Just three weeks ago, I wrote about Hay Festival sacking their main sponsor Baillie Gifford after pressure from the campaign group Fossil Free Books, which claimed the investment fund was profiting from the destruction of the planet and ‘genocide’ in Gaza. Whatever their merits of these charges (not much, as it happens), I argued, the sacking of a literary festival’s sponsor would do great harm to the festival and make no impact whatsoever on the fossil fuel industry or the lives of people in Gaza.