If you want a perfect example of the triumph of the (lack of) spirit at the heart of British politics, look no further than John Harris’ interview with culture secretary James Purnell in today’s Guardian.

When he talks, the requisite New Labour tics are present and correct - a fondness for such wonkish adjectives as “strategic” and “systematic”, and a habit of responding to difficult enquiries by making up his own rather banal questions and briefly interviewing himself (eg, “Is it better? Yes. Is it perfect? No.”)

…

Purnell won’t be drawn on specific examples

…

He talks about “engagement with communities”

That Harris is a Labour Party supporter makes the interview all the more unsettling. Purnell is another one of those smooth, featureless New Labour drones, like the Miliband brothers, Andy Burnham and Jim Murphy, who, terrifyingly, are hailed as the future of politics in this country. As the New Statesman’s Martin Bright put it with, for some unfathomable reason, complete calm: ‘One way or another we will have Adrian Mole as Prime Minister’.

Painfully on message, chary of the tough question, indoctrinated with that lifeless, soulless use of language devoid of passion, personality or the power into inspire, I’m yet to be convinced that these people aren’t being grown in vats somewhere. Which culture was the culture secretary grown from?

Purnell’s pre-Parliament bio is the all too predictable boilerplate we’ve come to expect of these up and coming young spud guns:

While still a student he worked in the summer holidays as a researcher to Tony Blair from 1989 to 1992. After graduating he worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research before moving to the BBC to become Head of Corporate Planning. In 1997 Purnell returned to work as a special advisor for the now Prime Minister Tony Blair until 2001. He also served as a board member of the Young Vic theatre.

Purnell was selected for the seat of Stalybridge and Hyde in 2001.

To wit: well connected, special adviser, parachuted into a safe seat, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

His master plan for the arts in Britain is…

…to usher in a new era in which the logic underlying public subsidy moves from “measurement to judgment”, and the pursuit of targets (as seen in a long-standing focus on the arts appealing to certain social categories) is superseded by a new emphasis on “excellence”

Which is all very well, in theory, but you have to ask, as you do with all these New Labour initiatives that promise tomorrow’s boysenberry conserve (nothing so common as mere jam for the new Jerusalem): what constitutes ‘excellence’ and who gets to decide?

We are besieged, and have been these long years, by the mediocrity of thought, poverty of ambition and dunderheadedness of deed of this government. Along with decisions and recommendations being made by committees of placemen and the top-down legislation being passed by rubber stamp, the precedents for a new golden age aren’t good. To say the least.

Purnell is looking forward to a ‘new renaissance’ which is extremely worrying when you consider that most of what passes for art in this country right now is almost entirely untouched by any renaissance values whatsoever. New Labour once charged itself with assembling the acme of British culture and look what we ended up with. Toiling under this regime, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would be starving artists working in call centres to scrape by.

(See also Jamie and Philip.)