On the day that the National Theatre revived Shakespeare’s tragedy about a leader who suffers after refusing to tell the people what they want to hear, culture secretary Lisa Nandy proved that she is no Coriolanus.
On the surface, at least, her speech to the Labour conference on Tuesday told arts lovers on the left exactly what they would have hoped for. There have been 14 years of Conservative “violent indifference” to the arts, allied to education policy and local government de-funding that has “erased culture and creativity from our classrooms and communities”. However, now, the cultural community will become “essential partners in the country we seek to build”.
This would include “kickstarting the charter review to ensure the BBC survives and thrives”. Showing a preference for metaphors involving violent foot movements, Nandy will also “kick off a review of the Arts Council to ensure arts for everyone”.
A few hours later, at the opening night of Coriolanus at the National, many arts lovers were indeed grooving to a mood music much more attractive than the anti-arts protest songs since 2010: from George Osborne’s austerity to Nadine Dorries’ asperity. Others, though, lamented that Nandy’s introduction by Imogen Grant, an Olympic rowing gold medallist – rather than, say, an actor or writer – might extend a fear of elitism and niche excellence that has felt inherent in Labour arts policy in recent years. Nandy is also in charge of sport but Grant, as an amateur athlete who is now a junior doctor, is an imperfect role model for those in the arts.
The biggest objection – typically in a sector that feels underfunded – was that the speech was more about sounds than pounds. At least this is consistent. In its final months in opposition, Labour held a briefing/reception for the arts community. The expectation at the time was that Thangam Debbonaire, then shadowing the brief, would soon be running the DCMS. This was exciting for many as she is a highly talented cellist and champion of classical music, although the policy positions outlined led some of those running arts venues to contemplate dusting off their school instruments and busking on the street. Labour’s message, as one cultural panjandrum put it, was: “We love you to bits but there’s no money.”
As it turned out, Bristol Central voters preferred the Greens’ Carla Denyer to Debbonaire, making Nandy a rare member of the Starmer cabinet who was not previously a shadow. But, while a lesser cellist than the intended incumbent, the surprise culture secretary suggested in Liverpool that she will play a tiny violin to requests for significant new cash. As at the pre-election briefing, it was a love song performed with hands in empty pockets. And with almost no practical intervention, beyond that old Whitehall time-staller: reviews.
Nandy’s speech would have been little consolation to the numerous regional theatres struggling to survive. Few towns and cities will be without a performance of A Christmas Carol this winter. That’s a great tribute to Dickens but a frightening economic barometer: a long, lucrative run of Scrooge might just keep the building more or less solvent for another year. A really popular announcement would have been writing off or rescheduling the “cultural recovery loans” that the Johnson administration introduced after Covid and that institutions are starting to repay. But it wouldn’t have been worth even asking Rachel Reeves.
There is also alarm about the declared aim of the Arts Council review being to ensure that culture is not just for “the privileged few, to be hoarded in a few corners of the country”. Strictly, there can only be four corners, but the more ambitious geometry the culture secretary suggests sounds ominously like a revival of the long arguments – under recent Labour and Tory governments – about redirecting arts cash around the island. To run against London is easy populism for politicians. But schemes such as NT Live and other theatre-to-cinema live transmissions – plus the streamed performances that many venues have maintained since the pandemic – have reduced the relevance of geographical location. The new Coriolanus can also be seen as a tribute to big investment in London. David Oyelowo once appeared in a schools production as part of the National Theatre’s Connections scheme and, 30 years later, plays a great role on its biggest stage.
Venues around the UK, already required to fill out forms of Anna Karenina length in pursuit of grants, may also balk at the implications of having to provide yet more data about social reach and community outreach, which are not always the best measures of excellence.
Also on that busy Tuesday, Rufus Norris, at his final press conference as artistic director of the National Theatre (Indhu Rubasingham takes over in March) shared statistics showing that the National has transformed its audience. After core theatregoers failed to return after Covid – either due to concern about transport or confined spaces, or simply generational attrition – they have been replaced by consumers younger, more diverse, less culturally habitualised (their survey revealed 37% were at the National for the first time).
At a (non-press) performance of Katori Hall’s brilliant comedy of family redemption, The Hot Wing King, I had the important – and corrective – experience of being one of the few audience members who was not black. This also happened recently at a West End performance of Benedict Lombe’s clever romance Shifters at the Duke of York’s. On both occasions, several people told me that they had never been to the theatre before. Yet such diverse audiences were not achieved through government or Arts Council policy but due to a subsidised theatre and a commercial producer (Sonia Friedman) having the staff and resources to find new theatregoers through carefully targeted advertising and accessible ticket prices. Smaller venues cannot afford to do this. Nandy risks restarting long and probably unresolvable arguments about the relative value of an arts pound in Southwark, West Sussex or Wolverhampton.
BBC staff and broadcast unions will be calmed, after 14 years of threatened wrecking balls, by the promise to preserve the corporation. However – perhaps counterintuitively – some in senior positions at the BBC were alarmed by Starmer’s early pledge to defend the licence fee. With hundreds of thousands of viewers each year now refusing to pay what they see as a state-imposed broadcasting tax, the funding system threatens, regardless of ideological or historical attachment, to become defunct. Significantly raising the fee from the current £169.50 a year – either for all, or at different levels according to wealth – would surely increase both evasion and resentment towards the corporation.
Just try watching Apple+’s Slow Horses alongside BBC1’s Nightsleeper and calculate the size of licence fee needed to compete with streaming budgets. There is a strong case for Labour seriously examining how a subscription system (topping up a basic package of news) might work through the iPlayer. That might make it impossible to pay someone a £million-plus to introduce football highlights, or hundreds of thousands for reading out news headlines but loyalty to the licence fee, from liberal sentimentality, risks destroying the BBC.
Interestingly, the speech did not repeat Nandy’s pledge on taking office in July that she would “end the culture wars”. This perhaps reflects an acceptance that in this ideological conflict, as in military ones, there are no easy ceasefires. Her speech had nothing to say to the artistic directors and chief executives in her sectors who are caught in disputes with staff or contributors over Middle Eastern or identity politics.
There are no easy answers but in this – as in many areas – the new culture secretary’s speech ducked the complexity of the questions.
• This article was amended on 27 September 2024. An earlier version said that Carla Denyer and Thangam Debbonaire stood for election in the Bristol West constituency; it was instead Bristol Central.
