HARD cheese Glenn Close. You may be one of the world’s greatest actors, but you’ve never won an Oscar. You’re not getting in, I’m afraid. What’s that, Sigourney Weaver? You’ve been nominated for three Oscars. Didn’t win any, though, did you? Sorry, back of the line.

The news this week that winners of Oscars, Grammys or the Nobel prize can be fast-tracked through the UK immigration system was hailed by the Home Secretary Priti Patel as an example of how the “best and brightest” in arts and the sciences could come to the UK under a new points-based immigration system.

To which the obvious reply is, “Yeah, right.” At first glance, this looks like pure trolling from a government that has done little to hide its utter contempt for the arts since it’s been in power. At second glance too, for that matter.

Talk about setting the bar high. The list of approved awards include Baftas, Brits, Golden Globes, Tonys, Oliviers and, yes, Oscars. But only if you’re an Oscar-winning actor, writer, director or cinematographer, note. Not sure where you stand if you’re a production designer or make-up artist with an academy award.

No Palme d’Or or Cesar Award winners need apply, it seems. And winning the Booker doesn’t qualify either. I guess writers are just not elite enough.

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Winners of the Balzen Prize (for scholars and scientists), the Fyssen International Prize and the Womex Artist Award are also on the approved list, so perhaps not everything the Home Office does is decided by who is likely to turn up the newspapers on a red carpet.

Even so, it’s a largely laughable list that looks more about winning headlines than anything else. In this, if nothing else, this government is an expert.

In the same week, of course, the education secretary Gavin Williamson announced he was planning to cut funding for music, dance, drama and performing arts in higher education in England by half. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden is also continuing his culture war on museum boards and TV companies by blocking appointments of anyone who dares disagree with this government’s position on the history of the British empire. (If a thing looks Trumpian and smells Trumpian …)

Meanwhile, musicians, whether classical or pop, still have no clue as to how they will ever be able to afford to tour Europe again in the wake of Brexit. Quite the way to treat an industry worth £10bn to the economy. My maths is dodgy but that’s somewhere in the region of 20 times more valuable than the fishing industry much loved by Brexiteers, isn’t it? (Of course, Brexit has shafted the fishing industry too.)

We don't value the arts nearly enough. In Scotland, as usual, culture didn’t feature hugely in the election campaign that has just ended. The Tories had just five paragraphs in their manifesto devoted to the arts, rather less than most of the other parties.

And yet we live in a country that projects itself around the world via its artistic output, from Harry Potter and James Bond to Simon Rattle and Tracey Emin. But the Westminster government in particular seems disinterested in – or actively contemptuous of –creative types. Unless, it seems now, they have a shiny bauble to their name.

In the meantime, is there a sweep stake on who will be the first to swap Hollywood for Hollyoaks?