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So What Now, Mr Blair?Dateline: 8th May, 2005By now, of course, everyone knows that Labour is back in power for what everyone is calling an "historical" third term. It's historical, of course, because this is the first time in its history that Labour has been re-elected a third time. Indeed, it doesn't happen very often, no matter what the party. The majority, of course, at 67, is much reduced. Indeed, it has fallen to a dangerous level for Tony Blair, giving a lot of power to the dissidents in the party who can now flex their muscles and make demands of the leadership in a way which they were unable to do before. There is a hard-core of dissidents, the Campaign Group, which numbers about forty, and this is more than enough to defeat the government unless it gets support from opposition parties. It would only take 34 rebels to vote against the government to bring about a defeat. Before the election Charles Kennedy, whose Liberal Democrats now have more seats than at any time since the 1920s, said that there would be no "deal" with Labour in the event of a hung parliament and it is certainly unlikely that the LibDems would in any case support the government in the kind of measures which the Labour dissidents would oppose. So what does this result mean for theatre? I don't think it's good news. Laying aside any radical agenda which Blair might want to push forward, the government is going to have focus on issues which concern backbenchers, who are in turn going to focus on issues which concern their constituents, and that means immigration, policing, education and the National Health Service. For Mr and Mrs Average the arts are very low priority, if they give them any thought at all, and even though opinion polls would suggest (as they do) that the public approves of public funding for the arts, it does not approve of them being funded at the expense of its priorities. So we can expect the current freeze on Arts Council grant-in-aid to stay but, on the other hand, we can also expect Creative Partnerships to continue, something which would not have happened if the Conservatives had won. What will happen to the New Opportunities Fund is not so clear, but, because it can be viewed as being education-orientated, I suspect it will stay. What I find worrying is the extent to which government, whilst remaining at "arms length" in funding matters, has made it very clear to ACE that there are certain areas - primarily fighting social exclusion - which are a priority for them and on which they want funding bodies to concentrate. Whilst no one can argue that fighting social exclusion is anything other than good, and whilst, too, for many in the arts world, it is something to which they believe the arts can contribute massively, there is a danger that funding will be directed towards "socially useful" theatre, which is generally not building-based, and away from what we might, for want of a better term, call "pure theatre". The news that Tessa Jowell is to remain as Secretary of State at the DCMS almost certainly means that there will be no change there. She made it clear in the last parliament that she expects ACE to follow funding policies which reflect government priorities. She cannot, of course, enforce it legally, but she can make life difficult in many ways, not just in terms of grant-in-aid. It is highly unlikely that ACE would want to make waves. In Britain precedent counts for a great deal, lacking - as we do - a written constitution, so the emasculation of ACW by the Welsh Assembly will always stand as a possible threat, in spite of the noises made in the last parliament about not interfering with the arms-length principle. Couple this with the amount of Lottery money which has been diverted from the arts, the signs are not good. There is a danger that the government may try to move the arts towards a concept of utility - what do they contribute to the solving of social and other problems? It's not Grandgrindian but it is nonetheless dangerous. And it is, I think, inevitable that they will move in this direction: given the comparative smallness of their majority and the consequent need to keep the dissidents happy, the government has to be seen to be concentrating on "popular" policies, and pushing theatre towards social exclusion and health issues is an easy way to do it, which involves no extra cost and therefore no rise in taxation, either direct or indirect. Blair has made it clear that he intends to try to push through a radical agenda, including offering private firms the chance to run schools if they can do it more cheaply than the state. Along with an expected crackdown on Incapacity Benefit and more deregulation of business, there is a strong chance of considerable infighting and even government defeat in the Commons. Defeat in the Lords, not unknown in the previous parliament, is bad enough for a government, but it can be overcome, but defeat in the Commons could lead to a vote of confidence which, if lost, would mean another election. In such a situation, the arts will be a very low priority and could well be forgotten about in the warfare which could start very soon in this parliament. The Queen's Speech will signal the way things will go. If Blair backs off from his radical agenda, there is hope: if he doesn't, the arts are in for a pretty lean time. We shall see. There are interesting times ahead.
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