Starmer loves Shostakovich – has British politics overcome its philistinism?
Praise be. The Prime Minister who only a few weeks ago couldn't name a favourite novel or film has suddenly shown his human side, in his big speech at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Would this revelation be carefully calibrated to show he has the common touch – a sneaking fondness for Strictly Come Dancing , say, or West End musicals?
No. What we heard was something so sweetly sincere and unfashionable that even a convinced hater of this government could only be touched by it. Keir Starmer likes playing the flute. It's an enthusiasm that took him all the way to Europe as a boy, with the Croydon Philharmonic. Now when the going is tough and "the reviews aren't good" he turns to Brahms and Beethoven for consolation and uplift . Those may seem obvious choices, but they're also exactly right. There's a massive strength in their music that makes them seem like a force of nature.
"Everyone", he declared, "will know the feeling of being drawn in by music, getting lost in something bigger than yourself, or being moved by a book, a painting, a play."
Yes indeed, we all know that feeling. But many politicians seem afraid to admit they feel it too, for fear of seeming elitist. Indeed ever since Tony Blair invited Noel Gallagher to Downing Street , we have seen Government leaders desperate to show their streetwise credentials.
Often, the resulting enthusiasms are bland. For example, when asked about his tastes David Cameron clung to the safe ground of the Smiths and Pink Floyd.
Then there was Boris Johnson's rendition of Bob Marley's Three Little Birds which proved that, while admitting to a taste for classical music may make you seem unfashionable, only a taste for pop can make you seem irredeemably naff. Teresa May confessed to liking Elgar and Purcell, but only for the select readership of a music magazine.
You have to go back decades to find another prime minister so unashamedly and publicly highbrow. Edward Heath was so enamoured of classical music he wrote books about it, and even conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. A closer parallel to Starmer would be James Callaghan, Labour prime minister from 1976 to 1979. He once told John Suchet that his chief regret in life was not having composed Beethoven's nine symphonies. In that touching confession we hear the authentic voice of old-style Labour, whose roots were working class but which was culturally hugely ambitious. Let's not forget it was the miner's daughter and Labour arts minister Jennie Lee who paved the way for a hugely increased role for the state in arts provision, with her 1965 White Paper for the Arts.
Many in the arts are hoping Starmer's government will repair the damage done by decades of cuts to arts funding, though the constant dour warnings of another round of austerity make that seem unlikely.
In the meantime, there is another pressing question. After his paean of praise to classical music, Starmer told his amused or possibly bemused audience that "I've got Shostakovich lined up for tomorrow".
But which Shostakovich? The ironically triumphal finale of one of his symphonies? A cantata in praise of the Soviet Union? The jolly arrangement of Tea for Two, which would certainly get the comrades swaying in the conference hall? We wait, with bated breath.
