There was no short or easy answer to hand, since the decline was long and endemic. The Arts Council served, in certain ways, as a mirror of national fortunes, a chart of the zigzag voyage of the good ship Britannia in the decades since the war. In the austerity era, arts grants were frugal to a penny but some clients were always more favoured than others. By 1960, the ROH was receiving 87 per cent of its budget from the council. All it had to do was ask nicely. The council itself doubled its money under the chairmanship of Lord Goodman, a heavyweight lawyer (in every sense) who acted privately for two prime ministers, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, and enjoyed an intimate friendship with the arts minister, Jenny Lee. In the Sixties it was spend, spend, spend; in the Seventies, moan, moan, strike. Margaret Thatcher's rise to power in 1979 signalled a culture shift from state funding to increased private donations to the arts, along American lines. "There are people in government who would have us abolished," an Arts Council chief warned me over a rather good lunch. But under the leadership of the Tory peers Palumbo and Gowrie, the Arts Council encouraged large arts bodies such as the ROH to adopt a mixed economy — one-third box-office, one-third private funds, one-third state. That formula is now the desired model for many European arts institutions.

Under New Labour from 1997, the Arts Council turned again with the political wind. Tony Blair's electoral mantra of education, education, education prompted a new demand from arts ensembles: they would have to teach as well as perform if they wanted to be considered for state subsidy. A cartload of political correctnesses was appended to this first extraneous condition. From now on, arts audiences would have to be measured to meet social inclusion targets. Arts companies had to employ statutory numbers of minorities and disabled people. Glyndebourne, which receives a grant for its touring opera (the main house is proudly self-financing), was made to put senior staff through equality training — a ludicrous exercise with a highly-paid consultant who reduced one executive to tears over her admitted reluctance to hire a morbidly obese assistant. Ever larger chunks of ACE budget were spent on compliance officers and management consultants. Davey, a Culture Department official who had never said no to a minister, was installed as chief executive. Where the council was once a friend in need, ever ready with tea, sympathy and unofficial help, it was now seen as a political police force, out of sympathy with the creative instinct. During one crisis meeting at English National Opera, the ACE monitor threatened to shut them down.

Staff at the Arts Council, once keen graduates who went on to lead the Tate (Nicholas Serota) or London orchestras (David Whelton, Kathryn McDowell), were now overpaid BBC discards or Whitehall Labour policy wonks. 

Worst of all was the all-shall-have prizes policy. Chamber orchestras, never previously funded, were deemed to be entitled to subsidy because big bands got it. Symphony orchestras, hitherto judged on merit, were now awarded equal amounts. Three London orchestras seethed as a fourth, notoriously lax in rehearsal and safe in programming, received identical subsidy. The all-shall-have-prizes policy amounted to an abdication of the ACE's responsibility to reward merit and discourage mediocrity.