The arts in the UK breathed a deep sigh of relief at the results of the recent election. To the minds of many working in culture, Labour is the party of art and it represents the only practical instantiation of political thought which both understands the arts and thrives on their critical ideas. From the formal enthusiasm with which the industry interest groups welcomed the appointment of Lisa Nandy as the Culture Secretary, one might expect Keir Starmer’s Government to usher in a cultural renaissance.

This optimism, however, is disingenuous. Granted, the arts have plenty of reasons to celebrate the end of an era of Conservative neglect. The industry has received scant attention from a string of twelve arts ministers. The lack of cash has been an even greater cause of the arts’ discontent. Since 2010, they have lamented a string of brutal cuts to state arts education and cultural production budgets. These reductions at points outpaced the decline felt in the rest of the economy. Politicians and lobbyists, meanwhile, hollowly lauded the creative industries’ fiscal might.

Most arts professionals … believe that ramping up the state’s financial support for culture is the best if not the only solution to their woes

Most arts professionals, therefore, believe that ramping up the state’s financial support for culture is the best if not the only solution to their woes. But it seems improbable that Labour will be a spending Government. Any windfall from the economic stabilisation inherited from Sunak’s administration is unlikely to buoy up the country’s crumbling cultural infrastructure, either. Deep down, the arts know this. Even in the pre-election fervour, enthusiasm for Labour among arts activists was muted in contrast to their boundless support for Jeremy Corbyn’s platform in 2019.

The new leadership’s cultural honeymoon will thus likely be short-lived. “The UK Government has changed” but “our arts access is at risk” claimed Campaign for the Arts, one of the groups lobbying for the arts’ special access to the public coffers, as it began a new fundraising drive. Seasoned arts professionals look to Nandy with a mixture of feigned hope and pre-emptive disappointment. The Times’ art critic Waldemar Januszczak, for example, sarcastically questioned the minister’s sensibilities in the mistaken belief that she had supported Brexit. Having done so would have disqualified her from the job.

The Labour manifesto does hold a couple of worthwhile proposals for the arts, as did the creative industries policy agenda which emerged from the party’s sector conference in March. The potentially impactful promises look to the distant future rather than the sector’s current crisis, however. The ideas include a symbolic commitment to valuing the arts in school curricula and an undertaking to reform the apprenticeship system to make up for the failings of creative higher education. Commitments like making EU travel easier for artists will be music to the highly mobile sector’s ears. The suggestion that public art institutions should lend their collections to “communities”, meanwhile, will baffle anyone who understands the practical purpose of a museum.

Such ideas, however, do not amount to a cultural vision. When examined, each of Labour’s commitments to the arts reveals itself to be a proxy for “we will stimulate economic growth”. This is the case where the creative agenda promises new funding models for the arts foregrounding private finance and commercial success, and even when it links state support for grassroots arts with skills and careers. It is as though Starmer’s Labour copied the Blair Government’s creative industries strategy but forgot about its central cultural “brand Britain” ethos.

There’s nothing wrong with the arts making money, of course. The risk in following this path, however, is that the arts workforce is so battered by funding decline and culture wars that it might blindly internalise the economic imperative as its core purpose, now that the command comes from a ‘friendly’ political formation. We once had “art for art’s sake” and, more recently, “art for social purpose”. We may end up with a far hollower “creativity for sustainability”. Accordingly, the industry lobby group Creative UK asked the new administration for “patient capital”, a kind of investment that’s written off as a loss at the outset.

What impact might a cultural policy have when most political formations have no discernible interest in culture? An arts hustings organised by a consortium of public cultural campaigns marked the election’s most uneventful hour. In the manifestos, only Reform appeared to have considered the question. Its answer? That Britain should have a “British culture”. What this ethos might be has been the essence of the culture wars. The Conservatives’ major entries to this contest included interventions like “retain and explain”, a policy commanding state museums not to hide cultural artefacts with complex pasts. Nadine Dorries’ 2022 levelling-up instruction to Arts Council England was perhaps the only other Tory arts policy in fourteen years. The sector denounced it as political interference.

There’s little doubt that Labour’s “boring” culture policy, as Juliet Jacques described it, will nonetheless become embroiled in similar clashes. Nandy was not a Brexiteer and has pledged to put an end to the culture wars. She is, however, a vocal supporter of gender self-ID policies and arts institutions have long been a battleground for such issues. But culture wars can stand in for culture only at great expense. If we are to have any meaningful culture by this Parliament’s end, somebody needs to make art that speaks to audiences beyond the confines of institutions and the grievances of their workforce.

Voters in Bristol scarpered Starmer’s plan to appoint the former cellist Thangam Debbonaire who was the default choice for Culture Secretary. By removing her from her seat, they might have done the arts an immense favour. Her replacement Nandy, who The Guardian’s columnist Charlotte Higgins charged with having “the soul of the nation in her hands” is likely to keep those hands behind her back. The insider Debbonaire would have likely flattered the arts lobby, only delaying their realisation that arts policy will do nothing for art itself.

… decoupling creativity from policy might become a possibility

The inevitable policy failure comes with an opportunity. Arts institutions styled themselves as bastions of political resistance during Tory rule. Now, they could become centres of political indifference. When the quid pro quo offered by policy is of such low value, decoupling creativity from policy might become a possibility. Left without political command, art will finally have to stand for something once again.