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Economic and intrinsic value in the arts are hard to unpick, and distinctions between social, economic and cultural policy are more diffuse than ever, says Adam Behr.

“Subsidy is about education, preserving the pinnacles of our civilization,” stresses Sir Humphrey. “Let us choose what we subsidise by the extent of popular demand,” counters Hacker. “It’s democratic.”

Covid-19, of course, has pulled the rug out from under Sir Humphrey’s beloved opera and Hacker’s preferred option of cinema alike, along with all points in between.

As the role of the state in all aspects of national life has been reconfigured on a historic scale, it has also thrown the broader role of cultural policy into stark relief. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s rescue package of £1.57 billion is large by any measure (more than 20% of the total departmental spend by DCMS in 2016-17, including the BBC and lottery funding, for instance).

Such is the size of the crisis that this still won’t prevent losses within the cultural sector. The threat to cultural activity, on top of the way people have turned to cultural outputs to see them through the lockdown, are in one sense unprecedented. But they also reveal tensions and debates in debates in cultural policy that long predate Yes Minister... Keep reading on The New European