A New Government, an Old Question: What Andy Burnham Means for the Arts

Every change of prime minister sends a ripple through the cultural sector, and the arrival of Andy Burnham at Number 10 on Sunday is no exception. Burnham became the UK’s new prime minister on 20 July, succeeding Keir Starmer, and by the time you read this the country will likely know who has been handed the culture brief. Whoever it is inherits one of the most crowded in-trays in Whitehall. For those of us who spend our weekends in galleries, the questions are less about Westminster theatre and more about what actually happens to the places we love to visit.

There is reason for cautious optimism. Burnham is the first former culture secretary to reach the top job, having held the post in 2008 and 2009, and his time as mayor of Greater Manchester threaded culture through the city’s fabric in ways that went well beyond marquee projects like Factory International. But good intentions meet hard sums, and the sector’s leaders are already setting out what they hope will not get lost in the noise.

Free entry, and who pays for it

The most immediate concern is money, and the most emotive version of that argument is about the front door. Should national museums remain free to enter? Maria Balshaw, the former director of Tate, has told The Art Newspaper that protecting free admission ought to be a priority for the new government. Her case is partly economic: four in five overseas tourists cite museums as a reason for coming to Britain, which makes free entry less a subsidy than an investment that pays itself back through hotels, restaurants and railways.

Balshaw also pushed back on the tempting idea that private philanthropy might quietly replace public money. Donors give generously to ambitious exhibitions, she argues, precisely because public funding already guarantees that the doors stay open to everyone. Take away that foundation and the philanthropy tends to wobble too. It is a reminder that the economics of a great museum are more delicate than they look from the queue outside.

The future of the Arts Council

Further from the headlines, but arguably more consequential, is the question of what Arts Council England is actually for. The Labour peer Margaret Hodge recently reviewed the body and recommended greater devolution of arts funding, and how the new culture secretary responds will be an early signal of intent. Few people expect the Arts Council to vanish. The real debate is whether it becomes less of a chequebook and more of a strategist.

Alison Cole, of the Cultural Policy Unit, frames it neatly: devolution would reshape the Arts Council’s role without diminishing it, allowing the organisation to set national standards and back projects of genuine significance while local decisions move closer to the communities they affect. The catch, she warns, is that devolution only reduces regional inequality if it comes with new local revenue and multi-year settlements. Hand power to the regions without the funds to exercise it and you simply redistribute the shortage. For a prime minister who built his reputation on the case for the North, this will be a test watched closely well beyond the M25.

Restitution and the small print of the law

The thorniest cultural question of the age is who owns what, and here the obstacle is often legislative rather than moral. Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and a former Labour colleague of Burnham’s, wants the government to revisit the National Heritage Act 1983, which prevents national museums from deaccessioning objects except in narrow circumstances. Hunt calls the act “outdated and infantilising for trustees”, arguing that it lets institutions “hide behind the legislation rather than engage” with provenance research and legitimate claims for the return of looted objects. A statutory review of the 2022 Charities Act next year, he suggests, offers a chance to give trustees real discretion. It is a technical point with profound implications for how Britain holds the world’s treasures.

Artists, and the machines

Two final challenges are really one: how do artists keep working? Kate Oakley, a cultural policy professor at Glasgow, points to rising studio rents, graduate debt and collapsing income streams, and argues that the answer lies less in headline-grabbing schemes for artists alone than in broader reforms that make freelance and insecure work sustainable across the whole economy.

Layered on top is artificial intelligence. Christian Zimmermann of the Design and Artists Copyright Society puts the principle plainly: artists must have a say when their work trains AI systems, and they must be paid for it. His argument is that Britain’s copyright law is broadly sound but poorly enforced, and that the behaviour of big technology firms, not the statute book, is the problem.

None of this will be settled quickly. But for gallery-goers, the takeaway is simple enough. The decisions made in the coming months, about who pays, who decides and who benefits, will quietly shape which doors stay open and which artists are still making work in a decade’s time. It is worth paying attention, even from inside the gallery.