This week has shown just how little regard the government has for the arts

Musicians and all of us in the arts now know that we face a Conservative Party united in immobility and a Labour Party too terrified of Little Englanders to contemplate free movement in the future. They need hardly bother, since the European Union is responding with folded arms and a Gallic shrug. Musicians, other performers, writers, choreographers and all those who travel with them in a professional capacity from Britain have too little to offer the EU States for them to care. Britain is not particularly interested in hearing or seeing their artists either.

London's most famous conductor Sir Simon Rattle has become a Berliner, like Barenboim before him, and will soon be a German citizen employed by Bavarian Radio. He has made it abundantly clear that the combination of the Brexit debacle and the lowly position of the arts in the political psyche is his reason for entrenching himself in the society that all those years ago made him the first Briton to direct the Berlin Philharmonic.

When composer Michael Berkeley, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, son of Sir Lennox, godson of Benjamin Britten, asked the DCMS Minister in the House of Lords what the government was going to do, the only answer Baroness Barran (a recent appointee to the Upper House) was authorised to give was that 'her door was always open', in other words, nothing until somebody else made her a better offer. From over her left shoulder her noble friend, Lord Hunt of Wirral, as David Hunt Secretary of State for Wales under Thatcher and Employment under John Major, told her bluntly to 'sort it out'. Diana Barran, a former hedge fund manager, looked shaken.

She was up against the wall again the next day when Deborah Bull, former ballerina and now Crossbench peer, pointed out that, 'taking back control of our borders was surely never intended to leave UK artists with less freedom to pursue their craft than their creative peers in, say, Tonga, St Lucia or the Federated States of Micronesia'.

Genista MacIntosh, former head of the Royal Opera House, the Guildhall and the National Theatre – and now as a Labour peer, Deputy Speaker of the Lords, pointed out, 'the noble Baroness has often told the House - indeed, she has just done so again - that the government is committed to supporting musicians, but I have to tell her from personal experience that they do not feel supported. They feel shocked and scared. The EU trade deal actively harms their interests, and they do not understand why'.

Not only British musicians are effected, of course. All those who work in ensembles with them are too. It is impossible to keep an ensemble's personnel together where only some of the singers or players can tour freely, without time or permit restrictions. It will also be pointless for students at either British or European Conservatoires to form quartets and baroque groups together if there is no prospect of future work – and if that opportunity is gone, the point of studying in this country is diminished, its massive expense unjustifiable.

Lord McNally, former Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords, put neatly what everyone was thinking. 'What really happened is that the government were inflexible in the TCA for fear of the European Research Group and other Brexit zealots anxious to protect the purity of Brexit. The Government have got to go back to the table on this. My advice to musicians would be to mobilise the millions of supporters, particularly among the young, who should be outraged at the betrayal of this important sector.'

That morning, Wednesday, The Times published a letter co-ordinated by the Incorporated Society of Musicians, calling on the government to, 'urgently do what it said it would do and negotiate paperwork-free travel in Europe for British artists and their equipment.' Frankly, given that The Times and its once deputy editor, Michael Gove, had campaigned loudly for Brexit for 30 years, it is surprising they bothered to print it. In response Secretary of State Oliver Dowden convened a meeting with musicians' organisations to find out about their particular concerns, as if he had not been well aware of them for all his year in the post. After listening for a bit, the best he could offer was to set up a task force to advise him – a response truly worthy of Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey's invention: Dowden is sounding more like Jim Hacker every day.

He and his cabinet colleagues need to remember that their precious trade deal may have been signed off by them and the EU Commission, but it also has to be ratified by parliaments in every EU Member State (many of whom take the arts much more seriously than Britain) and the European Parliament. That will not happen until the end of March at the earliest. If only one of them says no, in response to pressure from their artists, then the whole thing is ditched.

As Jamie Stone MP, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesperson in the Commons, wrote to Dowden last week, 'the government has stated that “the UK remains open for musicians to tour here”. The relationship between the UK and EU - which has long been a reciprocal one - seems to be falling out of balance, threatening to take with it the shared cultural landscape which many musicians depend on for a living'.