THE high street. Its dilapidated, empty shops are why so many will vote Reform. So why haven’t Labour filled it with nice, pretty new stores I will ignore to shop online?
I can picture them now. There would be one shop selling cupcakes, with wonderfully creative window displays that would change weekly. I don’t eat cupcakes but I’d buy them for guests at dinner parties roughly once a year. Expensive though.
Next door there would be a red-cheeked butcher which I’d use for those dinner parties and Christmas. Outside of that Ocado’s just too convenient. And just past him, a shop selling old maps! Wouldn’t that be delightful to look at? Lovely weathered maps.
Instead, the high streets of Starmer’s Britain are miserable and depressing. A vape shop here, a Turkish barber there. Between them a pretty little business might pop up but it’s gone inside six months before I’ve even had chance to call in.
Whither the newsagents, greengrocers and tobacconists of yesteryear? Replaced by the massive Asda behind me, cynics say, but I prefer to believe they were killed by Labour.
So if you don’t want Reform to win – and Nigel would revive those pubs, tobacconists and betting shops single-handedly, flitting between each every afternoon – then it’s time to get to work creating a high street of entirely false shops.
It doesn’t matter what they sell, I won’t actually go in. I’m happy if they’re money-laundering enterprises as long as they’re staffed by white people.
I suggest a shop selling gourmet dog treats, one specialising in imported cheese, one for fancy glassware, a haberdasher’s because I’ve always wanted to know what they are, a cigar store like I saw in Brooklyn, and perhaps a Hermès.
Transform our high streets with these shams and Reform voters, noses pressed up against the windows enchanted by all the things they cannot afford, will come back to their senses. Or not. Still, worth a go.
