Hot on the heels of the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Green Party manifestos, the Labour Party have unveiled their plans for the country should they be elected in three week’s time. Launched by Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer earlier today, the plan lays out what a future Labour government would intend to do during their time in office.
The Labour Party’s mantra for this election has been “change” and this is reflected in their manifesto, with a plan to achieve this established in the document’s opening pages. The party have highlighted the past 14 years yet again as a signal that they should be elected next and plan to “begin the work of national renewal”. But does that extend into the cultural sectors, namely Arts & Theatre? From reading the manifesto, here’s what I’ve found
The Policies
The fifth section in the ‘Break down barriers to opportunity’ part of the manifesto, ‘Access to arts, music and sport’ begins by claiming that the party will end “arts and music [being] the preserve of a privileged few”, and how culture forms a key part of the development of young people. To that end, Labour have proposed a total of 9 policies in this section, with the following 4 directly related to Arts & Theatre affairs:
- Implement our creative industries sector plan as part of our Industrial Strategy, creating good jobs and accelerating growth in film, music, gaming, and other creative sectors
- Support children to study a creative or vocational subject until they are 16, and ensure accountability measures reflect this
- Improve access to cultural assets by requiring publicly funded national museums and galleries to increase the loans they make from their collections to communities across the country
- Introducing new consumer protections on ticket resales
Analysis & Opinion
The Labour Party is one of the oldest political parties in British political history. Their last stint in power came from 1997 to 2010, with Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and following the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, were replaced by the Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government. The party have largely remained in second place since then, failing to make headway in 2015. In 2017, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the party returned a larger vote share than had been precited, denying Prime Minister Theresa May an outright majority (although she formed a coalition with the DUP).
Following the Conservative landslide in 2019, Corbyn was replaced by Keir Starmer, who has remained leader since. The party is hoping to echo their successes in 1997 in this year’s election, with them leading the Conservative Party by approximately 20 points in the polls. But every party needs criticism, and it’s time we looked at the Arts & Theatre provision that this party are offering.
The first policy promises to introduce the party’s creative industries sector plan. This 35-page document, which is available here, is certainly a very good sign as far as I’m concerned. We often discuss how political parties rarely consider the creative industries but knowing that the Labour Party have such an extensive plan to focus on the creative sectors is a good sign. They also have said they want this to be linked into their wider economic strategies, which is a positive step to helping these industries to not be forgotten in the wider legislative calendar.
My only reservation as of now is ensuring that sufficient funding is in place for these ideas. The Labour Party have repeatedly emphasised that everything in the manifesto is fully costed, and that Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is taking a cautious approach to the party’s financial strategies, but we have heard that funding issues may present themselves if economic growth continues at the rate it has been recently. Until we can be sure that arts funding will certainly be protected, we must take this bold document with caution, as creative industries are often the ones saddled with cuts and budget restrictions when things go awry.
The next pledge promises to help children study a creative or vocational subject until 16 (i.e. until GCSE level). Currently, regulations state that the only subjects children must study up until GCSE are mathematics, English language, English literature and science. It’s unclear from this phrasing whether adding a creative or vocational subject to this list is the policy direction, or whether some form of change will be made to make this more possible.
As someone who is a strong supporter of the creative arts, you may be surprised that I’m not sure this is a good idea for a policy, but this opinion is dependent on its implementation. I know from my own options subjects in school that doing a subject you don’t want to up until GCSE level is hugely draining, results in lower attainment and can be off-putting for that area for long after a pupil leaves school. Furthermore, making this mandatory would require a sharp increase in teacher numbers to cater for these additional subjects, which some schools do not offer, and either limit the number of free options pupils have to select subjects, or increase the number of courses an individual studies, which can already stretch into double digits.
If this policy is implemented to guide pupils towards creative subjects (however it is they intend to do this, which isn’t specified), I would be more open to it as a possibility, but if this is intended to make a creative subject mandatory, as much good as it would do pupils, in the long-term, I believe it would have more adverse consequences than positive ones, particularly if this is mandated at the cost of free subject choices. Until it is actioned, we will have to await further details.
The next policy turns to arts galleries and museums, wanting publicly funded national institutions to increase item loans to cultural venues across the country. This policy took me off-guard it must be said, this isn’t an idea I had really considered before, but thinking about it, this is a great idea. It’s unclear how this would work, whether there would be baseline requirements or what recipient venues would qualify for the scheme, but in principle it’s a brilliant plan, especially during the Cost-of-Living crisis. Many people want to visit national institutions such as the National Gallery or British Museum, but often financial or time constraints limit this, particularly if you have to travel far in order to get to locations such as this.
Taking items or entire exhibits on tour will allow people and communities who are unable to access these at the moment to experience culture in new ways, from somewhere much closer to home. It will also have a secondary effect of increasing visitation to local galleries or museums that already exist. If someone visits a museum for a touring exhibit from the National Gallery for example, they may use that visit to explore other cultural exhibits in the area or even the same building, driving up cultural experiences that may not even relate to the ones touring around. Now many galleries don’t often have a wealth of empty space available, but for those who could make this work, it’s definitely a policy that will benefit many across the country at a relatively small financial impact.
The final proposal relates to ticket resellers and protecting communities from those who increase prices for high-value tickets, forcing consumers to pay marked up prices in order to secure tickets. This is an important step but lacks details on how this is going to be achieved. It is most likely that this will be by implementing the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations to crack down on illegal ticket resale, as was stated in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, but this isn’t clarified by Labour. I think we can all accept that something needs to be done about ticket resellers, and to hear this committed to by multiple political parties is welcome, but Labour have fallen slightly behind one of their competitors here. They may be planning the exact same strategy, but we cannot currently be sure.
For me, the Labour Party manifesto is a real mixed bag of policies, ranging from ones I’m hugely supportive of, to ones which I’m much more sceptical about. Having the manifesto refer to, and go hand-in-hand with, their creative industries sector plan (which the simple existence of is very promising) is a good step to highlighting the importance of the creative sectors, but their similar collaboration with the Department for Education leaves me sceptical. Whether any of these will become any more than aspiration will depend on the voters, with three weeks remaining until we know who’s plans will be the focus of the next administration.
The Labour Party General Election manifesto was released on June 13th and can be accessed here. The 2024 U.K. General Election will take place on July 4th
