Rescue the South Bank

12 April 2012
Evening Standard editorial comment

Can an imported Australian with a solid background in capital management and cultural politics be the solution to London's worst eyesore? The appointment of Michael Lynch, chief executive of the Sydney Opera House, to the helm of the sinking South Bank Centre might just be a step in the right direction. Mr Lynch has solid credentials. He ran an artists' agency and a theatre before heading the fund-dispensing Australia Council and, latterly, the troubled opera house. In that role, he pushed through a major public redevelopment project. He is a "people person" who enjoys the company of artists and will throw a matey arm around demoralised staff and users of our decrepit riverside utility. But is that enough for his new job?

The South Bank's chairman, Lord Hollick, will do the political glad-handing and social arm-twisting to raise £100 million or so for site regeneration. The Mayor of London has promised support. And Tony Blair - who made his victory speech in 1997 outside the Festival Hall - has become aware of the blushes that rise whenever a foreign dignitary enters the nation's premier cultural village to find a windblown wasteland of dossers, skateboarders and twilight muggers. There is an urgent desire to make the South Bank shine again. But the road to redemption runs through a tangle of bureaucracies - Lambeth, Arts Council, Culture Department, Lottery Heritage Fund - that will not melt away.

Mr Lynch has a fair wind in his sails, but will need to be infinitely resourceful if he is to overcome the perennial curse of such projects - a debilitating contentment with second-best.

Kashmir in crisis

The Foreign Office, as it must, insists this is not contemplated. But the time may well come when Mr Straw's pleas to both sides to negotiate over Kashmir will have to be replaced by horsetrading. Pakistan needs foreign investment if Islamic fundamentalism and support for al Qaeda is not to spread further among the poor. Mr Straw could offer to emphasise to Washington that last autumn's promises of aid and support for President Musharraf - conditional on eventual return to democracy - will not be forgotten. And he needs to reassure India that its concerns over Pakistani sponsorship of Kashmiri militants have not been ignored. He has an important and a highly sensitive diplomatic task on his hands. The prospect of serious fighting breaking out between two powers armed to the hilt with nuclear weapons is too ghastly to contemplate.

Sans Sangatte?

As matters stand, scores of asylum seekers from Sangatte attempt to enter the Channel Tunnel every night. Their desperate attempts to board trains entering Britain has led to the suspension and disruption of freight traffic between Britain and France. Accepting a finite number of asylum seekers now seems a reasonable price to pay for the long term diminution of the problem. But accepting the asylum seekers does not mean automatic approval of their right to remain. Some will have a well founded claim to stay; others will not. What matters is that their claims should be quickly and fairly processed. We should not delude ourselves, however, that closing Sangatte will resolve the problem of Channel Tunnel entry by migrants in France; it will simply mean that refugees will be less conveniently situated to make the attempt.

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