Lord Frost has criticised the BBC's Last Night of the Proms over its "slightly down-market feel" following calls to "diversify" their iconic classical music event.
The former special advisor to Boris Johnson hit out at the BBC Proms saying there was "not enough serious music".
It comes as the BBC faces backlash for its alterations to "diversify" this year's event.
"One can’t entirely suppress some doubts. Is high culture really safe in the BBC’s hands? The attempt to kill off the BBC Singers earlier this year hardly suggests it," Frost wrote in The Telegraph.
"This Proms season had a slightly down-market feel, with no truly world-class overseas orchestras, a bit too much Horrible Histories and Northern soul, and not enough serious music.
"William Byrd, whose 400th anniversary was supposedly being marked, got one concert in Londonderry and one four-minute piece in a 'Mindful Mix'."
Frost also claims the BBC "doubts the appeal" of the Western civilisational and cultural tradition and instead offers people "what it thinks they can cope with".
It follows a backlash from Royal Broadcaster and Historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo after some dubbed the annual festival "outdated".
Speaking on GB News, Heydel-Mankoo was joined by Classical Music Consultant Kate Menasse to discuss the broadcaster’s move.
He said: “You know, I'm just so tired of all of this, that there's constant introspection from the BBC and our elite institutions, navel gazings, self-loathing almost.
“It's corrosive and it's nihilistic to the fabric of our nation. The reality here is course is that our cultural elites, the BBC and others are embarrassed by patriotism.
"It reminds me of George Orwell's famous quote, you may remember when he said ‘an English intellectual would be more ashamed to be caught standing to God save the King than stealing from a church poor box’.”
It comes as the BBC faces backlash for its alterations to 'diversify' this year's event
PA
Frost added that changing the Proms is "losing the culture war" and "provides at least one evening of nostalgia".
He said: "The Last Night, unchanged, provides at least one evening of nostalgia, of self-deprecating humour, and of harmless, inclusive patriotism, all things which were thought, until recently, to be entirely and characteristically British.
"When the new cultural forces feel strong enough to scrap it, or turn it into the usual modern mush of celebrating diversity and inclusion, then we will know we have lost the culture war. At the moment they don’t feel strong enough. Let’s keep it that way."
