How Did New Labour Do on Arts and Culture? And What Happened Next?

Abstract

In this final chapter, we consider New Labour’s record on arts and culture in the round. As part of that consideration, we discuss the relationships of New Labour cultural policies to their distinctive efforts to remould (some would say, abandon) social democratic politics for the twenty-first century. It is important for us to reiterate here that our purpose in assessing New Labour’s record on arts and culture derives only partly from the intrinsic interest of what this remarkable, intriguing and deeply flawed political project achieved. Our more general goal is to contribute to thinking about how citizens and governments might pursue social justice in the realm of cultural policy, and thereby maximise individual and collective human flourishing (see Hesmondhalgh, 2013b).