Insurers are wrecking Theatreland

“Mayday! Mayday! The whole British theatre sector is sinking fast,” says Michael Grade. “And the insurance companies paid to protect it are refusing to launch the lifeboats.” Most theatres and producers, sold expensive “business interruption” policies to cover closure, have discovered that Covid-19 doesn’t count. Absurdly, some insurers have dodged their obligations by arguing that they’re not obliged to pay out unless the business was “closed down or sealed off by the police or other emergency services”. This refusal of insurers “to face up to their liabilities in Britain” is in marked contrast to their behaviour elsewhere. On Broadway, and in German theatres, many claims have already been settled – often by the same companies refusing to pay out here. In the meantime, shows and theatres across the UK have been closed, some forever, with a “miserable consequence” for jobs. Of course, insurers must do their due diligence, but they must also act responsibly. Unless they are “shamed into facing up to their liabilities”, it will be too late to salvage “our priceless arts infrastructure”.

In 2006, Professor Nouriel Roubini – then an “obscure academic” – told the IMF “what it didn’t want to hear”, said Eric Levitz in New York Magazine. He warned that the US housing market would soon collapse, and “quite possibly, bring the global financial system down with it”. At the time, some expressed concern for “Dr Doom’s psychological wellbeing”: the global economy had just recorded its fastest half-decade of growth in 20 years. But he was right, of course. And now he’s back in full bearish form, staking his reputation on an L-shaped “Greater Depression”, lasting a decade or more – on grounds that massive debts will “durably depress consumption”, particularly in the “ageing” West. As for the moniker “Dr Doom” – forget it, said BBC Business. Roubini much prefers the name “Dr Realist”.