Hundreds of theatres face closure and more than 500 museums have shut since the turn of the century, laying bare the true scale of the risk facing Britain’s cultural venues.
Leaders in the sector are urgently demanding major investment from the new Labour government as they grapple with fresh challenges including rising energy bills and the hike to employer national insurance contributions in the Budget.
After years of cutbacks and underfunding, they have warned of “the danger of cultural wastelands” in a direct appeal to the chancellor Rachel Reeves and the culture secretary Lisa Nandy.
Maybe you see pubs has more vital to British culture than high culture is. If so, there is bad news there too. In October This is Money reported:
One in 10 British pubs is at imminent risk of closure, according to new figures that indicate the threat to the hospitality industry is worsening.
Around 11 per cent of the total number of pubs is at significant risk of going bust, analysis by accountancy firm Price Bailey shows.
The figures show that 7,445 pubs - 20 per cent of the total - have negative net assets on their balance sheets, meaning they are technically insolvent.
Or is it the British countryside that means the most to you? In September the Natural History Museum site said:
The species of animals and plants found in the UK have declined, on average, by 19% since monitoring began in 1970.
This dramatic and continued decline in the UK’s wildlife has now put one in six species at risk of being lost from Great Britain, according to the latest State of Nature report.
The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.
One thing that unites these multiple crises in British culture - in Britishness itself - is that the culture warriors of the right have nothing to say about them.
The only aspect of Britain that appeals to them is its history, and even then they share a strange and tendentious reading of it. Could it be that, deep down, the only thing the right really cares about is money?
