Simon Rattle is right: Britain is becoming a cultural desert – and that’s a political choice | Martin Kettle

The arts and classical music say much about us as a country. Labour should fight for their place in our national life

Classical music will rarely have a larger audience or a more exalted place than at the coronation next week. And yet, like so much that occurs in Westminster Abbey on 6 May, it will send a misleading message about the kind of country that Britain now is. For Simon Rattle is incontestably right in what he said this week: classical music in this country is “fighting for its existence”.

Over the decades, Arts Council England (ACE) and the BBC have done more to sustain classical music and the other performing arts than anyone. But there is nothing coincidental about ACE now taking the knife to the nation’s orchestras and opera companies, and the BBC’s attempt to kill off the BBC Singers and slash spending on its orchestras. As Rattle put it in his cry from the heart in London, these cuts are “rooted in political choices”.

This article was amended on 27 April 2023 to correct the name of the Arts Council England chief executive to Darren Henley

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