Why bother, many wondered, to maintain an Arts Council that no longer spoke for the arts or acted in their best interest? During the 2010 election campaign, the Tory Culture Secretary-designate Jeremy Hunt pledged to absolve the ACE from abolition. It was not a battle worth fighting in the first term of a new administration and probably not a good idea. What is needed in the arts is a thorough review of funding priorities, one that recognises excellence and enterprise and removes all distraction and extraneous causes from the vital process of sustaining an industry that gives the country wealth and prestige far beyond the amounts invested.

So what would Keynes have done? I won't attempt to read the mind of a man who died before I was born but there are themes within his shrewd and beautiful vision that are as relevant today as they were when he uttered them. Keynes's first concern was arts for all: "We look forward to a time when the theatre and concert hall and the gallery will be a living element in everyone's upbringing." That means making sure that every part of the country is well served and no child leaves formal education without some exposure to the possibilities of culture and creation.

The creative renaissance, Keynes argued, must be artist-led. He spoke whimsically on the radio of the artist "who walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction. He does not know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into fresh pastures and teaches us to love and enjoy what we often begin by rejecting." In other words, the Arts Council exists as a god of small beginnings, a sponsor of new artists of all kinds and a propagator of their work. There was a just complaint to the Commons committee from David Lee, the editor of the visual arts newsletter The Jackdaw, that the ACE sponsors only one kind of contemporary art — conceptual — depriving other artists of an airing. These petty tyrannies are inevitable in a large, unaccountable bureaucracy.

Nowhere in Keynes's prescription is there mention of the large organisations that grew organically from his mission. These big beasts have since outgrown the Arts Council, as well as making itself bigger than it needs to be. They are the start of my ten-point plan to reform arts provision and make it fit for purpose. 

1 The big beasts

The Royal Opera House, English National Opera, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, receiving between £12 and £28 million, need to be funded directly by government, in the same way as the big museums and galleries. Their budget increases should be pegged to the Education Department's. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport should give the Mayor of London £20.7 million to administer the South Bank Centre, which was paid for by and belongs to the people of London.

Removing the big beasts from the ACE not only slashes a large monitoring team — work that can be done by two low-paid Whitehall officials — it sends out a signal that the council exists for the grassroots, the new beginnings, the enterprise that will revive British arts. A ceiling of £2 million should be placed on ACE grants. Anything bigger is a government matter.