Today Tristram Hunt’s V&A has taken to the pages of the Evening Standard to complain that Brexit could lead to lower visitor numbers and revenues for his museum. This is despite tourism being at a record high, rising by more than three million since 2016.
In completely unrelated news, the most recent figures show that Tristram’s museum saw a 12% drop in visitors, down from 527,910 in September 2017 to 469,553 in September 2018. Despite record tourism, and Britain’s continued membership of the EU. Could it be that Tristram is trying to use Brexit as an excuse for his poor performance? Surely not…
Turns out Jamie is not his real name:
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Jamieson Ronald Reed to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Tristram Julian William Hunt to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.
Who says Labour lost touch with its base…
Outgoing Tristram Hunt gives his final Commons speech:
“I represent a constituency that voted 70-30 to Leave the European Union… This division of opinion between the official Labour Party position and many of our heartland voters have served only to highlight some of the deep-seated challenges which centre-left parties are facing. From Greece to the Netherlands, Sweden to France, the combination of austerity, globalisation and EU policy has hammered social democratic politics… What Brexit has done is exacerbate the divergence of priorities between what the Labour voters of Cambridge want, and those in Redcar, Grimsby or Stoke-on-Trent. Keeping a metropolitan and post-industrial coalition together is no easy task.”
In other words, Labour is increasingly irrelevant in Brexit Britain, and Tristram doesn’t have the answer…
Entries in the comments please…
Did DCMS and the V&A know about this 2011 Guardian article by one Tristram Hunt?
“while it is free to visit the V&A, the British Library and Museum, an entrance fee is set to be charged in Stoke. Across the country, eye-watering cuts to local authority budgets mean that councils are either closing museums or ratcheting up charges. Last week, artist Anish Kapoor accused the Tories of having a “castration complex” about the arts. Yet, in the midst of this, the teeming London museums continue to enjoy a state subsidy to retain free admission…
while American tourists and continental mini-breakers have no problem paying €6.50 to wonder at the majesty of Lorenzetti in the Uffizi and €8 to feast on Velázquez at the Prado, in London it is all gratis. At New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a de facto $20 entrance fee for adults, so why not a fiver for London’s great galleries? Would it really undermine our cultural competitiveness?…
A truly equitable cultural policy might begin to think about reintroducing charges for our national museums.”
Oops!
