If you doubt this, then try to think of a novel, play, film or piece of installation art which, for example, seriously criticises the doctrine of multiculturalism. With a tiny number of honourable and genuinely brave exceptions — Lloyd Newson's DV8 dance troupe's 2011 production of Can We Talk About This? being one — there is a deafening silence on what is one of the most urgent issues of our time. Similarly, the chances of the BBC commissioning a drama which explores the experiences of an ageing white couple in an area transformed by mass immigration — surely a subject with real dramatic potential — are virtually nil. And if such a project ever did see the light of transmission, the audience could be forgiven for predicting quite accurately all the conclusions that would inevitably be drawn. 

On a whole host of issues — foreign aid, climate change, social inequality — the viewer, gallery-goer and novel-reader, far from being shocked, provoked or given even a slightly alternative perspective, generally know exactly what they are going to get. For our cultural establishment, there is a right and a wrong way of looking at such issues and as a result the arts, far from being "challenging" or "cutting edge", have essentially become the providers of window dressing, a sort of visual aid unit, for the views and assumptions of the political and media class.

This narrow-minded complacency is illustrated perfectly by the state of British satire, currently at one of its lowest ebbs. Whether on stage, in print or hanging on the wall, satire is the ground on which artistic creativity and politics meet with most urgency, yet with the exception of the Westminster-fixated BBC series The Thick of It, it is hard to know where to find it. And yet never has it been more needed.

A satirical treatment of the various strictures of political correctness, whether small and absurd or large and insidious, could power a whole TV series alone. But the satirists' pens remain largely untouched; it is sobering to ponder that we have been debating the rights and wrongs of the wearing of the burka — an issue with an increasing everyday social and legal impact — without any recourse to satire. When in 2006 it did appear in the shape of the cartoons of Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the British press retreated. It was left to Channel 4 to discuss whether or not banning the cartoons was a danger to free speech, which it concluded it was not; then, in a move which was beyond parody or satire, it refrained from showing them for fear of causing offence.    

This is worrying enough, but what is far more important is the way in which, for all its protestations about the value of freedom of expression, the creative world shows such little enthusiasm for standing up for it.

 This was illustrated recently by the fate of the annual Passion for Freedom exhibition, which, in exhibiting work by artists concerned with human rights abuses and the quashing of freedom (including by Islam), was already very much the artistic exception that proved the rule. The organisers had to find another venue at the last minute after the original gallery got cold feet. And then, astonishingly, the festival was ignored by the national culture press.