‘The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles.’ This view – articulated by Boris Johnson in 1986 when he was studying classics at Oxford – is not shared by Rishi Sunak.

On Monday, the Prime Minister caused a diplomatic spat after he called off a meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, his Greek counterpart, hours before it was scheduled to take place. The reason? Mitsotakis gave an interview to the BBC in which he said the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Greece. The current situation, he added, of having some artefacts in London and the rest in Athens was akin to ‘cutting the Mona Lisa in half’.

As Persephone spends six monthsof the year in Hades, the Marblescould do half the year in Greece

Although Mitsotakis was stating the long-held position of the Greek government, such comments, No. 10 claims, broke an agreement between the two countries not to use the visit as a public campaign for returning the antiquities. Aides were anxious that the meeting did not turn into a repeat of Johnson’s 2021 pow-wow with Mitsotakis, when all other topics during the visit were overshadowed by briefings about the Parthenon Sculptures. 

Sunak wanted to focus on boats and Gaza, but his zero-tolerance approach towards the mention of the Marbles meant that nothing was discussed at all. ‘He has a visceral reaction to people taking the piss out of Britain,’ explains an ally of the Prime Minister.

The Greek Prime Minister refused a backroom meeting with Oliver Dowden, Sunak’s deputy – citing his ‘annoyance’. His foreign minister went further, declaring that Sunak’s reaction was ‘unheard of’. ‘Even Israel and Hamas communicate,’ he said.

The Greek press fell behind their man, arguing that ‘it’s no coincidence the meeting was cancelled while Mitsotakis was meeting Starmer, who is 20 points ahead’. Mitsotakis also has a public mandate for his position – a pledge to renew efforts for the return of the Marbles was part of his successful re-election campaign. Sadly for Sunak, he has not enjoyed the same show of support in this country. A YouGov poll this week found only 15 per cent of voters think the Parthenon Sculptures should be kept in Britain.

‘We wanted him to fight – but on boats, not antiquities,’ complains one Tory MP. Meanwhile, the Cameroons (minus their leader, who is bound by collective responsibility in the Foreign Office) are on the offensive. Former Coalition-era culture minister Ed Vaizey, who is chairman of the Parthenon Project, a return-the-Marbles lobbying group, described Sunak’s decision as ‘odd’ and ‘tied up, to a certain extent, in the traditional culture wars’. But the row is significant because it points to the different outlooks the two parties hold when it comes to British institutions. These two positions could soon come to a head.

Labour points to Starmer’s comparatively warm relationship with Mitsotakis as proof of Sunak’s tetchiness (‘He’s too thin-skinned to have tough conversations,’ says one Labour MP). But it’s no coincidence that Labour’s position on the Elgin Marbles is more appealing to Mitsotakis. Starmer would support a temporary loan of the sculptures to Greece if it was agreed between the British Museum and the Greek government. Sunak, however, doubts the wisdom of allowing the Marbles to leave the British Museum for Greece, even temporarily. ‘Would we ever get them back?’ asks a No. 10 aide.

Since George Osborne took over as the head of the British Museum two years ago, he has made little secret of his desire to solve the historic disagreement. Earlier this month at a museum trustee dinner in the gallery where the Marbles are displayed, the former chancellor said that ‘too often we’ve thought: let’s keep quiet. If we don’t talk about things that are difficult, then no one else will. And it hasn’t worked’. He went on to say he hoped to ‘reach an agreement with Greece’ for some of the Marbles to be ‘seen in Athens’. A deal could be months away.

Returning the Marbles permanently is not seen as a practical or desirable option, given that it would require the approval of the government and a change to the 1963 British Museum Act, which stops the museum from deaccessioning items in its collection. Some figures involved in the negotiations like the idea of a ‘Persephone clause’ – just as Persephone spends six months of the year in Hades, the collection could do half the year in Greece and half in Britain.

The Osborne approach is intended to avoid the need for any changes in law. One idea is a mutual loan whereby the Acropolis Museum trades items with the British Museum for a limited time. Osborne has suggested that this could be done without the Greeks needing to relinquish their claim over the Marbles – but sending antiquities to a country which maintains a legal claim over them would inevitably run into complications. He is already drawing criticism from parts of the Tory party. ‘He has always wanted to be in with the fashionable crowd,’ says a former colleague of Osborne’s current mission.

Labour’s stance is that a Starmer government would not make any changes to the laws that govern museums, but support institutions that debate how objects came to be there. Two years ago, Glasgow Life became the first museum in the country to repatriate objects to India. Since then, Manchester Museum has completed a return of 174 objects to the Anindilyakwa people in Australia, while London’s Horniman Museum returned its Benin bronzes to Nigeria.

When it comes to the Elgin Marbles, Sunak’s fear is that a precedent could be set for bending the British Museum Act. ‘Trust Rishi to pick the culture war that will have no appeal to the 2019 coalition,’ complains a critic within the Tory party. But while Sunak is known for his lowbrow tastes (Jilly Cooper, Michael Bublé, Taylor Swift), repatriation is an issue which animates him, according to aides. He worries that if the Marbles are returned, even briefly, that creates a slippery slope for many other objects to leave the British Museum’s collection. Senior Tories warn that if the principle was followed, it could lead to a world in which only Chinese artefacts could be shown in China, and so forth. ‘Half of the museum would go,’ predicts one gloomy government figure.