Reform is right about one thing – the death of British towns_D

So I was sitting in the Turkish barbers the other day having a cheeky vape prior to getting my nails done in the nailbar next door and I got to thinking “what on earth has happened to the British high street?” Well, courtesy of a Reform announcement we got the answer – it has been taken over (not ‘invaded’, hush no! We’ve all been told the i-word is beyond the pale) by foreign organised crime.

Zia Yusuf, not so much a Marmite politician as a cod liver oil one, told us “for every British pub lost in recent years, seven vape shops have opened. The number of nail bars has surged by 91% since 2010. The number of foreign barber shops has doubled nationwide and tripled in places like Essex and Doncaster.” He classified these businesses as “cash intensive operations”. He was being coy – he meant money laundering fronts for criminal gangs.

He may be right. But gosh that’s an awful lot of money laundering and scary criminality. No-wonder no-one goes anywhere near a high street anymore. What he was right about though is that a pincer movement of pointless shops and incomprehensibly crippling rates of taxation, both at national and local level, have decimated what was once the beating heart of every town and city in Britain.

The Reform Home Affairs spokesman said: “The decay of Britain is equally visible on our high streets. We all see it every day. Over the last 15 years, under Tory and Labour governments, over 10,000 classic British pubs have closed their doors. “Beloved retail institutions, department stores, and local bank branches have vanished, driven out by excessive red tape, exorbitant business rates, and crushing taxation.”

And indeed in what feels like the blink of an eye ago town centres and high streets were indeed alive to throngs of shoppers flicking through the albums in Woolies, getting their thermals in for the winter at Debenhams undies department, or treating themselves to a quarter of special toffee Thorntons, or a slice of pork pie at the deli in British Home Stores.

Sadly now all gone. Or, whisper it quietly, locals having a few pints and a night on the town. The actual town, A proper British pub crawl with good times a plenty as you trawled from pub to pub in the town centre of your choosing with your best mates. On a good night you might even pull – imagine that.. chatting a girl up face to face, in real time, in real life. No swiping right required

These days you’d be lucky to get three pints down you there are so few pubs in most British town centres. And I suspect chatting a girl up in real life is probably a hate crime, so I’d give that a wide berth too.

Yusuf was adamant the big fish behind the vape shops, nail bars and barbers were in Reform’s sights should they achieve power – which let’s be honest is starting to look much less likely (although free business rates for pubs does sound like a decent Count Binface policy).

The problem is – and he did allude to it without suggesting anything close to a solution – closing down the shops run by villains without a concrete, and expensive, plan to find replacements will just make the tumbleweed roll ever faster down our dying high streets. And the place which used to literally bring a town together will be gone forever as we retreat into our phones and our fake perma-happy online personas.

As ever in life we pays our money, and we takes our choice.