5/2/08

Ministers come and go

In Britain, the briefly appointed new minister for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, James Purnell, had landed with a clean sheet last month. He did not have an international crisis over the Russian exhibition cancellation facing the Royal Academy to contend with, this having been resolved at the 11th hour. (It might have bankrupted the RA, unless bailed out Northern Rock-wise.) British Council offices have had to be stripped down or closed in Russia by request of the host nation (surely no worry to a cost-cutting minister), the Arts Council of Great Britain is in terminal decline (it seems), and the only threat now to the coffers as inherited seems to come from the burgeoning deficit of the Olympics, for which Tessa Jowell is now the minister solely carrying the can. In addition he has the report of the capable Sir Brian McMaster, a review of public expenditure on the arts, to contend with, which talks euphemistically about ‘a new renaissance’ and brings in a new focus on ‘excellence’. Not quite a manifesto for the arts, but reaching for it. For once, the Fates had dealt James Purnell a fair hand, unexpectedly it must be said. He seemed capable of playing it cautiously but well, and not with any recourse to ‘photoshopping’ a genuine misjudgement by his staff last October and forgotten despite press excitement at the time. There will be no more misjudgments, however, now that he has gone onwards and upwards. Now he has gone in the wake of the Peter Hain resignation, to become Minister for Work and Pensions. And in his place comes Mr Andy Burnham, reputedly a clever new kid on the block skilled at musical chairs and other party games.