Keir Starmer’s come up with a £5bn plan to save YOUR high street – here’s why it’s doomed
We Conservatives know Starmer’s new plan will do nothing to stop the heartbreaking rot of UK high streets, says Mieka Smiles.
Town centres across the UK are struggling – but Mieka Smiles says Starmer’s plan won’t work (Image: Getty)
Parents scramble for last-minute buys, children pack around Santa’s grotto and Wizzard blares out over the shopping centre speakers. It’s Chriiiiisssstmas! As a teenager in a northern town, I vividly remember those £5-pocket money bus trips to buy gifts. The high street and shopping centres were a chaotic riot of tinsel and tack, packed with mafting-hot shoppers with woolly hats stuffed into their pockets.
Wow, how things have changed. Now the crowds have thinned to a polite trickle. All the big hitters of the high street have moved out of town. Marksies? Gone. Debenhams? Gone. And Next? Yep, that’s gone too. And I know we’re not alone.You can’t turn back time – and I love the convenience of Amazon Prime as much as the next person – but to see the high street die this slow and painful death breaks my heart.
You’d think this would be Keir Starmer’s moment. It’s surely his opportunity to prove he cares about places outside of Westminster. Instead, we are given his £5billion plan for ‘Pride of Place’, encouraging communities to buy empty town centre shops and giving councils more power to block vape shops, “fake” barbers and betting shops. It’s just window dressing.
New businesses needed to fill empty units can’t thrive if Chancellor Rachel Reeves continues to turn the screw – first by hammering them with National Insurance contributions for employees and now by issuing yet another diktat for higher wages that I’m sure they’d love to give, but are struggling to afford. He’s living in an economic dreamland.
The Tories have grasped the urgency. We’re calling for business rates to be wiped for all high street shops and pubs. Well, wouldn’t that be a brilliant start? Sadly, we don’t know who is going to be in power come the next election, and that help was needed yesterday.
Meanwhile, retail parks are a Shangri-La of free parking and safety, with even the slightest bit of beef nipped in the bud by hefty security guards. By contrast, our town centres have become laughing stocks where drug-addled criminals walk in and out of shops, with their arms full of goods.
If we want to give town centres even a fighting chance, central government must let councils scrap parking charges and fund dedicated teams of high street police officers to tackle not just the thefts but intimidation and disorder. And instead of Labour’s obsession with shoving identikit houses on every inch of our green fields, let’s make homes in vacant high street properties: some of which are stunning Victorian buildings left to rot. As well as plugging the housing gap, they could give businesses much-needed footfall.
But do you know what? Let’s not bank on Starmer doing any of those things. So even if it’s just once this December, take a trip into town, grab a pint and some grub and pick up some presents. Be that little bit of Christmas magic that your High Street so desperately needs.
