Why all these anodyne ‘debates’ about arts finding? Two this week, another one next week, and we’ll get the same John Knox answer: “Art? We’re for it’. There was a brief moment during the Cultural Leadership panel of Ben Bradshaw, Jeremy Hunt and the LIB Dem Don Foster when Michael Lynch – yes, back on a flying visit from Oz – asked if they would keep the Arts Council, and after they’d all said they would there was an instant in which Bradshaw tossed ‘shoe-horning cronies into jobs’ (Boris Johnson trying to get Veronica Wadley made chair of the London Arts Council) and Hunt tossed back that Labour are past masters at cronyism, but the squall was over as son as it had begun, to everybody’s disappointment. The arts, culture, creativity, whatever, has become so much a political favourite that no one is going to speak against it or for cutting it. But nor will they promise no cuts (except the Lib Dems who won’t have to prove it) because, they say, they don’t have control of the money. The debate should be between Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable, but would we get a positive response? ‘Course we would.