As Charlotte Higgins points out in the Guardian, the London Arts Council is bogged down in a bitter political and partisan row - with a dash of personality politics thrown in. This is a terrible situation, as any grown up can recognise. The London Arts Council need to regain control over the recruitment of its own chair to avoid further ludicrous shenanigans.
Arts Council turns political football | Charlotte Higgins | Culture | The Guardian
None of the other regional arts councils' chairs are decided by outsiders; the mayor's role in the London post was established by Johnson's predecessor, Ken Livingstone. The only way out of this now discredited process is surely for the Arts Council to wrest back control for the appointment from the mayor, and bring it back in line with recruitment for all its other regional chairs. The whole point of the "arm's length" principle is that the Arts Council should be at a distance from politics – not embroiled in them.
