If Rishi Sunak was really serious about saving the arts, there’s one simple solution he could announce tomorrow. No dancers would have to retrain for cyber, no musicians need to be rendered “unviable”, no billions of public funds would have to be syphoned into shell companies registered six months ago in Panamanian lock-ups under the name of Doris Johnson. It would cost the treasury absolutely nothing and music would not just be protected through the pandemic, it’d instantly become the primary driving force of the entire country’s economic recovery.
All Rishi has to do is stand up in Parliament and declare ‘exposure’ as legal tender.
Overnight, the poorest busker would become richer than Rockerfeller and struggling artists the new ultra-elite class. Not only could they finally exchange their vaults full of ‘exposure’ – gathered over many years of basically being…