Simon Rattle is right: Britain is becoming a cultural desert - and that's a political choice | Martin Kettle

The arts and classical music say much about us as a country. Labour should fight for their place in our national life Classical music will rarely have a larger audience or a more exalted place than at the coronation next week. And yet, like so much that occurs in Westminster Abbey on 6 May, it will send a misleading message about the kind of country that Britain now is. For Simon Rattle is incontestably right in what he said this week: classical music in this country is "fighting for its existen...