Why the Arts Council should kill off ENO and ENB

Pity Arts Council England, least loved of our NGOs, understaffed and under-resourced, its arm’s-length status gnawed to the shoulder by DCMS ukases, the stinginess of the Treasury and the government’s (in some respects, welcome) indifference to our higher culture.

In return for its annual grant-in-aid (currently £336 million), it is obliged to cheer-lead policies of inclusivity and diversity and step gingerly over the eggshells of elitism, racism, gender politics and decolonisation. Its hands are further tied by the requirement to operate as extensions of the social services. The diktats of Levelling Up have to be honoured. The disabled and the disadvantaged, the young and the old are all crying out to be championed. The arts must work in schools, hospitals and prisons as well as theatres and art galleries. The right sneers and calls for abolition. Leftist agitators ask who gets to define what ‘excellence’ consists of? And should munificence be directed towards posh metropolitans wallowing in grand opera or deprived kids off their heads on drill?

No wonder ACE struggles to fulfil the simple and benign core mission set out by Maynard Keynes in 1946 – to give financial support to the higher reaches of professional artistic activity and to ensure that it is accessible at reasonable cost across the population.

Having been flayed by the media in the past, ACE has become more cautious and even biddable in recent years, but with chairman Sir Nicholas Serota’s admirably circumspect hand on the tiller, it has managed to preserve what shreds of its independence remain. No disasters, no exposés in the Daily Mail, just a lot of moaning. But after a long period of austerity, ACE has been left chronically short of the money it needs for the tasks it has been set. So I now propose that it stiffens its sinews and saves a few million by withdrawing all life-support subvention from two of its major clients, thereby effectively killing them off in their present form.