“New Labour has been pouring money into the arts, not just because this is a good thing but because of the belief that the arts will heal communities, reduce crime and raise the aspirations of those not educated enough to know whether they like Bartók or Birtwistle. The arts have long been used as a weapon. In the Cold War they were a beacon of intellectual freedom of expression, in stark contrast to the repression of dissent in the USSR. Now the enemy is what Andrew Brighton calls ‘the limitations of working-class culture’.”