Replacing €184m for £7m in the UK arts sector

Cultural vandalism, as reported in Best For Britain’s Weekend Wire newsletter. This just seems spiteful, arrogant, stupid or incompetent by our utterly dreadful UK government. Emphasis mine.

 Arts sector in €200m Brexit black hole

Doesn’t it feel good to set €184m alight and take back control with £7m worth of Great British Cash? Well, not for the UK’s arts sector, because, as revealed in exclusive UKTBC research published in the Independent Wednesday, Brexit caused the UK to miss out on hundreds of millions in arts funding from the EU’s flagship cultural development programme.

To top the whole farce off, Creative Europe is not limited to EU members, and the Government rejected an offer to remain part of the scheme. The UK was subsequently shut out of the programme’s 2021-27 cycle, meaning we miss out on our slice of a budget increase of nearly €1bn.

The only crumb the Government has offered up to replace this money, the Global Screen Fund, doled out just £7m in its first year. Reports were that Jacob Rees-Mogg was on standby to make another tone deaf intervention about how much Brexit will benefit artists in 50 years before the Government offered up its standard spin.