Joyce McMillan: Creative Scotland’s decision to axe funding for seven leading touring theatre companies defies logic, and its failure to explain its reasoning beggars belief

First, let’s spare a thought, this week, for Scotland’s culture minister, Fiona Hyslop. Remarkably, in a world where culture ministers rarely last long, she has now held the post for almost seven years; and in an age of mounting austerity across the UK, she has quite simply played a blinder throughout, in persuading her colleagues of the brilliant “bang for the buck” Scotland gets from its artists, and of the need for the Scottish government to keep on supporting their work. Two months ago, in the final tussle over Scotland’s budget that followed the UK autumn budget statement on 22 November, she did particularly well, persuading finance minister Derek McKay not only to avoid making cuts to Creative Scotland and the rest of the arts, but to offer Creative Scotland an additional sum to compensate for declining arts Lottery income. Scotland’s arts community and creative organisations breathed a sigh of relief; and looked forward to a Creative Scotland three-year funding announcement, at the end of January, that should, for once, have been a relatively happy and trouble-free event.