MAY/JUNE, 2024
Bryan Christ, a former cleric, has been appointed Minister of State at the DCMS. He adds intellect to a department overseen by mediocrity. Christ is well-educated, fluent in Spanish, and has written a solid biography of Stafford Cripps, Attlee’s reforming Chancellor. It is thoroughly researched, efficiently written and serves as a primer on Labour history in the first half of the 20th century.
He has said he will review “the whole package” of arts funding, which sounds positive. He’s also devoted to improving art tuition in schools. Let us hope he is as good as his word and turns his attention also to the shambles of art education at higher levels. Presently, both words in the term ‘Art Education’ are a lie: improving either of them would automatically lift the other.
In 2022 he said: “It’s a disgrace that over the last 14 years, we’ve seen such a collapse in the number of students studying music and I want every child to have a possible career in the creative industries as well, and we cannot have the creative industries as just a hereditary industry.” Also: “The role of [ACE] should be to nurture and champion high quality, challenging and innovative [oh dear!] culture and creativity across the whole country, engaging people of all backgrounds no matter where they live, so that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy the life-changing power of the arts, whether that’s as artists, participants or audiences, and do that independently of the government of the day.” Admittedly this is mostly flannel, but ACE won’t like to hear this, even though it echoes exactly the rhetoric they themselves spout but, crucially, don’t practice. Christ is more than sharp enough to spot the inconsistency.
He claims on expenses an annual subscription to The Guardian – the cushy number of being an MP seems to mean you are not expected to pay for anything. Other MPs claim he’s pompous and big-headed. He’s also been in scrapes involving half-naked snaps, getting his facts wrong and flipping properties to claim 92 grand in expenses – he admitted later that he knew this was questionable but did it anyway because everyone else was. More questionable of his negotiable ethics is that last year he accepted a knighthood having previously written a book condemning such ornaments. He’s an intriguing combination of principle and maverick. But age seems to have mellowed him and he now appears reformed, more rational and, a cause for hope, he’s easily clever enough to see through the visual art lobby’s self-serving lies.
He pockets £91,000 p.a. as an MP and £43,000 p.a. as a Minister of State. He is likeable, potentially a sound appointment and The Jackdaw wishes him luck and good health.