Good morning. There is a familiar refrain about Britain’s high streets – that they are now little more than a procession of shuttered units, former bank branches, barbers, vape shops and fast food outlets, symbols of a country that feels as though it is quietly running down.
This week, a Guardian investigation set out to explain why the decline of the high street has accelerated, why it is now so visible, and why it has become a proxy for whether people feel their area – and their lives – are moving forwards or backwards.
For today’s newsletter I spoke to our north of England editor, Josh Halliday, to find out what is changing the face of Britain’s high streets, why it matters politically, and how it could become an electoral problem for Keir Starmer. But first, the headlines.
Five big stories
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China | Keir Starmer has taken a big step towards rapprochement with China, opening the door to a UK visit from Xi Jinping in a move that drew immediate anger from British critics of Beijing.
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Iran | The creators of a messaging app accused of handing user data to the Iranian regime live on a windswept hill in a British coastal town, the Guardian can reveal.
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Reform UK | A Reform UK council chair has resigned after it was found he was illegally running two unsafe rental properties, according to a neighbouring local authority.
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Banking | The boss of Lloyds Banking Group has warned that bankers will need to “re-skill themselves” to survive the oncoming AI boom that stands to transform the financial services sector.
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US politics | Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic US senator, announced she will run for governor of Minnesota, after the incumbent governor, Tim Walz, dropped out of the race in early January.
In depth: ‘People still have this image of the high street as representative of their area’
“High streets have this peculiar place in British life,” Josh says. “Kind of like the weather, they are great for small talk. We can all talk endlessly about what used to be on the high street, what’s there now, looking back through rose-tinted glasses, talking about Woolworths and BHS and all these stores that have gone bust nationally.”
I’m very used to hearing that sort of chat. I live in Walthamstow, where the market, proudly described by the council as Europe’s longest outdoor street one, is regularly lamented on local Facebook groups as a shadow of its former self. But the current conversation around our high streets is much more than idle chit-chat, and has an increasingly important political dimension.
What did the Guardian investigation find?
The idea for the high street project really started six to 12 months ago, Josh tells me, when he was travelling around the north and meeting Labour MPs. “One thing they all raised was concern about the state of the high street,” he says. “Voters were telling them it was one of the things they disliked most about their area, and there was a growing sense among MPs that this was one of the factors pushing people towards Reform.”
Guardian analysis showed thousands fewer retail outlets now compared with 2019, rising numbers of services like vape shops and restaurants replacing traditional shops, and a loss of basic amenities such as public toilets and cash machines, all contributing to the perception that town centres are struggling. Improving shopping precincts was rated the third most important local issue by voters – behind healthcare and crime – and supporters of Reform UK were especially likely to say their high streets had worsened.
Earlier this month, John Harris wrote about an experience he believed thousands of people would have had over Christmas: a visit to friends or relatives somewhere familiar, and the growing, nagging realisation that a once-thriving town centre is now edging towards the economic point of no return. And the bad news for the sector continued apace this week, with The Original Factory Shop homeware chain calling in administrators, putting 1,200 jobs at risk, while video game chain Game Retail filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators.
In an analysis piece yesterday our senior economics correspondent Richard Partington noted that “Across the UK in 2024 almost 13,000 shops – about 37 a day – pulled down their shutters for good. Closures have been most pronounced in the north of England, the Midlands and deprived coastal towns where Reform ran Labour closest at the general election.”
Why do high streets matter politically?
The state of the high street has become one of the most visible indicators of neglect, determining if people feel their area is being looked after by those in power. When shops are boarded up, banks and toilets disappear, and footfall drains away, it feeds a sense that nothing is getting better – and that Westminster is distant, indifferent or both.
Part of the Guardian’s reporting focused on Newton Aycliffe, a town that Josh says “draws high profile politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage because it’s been kind of symbolic of the collapse of Labour’s so-called ‘red wall’”.
It is in a constituency where Tony Blair used to be the MP, and Josh says he heard again and again local people complaining about absentee London landlords “charging London prices and London rents” as a contributing factor to the decline.
This interactive allows you to scroll through the shops on its high street, to see what they used to be, and how many are vacant now. As Josh reported it “The banks are long gone – the closest now a 90-minute round trip to Darlington by bus – and the faded signs record an exodus of household names: Wilko, Select, Peacocks.”
You can also use this postcode-based tool to discover how many high street shops are vacant where you live. This is the kind of editorially independent public interest journalism we can research and develop, without fear or commercial bias, because of the way we are funded by readers. You could be part of that – if you aren’t already – with a one-off contribution or by making a small monthly donation.
Who is responsible for the decline?
Newton Aycliffe is not a template for every town centre in Britain, but it neatly illustrates the bind many places find themselves in: an absentee landlord with little incentive to invest – in this case London-based multibillionaire Benzion Freshwater, who, at 77, Josh says “may be the biggest property tycoon most Britons have never heard of” – and a local authority without the money or power to force change.
The result is paralysis – and decline that everyone can see, but no one can easily repair. One Newton Aycliffe resident Josh spoke to said “You would be ashamed to bring someone here now.”
There is also an uncomfortable truth running through all of this. In some ways, we collectively shape the high streets we end up with. If we prize the convenience of doorstep delivery and the price advantage of online shopping, town centres inevitably become places for what can’t be ordered on a phone – haircuts, food, gyms, services.
This sense of visible decline is something Nigel Farage has deliberately latched on to, with Miatta Fahnbulleh, the devolution, faith and communities minister, saying this week that his repeated TikTok attacks on Turkish barber shops amount to dog-whistle racism.
Josh is keen to stress that the hollowing out of the high street cannot be pinned on online shopping alone. “Woolworths and BHS – this is kind of the long tail of the financial crash,” he says. “In some sense it’s not just about the rise of internet shopping, it’s the collapse of these huge firms that were massively exposed to the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.”
That said, he adds, the impact of digital retail is undeniable. “There’s absolutely no doubt that internet shopping has rocketed, accelerated during the pandemic, and has shown no sign of slowing down.” Yet despite those shifts, he says high streets retain a powerful symbolic role. “People still have this image of the high street as representative of their area. It’s often the first thing you see if you go through a town on the top deck of a bus, and you judge a place instantly from how the high street looks.” For that reason, he says, “people do think high streets and town centres are incredibly important for local pride.”
Fast fixes?
I’ve walked through a lot of League One and League Two town centres following Leyton Orient over the past few years. Different places, the same pattern: familiar names gone, shutters down, a sense that the centre of gravity has shifted elsewhere.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that Labour has been complacent about the problem. The U-turn over business rate rises for pubs and live music venues, said to be worth £80m, is one way to address the problem. But the biggest thing the government is trying to do is the Pride in Place scheme. Josh explains it is intended to give councils and community organisations more power over vacant buildings. “How that will work in practice though has not yet been fully fleshed out,” he says.
“When it was announced last autumn, some critics described it as levelling up 2.0 – or even 3.0 – warning that it risked amounting to little more than a dressing up of the high street: some flower baskets, a few new benches, visible changes that could be pointed to at the next election to say things look nicer than they did a few years ago.”
Whether that represents meaningful change is still up for debate, says Josh, and notes that some Labour MPs are pushing for more fundamental reforms, such as giving councils the power to allow community organisations to move into vacant units on a temporary, “meantime use” basis between long-term lets.
What makes the decline of the high street so politically dangerous is not just the economics of it, but the speed at which it is experienced. Policies take years to design and deliver; more boarded-up shops, closed banks and empty units are visible every day.
For voters, the high street has become a kind of shorthand for whether things are getting better or worse – a judgment made not through GDP figures or growth forecasts, but on the walk to the bus stop or the view from the top deck. Unless Labour can make change visible, not simply promised, it risks leaving space for others to craft a narrative of decline instead.
What else we’ve been reading
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The most popular politicians are often exceptional speakers. But is that a good thing? Andy Beckett makes a compelling argument about the dangers of politics driven entirely by rhetoric. Aamna
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“And I realise that every day, the shittier life gets, the more attached I become to it” is one hell of a quote from this moving portrait gallery of terminally ill people facing their final days. Martin
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The White House has posted memes, wishcasting, nostalgia and deepfakes on its social media. Welcome to the era of slopaganda: Steve Rose rounds up the most bizarre and sinister examples. Aamna
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Dazed magazine speaks to the Tokki Tokki tattoo studio in Minneapolis which is offering anti-ICE designs as part of the city’s resistance to the Trump agenda. Martin
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I loved this four-way interview with Kristen Stewart, Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, and Lidia Yuknavitch on bringing an intense, unflinching story of a woman’s pain to the screen. Aamna
Sport
Football | Nottingham Forest and Celtic have secured play-off berths in the Europa League, while Aston Villa will progress straight to the round of 16 after all three sides recorded wins on the final day of the league phase.
Tennis | Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev are in play in the Australian Open 2026 men’s semi-final. The Spaniard is in front, but appears to be suffering from cramp. Follow the conclusion with Joey Lynch on our live blog.
Cricket | Jofra Archer is the surprise inclusion in England’s team for their Twenty20 series opener against Sri Lanka on Friday, having initially been excluded from the touring squad.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now
TV
Wonder Man | ?????
You will be left disappointed if you’re hoping to see plenty of the superhero stuff in Marvel’s new Wonder Man. But the eight-part series is better for it, leaving room, instead, to focus on offering a new take on male friendship and the film industry. The show follows struggling actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who leaps at the chance to audition for his dream role, Wonder Man. There, he befriends fellow actor Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who isn’t exactly who he says he is. The strength of the show lies in its depiction of the relationship between the leads and its interrogation of the effects of art and how it gets corrupted. Wonderman is clever, tender and altogether wonder-ful thing. Lucy Mangan
Music
Tyler Ballgame: For the First Time, Again | ?????
Tyler Ballgame’s vocal style – which on his debut album, For the First Time, Again, is straightforwardly beautiful – features a bruised, brooding croon that sweeps into an emotive falsetto as if doing so were the easiest thing in the world. The lyrics tend toward open-hearted, no-filter confessional. Largely recorded live, the quality of the material is such that the listener is swept along while it plays – the abundance of gorgeous melodies, most notably on Deepest Blue and Waiting So Long; the magical tempo shifts of You’re Not My Baby Tonight. You can understand why Ballgame has caused so much excitement so quickly Alexis Petridis
Film
Is This Thing On? | ?????
For Bradley Cooper’s new film, which is inspired by British comic John Bishop’s often told autobiographical anecdote, Will Arnett plays a regular guy with a regular job, unhappily married with two young kids. As he heads towards divorce, he discovers stand-up comedy by performing in an open-mic slot one night on a weed-fuelled whim, and finds that audiences love his unfunny but sweetly honest confessional ramblings. It is a likable story that offers up drama, thankfully, about comedians who aren’t supposed to be dark or malign. Peter Bradshaw
Theatre
A Grain of Sand, Arcola theatre, London | ?????
Sarah Agha plays Renad, an 11-year-old growing up in war-torn Gaza who dreams of becoming a famous storyteller. This solo show builds its drama through multiple young voices, based on verbatim accounts from a booklet compiled by Leila Boukarim and Asaf Luzon called A Million Kites: Testimonies and Poems from the Children of Gaza. These devastating stories are leavened by a magical realist element that transports us into Palestinian folklore, with the figure of Anqa, an ancient phoenix, at its centre, producing a show that is beguiling yet still deeply heartbreaking. Arifa Akbar
The front pages
“Starmer opens door to UK visit by Xi as China relationship is ‘reset’,” is the splash on the Guardian on Friday. “Great Ball of China,” says the Star, while the Mail asks: “Is that it?”
“Iranian guard corps to be treated as terrorists by UK,” has the Times. “UK set to deport asylum seekers to war-torn Syria in migrant crackdown,” is the lead story at the i. “Revolt of cancelled elections,” is the headline at the Telegraph. “Companies scoop $22bn in contracts from Trump’s immigration agencies,” at the FT.
“I’ve lost my brothers,” says the Mirror, “Sophie’s plea: Don’t snatch hope away from us,” has the Express. Finally the Sun with “Gang raids Maya & Ruben’s £4m pad,” and the Metro: “Bus snatch hero sacked.”
Today in Focus
Minneapolis citizens on protecting their neighbours from ICE
Since the beginning of January, thousands of ICE agents have been deployed to the city. Confusion, violence and chaos followed. Two people have been killed, hundreds have disappeared – but that’s not the full story. Because thousands of residents in the city have been mobilising. Annie Kelly spoke to five people living in Minneapolis about how they have been taking on ICE – and the consequences.
Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Ali Akbar, France’s last newspaper hawker, was made a knight of the National Order of Merit at the Élysée Palace by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday.
The 73-year-old, originally from Pakistan, has spent over five decades pounding the pavements of Paris, engaging with locals, offering news parodies, and becoming a fixture of the city’s cultural life.
Macron praised Akbar, calling him the “most French of the French” and the “voice of the French press” in Saint-Germain.
Speaking to Reuters in August, Akbar highlighted the delight he got from walking through Paris each day. “It’s love,” Akbar said as he crisscrossed the cobbled streets of Saint Germain-des-Prés. “If it was for the money, I could do something else. But I have a great time with these people.”
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
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