exports in 2023 were worth as much as £5.6bn to our economy. I haven’t touched whisky in 40 years but could hear guests asking why it wasn’t on offer as a showcase for a Scottish economic success story. The (Spanish) EU Ambassador to the UK, the evening’s guest of honour, might have enjoyed a dram – or a sherry, I know. “We’d have liked the choice, I guess, rather than having none,” one consul said. “You have to make people feel good.”
The parsimony extended to the food in the form of a few late-arriving trays of mediocre canapés, as if to say: you still have time to eat out elsewhere; we’re not paying. It’s hard to imagine any other European country making such a peely-wally offer – especially one that aspires to being a fully-fledged EU member state in its own right. That inevitably means putting it out there…But this event was just the opposite: mean-spirited, penny-pinching and lacking ambition (though the string band was good if not quite incredible). Can you imagine Moldova putting on such a poor show?
First published on the author’s Cosmopolitan Villager Substack
Reinhard Behrens says
I guess austerity in the provision of supportive nutrition along celebratory events started well before Humza’s time: I do remember the staff apologising for rather uninspiring biscuits on offer after having become a British Citizen in Kirkcaldy Town Hall a few years ago, arm-twisted by the idiocy of Brexit. They referred to much more lavish offerings in the past but us new citizens all knew we had joined a Britain of austerity….