The Turner prize — worth £40,000 and awarded to a British artist working in Britain — has a longstanding reputation for spats and surprises. Yet the decision to split the 2019 prize to make a politically correct statement of communal solidarity is enough to make anyone hanker for a good old-fashioned row over whether the works on display are, as the culture minister at the time, Kim Howells, said in 2002, “conceptual bullshit”.

In an unprecedented move the judges gave this year’s prize to all four shortlisted artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani. It came after the artists issued this plea: “We feel strongly motivated to use the occasion of the prize to make a collective statement in the name…