had it been a drama inside a theatre, the critics could have gone into overdrive. Not since the Greeks got seriously into tragedy have there been so many bodies thudding to the floor in such a short space of time. Thump! There goes the chair of the drama panel. Klunk! There goes her panel too. Crash! The chair of touring bites the dust. Bang! So too does the chair of dance. Over the past week the Arts Council of England has imploded in the most spectacular fashion and it seems certain that more blood will splatter the walls in the coming week.

As the man from the Lottery has it, it could have been us. When the Arts Council of Great Britain, as it then was, decided to devolve and regionalise we were in line to become outstation number 11. Happily, and belatedly, we made the leap from being a supplicant at the big boys' table to running our own show north of the border. It hasn't stopped rows over funding and policy but at least they're our rows.

The stushie down south is something else again. It stems from the appointment of Gerry Robinson, chief executive of the Granada Group, to the vacant Arts Council Chair. (Lord ''Grey'' Gowrie has left to spend more time with his investment consultant.) But Gowrie was a man with an undisputed passion for the arts. Mr Robinson is passionate about business, which is what he has in most common with

New Labour.

He also shares Culture Minister Chris Smith's belief that the current structure is too large, too unwieldy, and too blind to the big picture because full council members are too busy defending their own patch. Actually, nobody much quibbles with that analysis. What worries the luvvies is that the new slimline council will be stuffed with pinstriped clones who don't know their aria from their Elgar.

Howandsoever. All that is for them down there to sort out. But the episode is worryingly emblematic of the Government's kneejerk assumption that business knows best.

The wooing process of business figures into the political process would be quite touching if it wasn't downright alarming. The fact is the ability to manage major corporations, or to be balance sheet literate, is no guarantee of success when those skills are transferred into other arenas.

The talents of chief executives are not necessarily easily transferable into the public sector; quite the reverse when what is needed is an ability to construct consensus rather than hand down tablets of stone.

We saw the downside of this enthusiasm for the well-honed business brain with the introduction of the internal market in the health service. All manner of private sector managers were recruited on the crude assumption that business gameplans were pretty well interchangeable. What that flawed equation failed to consider was the need to build in flexibility in respect of unpredictable demand, and what it discarded was the accumulated wisdom of the practitioners in the health field.

In that respect,the Arts Council debacle is something of a Labour reprise of a Tory folly.

We have been down this road before. You may recall the blessed David Young, called into to revolutionise trade and industry by Mrs Thatcher. ''Other people bring me problems; David brings solutions,'' she cooed. Actually, he brought cock-ups born specifically of his total lack of experience in the political arena.

And, anyway, what can you expect in the way of sagacity from a man who reputedly had unpicked the letter D from his monogrammed DY shirt collection on his acquisition of the obligatory peerage? Think too of the Lord Beeching and the recently deceased Ian McGregor. If all you want from such imports is the stern application of the bottom line then both win awards for unflinching pragmatism. But if you build in the other vital dimensions - if you care what happens to communities and skilled workforces and social cohesion - then both men stand accused of vandalism on a rather large scale.

The jury is yet out on Lord Simon, late of BP, hailed as a top gun by the Government when seduced from business to deal with European competition and clothed in ermine to sweeten the transfer deal. But it's difficult not to conclude that this Government is prone to bouts of sycophancy when in the presence of industrial captains, and that its judgment on their skills is somewhat skewed by a tendency to behave like a groupie at a pop concert. If Bernie Eccleston ever joins Oasis then we're in serious trouble here.

Politics, much like any other profession, is not an arena into which people should be encouraged to parachute without experience. Think of the Lord Irvine, one of the sharpest legal brains of his generation, a man of towering intellect, a man whose clever tongue can reduce the most illustrious opponent to verbal rubble. And a man capable of making the most basic of mistakes in office because political nous is quite another attribute.

The reverse is also true. The boardrooms of Britain are stiff with ex-Ministers, especially ex-Chancellors of the Exchequer. Now adrift without their civil service lifeboat squadron, I suspect they may cut a rather less astute dash.

The oddity of all of which is that this is a Government which has grasped that the real tragedy of Britain is the number of people who underperform their potential because of lack of opportunity. They recognise that we have a vastly under-used capacity in the general population, and have quite prop-erly set about trying to liberate it.

So it might be prudent to remember that while many of the men and women in the street are under-utilised assets, many of the briefcase brethren are shining examples of the Peter principle . . . people promoted a station or two above their natural ability.