Symbolically, Keir Starmer’s decision to deliver Labour’s 2024 election victory speech at the Tate Modern – the biggest and best-known national gallery to be opened under New Labour – was important. On a rhetorical level, Starmer has retained his predecessors’ commitment to access to the arts, talking about his entry into music at the Labour Creatives conference last March (sponsored by the Bank of America and Bloomberg) even if most of the relevant policies from the Corbyn period were ditched for last summer’s notoriously flimsy corporatese manifesto. This did not even commit to retaining the free access to national galleries and museums introduced by Tony Blair’s government – although it has not yet been mooted for cutting like, for example, disability benefits or the winter fuel allowance have been – and did not give any figures about what Labour proposed to invest in the arts.

After six months in power, there have been no headline-grabbing cultural policies. Perhaps this is because, despite its huge parliamentary majority, Starmer’s administration has been on the back foot ever since its startlingly low total vote – down by over half a million on the endlessly condemned 2019 – showed how little public enthusiasm existed for its dull managerial centrism and cost its planned culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, her seat. 

The rightwing media that ignored Labour’s dishonesty when it was useful in crushing the left instantly turned on the party, continually creating a sense of crisis around the government in a way that seemingly only Starmerites hadn’t predicted, and certainly don’t look able to counter. Given the recent Elon Musk-driven escalation, it looks like the media assault on Starmer will only intensify throughout the next few years.

The best response might be ambitious and well-publicised investments in public services that might inspire people to support or defend them: this looks unlikely with Rachel Reeves talking about yet more austerity. Past Labour governments have used flagship arts or education policies to signal a positive commitment to cultural democracy, all of which have endured: Clement Attlee establishing the Arts Council, Harold Wilson founding the Open University and National Theatre, and Tony Blair’s provision for numerous regional galleries. So far, there has been little sign of anything remotely so bold. Labour has not even made good on its only concrete arts manifesto pledge, to create a National Music Education Network (which, as I said when it was announced, might just be a website, so vague was its wording).

With Debbonaire – a cello player who shared Starmer’s commitment to music – deposed, the culture, media and sport brief fell to Lisa Nandy, the most rightwing of Starmer’s leadership challengers in 2020. Nandy has at least said the right things about the Tories’ cuts to arts funding and contempt for arts education, and the need to improve access to culture and its industries. Her most notable act so far has been to announce an “independent review to ensure access to high-quality arts and culture in every region” – which you would expect her to take seriously given her constant talk about “towns” during her leadership campaign. In yet another throwback to New Labour, this review will be led by rightwing stalwart Margaret Hodge, also rewarded for her fierce opposition to Corbyn’s leadership by being made “anti-corruption champion”.

What comes out of this remains to be seen. Labour’s pre-election plan for the arts, culture and creative industries raised the prospect of using private finance models to attract funding. Thus far, the department for culture, media and sport (DCMS) has removed advertising and sponsorship limits from community radio stations and secured a cultural partnership with Saudi Arabia – but otherwise, it has mostly reappointed trustees to institutions (including People’s Vote co-founder Roland Rudd at the Tate) and set up various taskforces and reviews, including of Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. The Creative Industries Council, headed by Baroness Vadera, “the first woman to chair a British bank”, will lead some of these; temporary co-chair Sir Peter Bazalgette said he could “think of no one better to drive forward public and private investment” in one of the government’s ‘priority sectors for growth’ than Vadera. Most disconcertingly, Nandy recently told a parliamentary select committee that “there is a lot of fragility in our sectors”, warning it to expect further budget cuts.

Arts workers have already expressed concern that Labour’s policies will be “a case of warm words [but] no hard cash”, as Conrad Landin recently put it in Apollo magazine. Landin mentioned that the Arts for Us All report on how to fix Britain’s creative sectors had come from the Fabian Society, a notoriously cautious group affiliated with (surprise!) the Labour right, with little in it that would require money from tax revenue, with a handful of education reforms addressed by moving existing funds from the National Lottery and Nesta, and no mention of the local government crisis caused by years of austerity. Nandy has addressed the difficulties that places such as the Oldham Coliseum have encountered as a result, talking about a deal between the council and the town’s MP to save it, speaking of “place-based philanthropy”. But as Landin writes, private donations have not made up for public spending cuts. Nandy’s example of New Statesman owner Mike Danson buying Wigan’s football and rugby clubs doesn’t work for arts institutions, which do not offer investors the same outright control or media profile.

As it did when the manifesto was launched, Labour’s arts policies already feel like a missed opportunity to counter the media onslaught and brighten the mood around its government – to lift the spirits not just of those commentators who want to support them, and are often receptive to cultural initiatives, but the people of a country governed by little other than spite in recent years. Perhaps Hodge’s review will advocate for some transformative new institutions or programmes, but it’s hard to picture it: Nandy announcing herself as “minister for fun” at September’s conference before Reeves jokingly told her that “fun is cancelled” will most likely epitomise their administration.

Expect four more years of reviews diagnosing problems but offering few solutions besides private investment, the use of AI and nebulous promises of growth; as well as a mounting frustration at the waste of a huge majority and a sense of little, from living costs to the state of public services, getting noticeably better. Maybe it’s time to get that National Music Education Network site online – if only to give the arts industry something to talk about.