In January he made a speech, seen as a counterblast to his right- wing rival, Michael Portillo, in which he rejected ‘the exaggerated histrionics of flag-waving nationalists’ but spoke warmly of the nation’s ‘legacy of artistic achievements in music, literature and the visual arts which reflect our distinctive national viewpoint’, which we ’should commit ourselves to pass. on, enriched, to our children’.His decision to grant an extra three months to the Victoria and Albert Museum to try to keep The Three Graces in Britain – seen as alitmus test of whether he was going to be a ‘toughie or a softie’ – is consistent with this view. It should not, however, be read asa signal for the arts lobbies to open the champagne. The Evening Standard once said he stood ‘about as far to the left of the Tory party as it is possible to do without falling off’, but colleagues have noticed a move rightwards and an affection for Treasury orthodoxy.In the next 12 months he will conduct a fundamental expenditure review of his pounds 1bn-a- year department – even though it has existed for less than three years. With the lottery due, in his estimation, to double the amount of money going to arts and sport, there is an opportunity to be more discriminating with its cash, while playing a national Santa Claus.This windfall raises the prospect that Mr Dorrell could please the left of the party by channelling extra money to the arts and sport, and the right by cutting state subsidy.Asked whether it is the responsibility of the state or the individual to fund libraries and museums, his response was Delphic.

‘I would be anxious to ensure that we don’t commit ourselves to doing something indefinitely in the future in the way that it has been done in the past. We need to reassess how our present pattern meets the cultural needs of the late 20th and 21st century.’This is not, he stresses, tantamount to a plan to charge for public libraries, but ‘what I am not committing myself to doing is maintaining each library building in the condition that it was left to us by an earlier generation’. And, as far as his wider review is concerned, he goes further: ‘You have to be prepared to think the unthinkable merely in order to ask the relevant questions.’ Whatever Mr Dorrell has in mind, some state funding is likely to be cut.A series of controversial issues loom – cross-media ownership, privacy legislation, the British Library – and they will test the extent of his faith in the free market as against his commitment to preserving national institutions. Predictably, he is offering no hostages to fortunes, arguing that Rupert Murdoch has been a good thing ‘because he has required the newspaper industry to address practices which prevailed 20 years ago which are wholly indefensible’. And, while he regards the BBC as ‘an institution which had a tremendous tradition in a positive sense’, he believes ‘it also needed managerial change.

I hope we can see a diverse media market’.On the wider political spectrum, Cabinet colleagues are divided about how to counter Labour under Tony Blair. There are two schools of thought: ‘Coke’ (the Conservatives are the real thing, Labour a cheap imitation) and ‘Clear water’ (Mr Major must differentiate himself from Mr Blair through radical policies). Although he rejects the tag as simplistic, Mr Dorrell would back the first rather than the second; he believes the next election can be won if economic management reduces unemployment and presents the chance of tax cuts, while reforms on education and training are followed through.Where does that agenda involve him? The fact is that Mr Dorrell has a big, challenging Cabinet job but it is not one that will influence the outcome of the election. ‘There is,’ he concedes, ‘no point me pretending to you that people will choose to vote Tory because of our policy on the arts or sport. But that does not mean that they are not important.’(Photograph omitted).