And there’s more Christmas cheer. A new analysis of Office for National Statistics data suggests that business activity in the arts and entertainment industries, far from flourishing under a Labour government (as some optimistic souls were wishfully anticipating), has already shrunk by 15 per cent since the election. And this decline appears to be accelerating. In October alone the entertainment sector shrank by nearly 5 per cent.

At this rate there won’t be any live entertainment left in Britain by the time this government enters its fourth year — if it gets that far. And in case you think this story is more evidence of the “right-wing media” stirring up trouble for Labour, let me point out that the research was done by Equity, a trade union. It is clearly worried that its membership, the acting profession, will soon be joining shipbuilders, carmakers and steelworkers on Britain’s growing list of extinct trades.

Hang on, though! The cavalry is galloping to the rescue! Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has just announced a government review of arts funding, with a particular focus on Arts Council England’s role. But perhaps, like me, you are experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu about this announcement. Didn’t Nandy’s Tory predecessor, Lucy Frazer, make exactly the same announcement last March? She even went as far as appointing a committee led by Mary Archer, a Tory peer.

Now Nandy has wasted nine months — during which many arts organisations have slithered to the brink of insolvency — by starting the whole process again, this time under the leadership of the Labour peer Baroness Hodge. Perhaps Nandy feels that Hodge, at the age of 80, will bring more experience to the task. After all, Archer was only 79 when appointed. Or perhaps the real reason for the change is that Hodge can be relied upon to toe the Labour party line.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has just announced a government review of arts funding

RASID NECATI ASLIM/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES

Whatever, I can’t stop a certain set of metaphors from flashing through my brain when I think about this inquiry. You know, deckchairs rearranged on the Titanic, fiddling while Rome burns, balls kicked into long grass, that sort of thing. Isn’t this whole charade just a way to evade confronting, for another year at least, urgent issues threatening our cultural life? For instance, the increasingly insistent thought that the only way our national museums and galleries are going to halt their present financial meltdown (the Tate’s deficit last year was nearly £9 million) is either by charging for admission, which Labour refuses to contemplate, or by accepting money from sponsors whose line of business may well be upsetting to fashionably woke sensibilities. Or that the Arts Council’s disruptive Let’s Create policy — essentially shifting a lot of its subsidy to community and amateur outfits — is quite obviously destroying some of our most distinguished performing ensembles, including two national opera companies.

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Yet we now know that Let’s Create will continue until at least 2026. How do we know that? Because Nicholas Serota, the chairman of the Arts Council, who instigated this misguided policy, has quietly had his long reign over the subsidised arts world extended by a further 18 months (by which time he too will be 80). I like Serota personally and admire his velvet cunning but it’s outrageous that he and his acolytes have been allowed to continue for so long, making such radical changes to the arts landscape without being properly held to account by elected politicians.

This new review is not the only instance of Labour timidly delaying difficult decisions about culture. In its election manifesto was a clear commitment to reforming the national curriculum to boost the creative subjects, which have been all but squeezed out of the timetable in many secondary schools. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, could have taken the first steps towards that straight after the election — for instance by scrapping the EBacc, a way of measuring schools’ performance that entirely excludes the arts. Instead, yet another review has been set up, this one chaired by Becky Francis, a left-wing academic. Its full recommendations won’t be published until next autumn and we are told that implementing them could take “years”.

Many other things have gone quiet too. Before the election Labour circles were buzzing with alternative ideas for funding the arts: city tourist taxes, lottery money diverted from capital projects to revenue funding, a small levy on smartphones and tablets to support new creative talent, and so on. All potentially game-changing ideas but they need to be implemented now, not endlessly mulled over then filed away in Whitehall’s never-ever drawer.

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Keir Starmer’s cabinet should take inspiration from the great cultural visionaries in Labour’s history. It should remember Herbert Morrison, who masterminded the huge, morale-boosting Festival of Britain in the midst of postwar rationing and bomb sites. Or Jennie Lee in the 1960s, when the economy was arguably even shakier than it is now, setting up the world’s first Open University despite vicious hostility from the educational establishment.

The difference is that these politicians truly believed in the power of culture to change ordinary lives. Today, the endlessly parroted soundbites profess the same thing, but the deeds don’t match up.