RUTH SUNDERLAND: Labour letting down High Street

Nostalgia is not what it used to be. Not in retail, at any rate. Baby-boomers and Gen X-ers like myself have been harking back for a while to the rose-tinted High Streets of our youth, when virtually every town boasted at least one good department store, a bookshop and a branch of M&S.

Now even young TikTok-ers are reminiscing ruefully about the good old days of shopping when ‘real bargains’ were on offer on Black Friday.

The past for which they yearn is not terribly distant: Amazon launched its first Black Friday deals in the UK in 2010. The concept, which originated in the US where it is the start of the Christmas shopping season after their Thanksgiving celebrations, took off from there. Now, Black Friday is entrenched and around 60pc of British retailers join in.

Despite the anger on TikTok at relatively measly discounts – ‘All I’m getting is 10 or 15 per cent off. Like, what am I supposed to do with that?’ – the event does galvanise the armchair shoppers of Britain.

Buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna reported sales in the first four days of ‘Black Week’ (their term, not mine) were up by more than a third over last year, and by 30 per cent in the first six hours of the day itself.

But it is not an unmixed blessing for the consumer sector as small retailers fear being left out in the cold. Black Friday mainly benefits the big chains and online operators: a survey at the weekend found that while shoppers in theory want to support independent businesses, almost half plan to do festive gift-buying at Amazon.

No laughing matter: Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Christmas, when retailers make a huge chunk of their profit, will be a season of trepidation for many small store owners.

As my colleagues on the Mail on Sunday reported yesterday, shopkeepers in Rachel Reeves’ own constituency are furious – and fearful – because of the costs heaped upon them in the Budget of additional employers’ National Insurance, reduced business rates relief and higher wages.

One man was so angry he wants to bar the Chancellor from his greengrocers shop.

A regular lament on social media sites for my home town of Middlesbrough is the deterioration of the town centre. It used to be vibrant but, having seen the closure of M&S and House of Fraser, both of which had been there more than 100 years, it is just depressing.

The nearby Teesside Park shopping centre is far busier, but also far less atmospheric than the bustle of Linthorpe Road.

Independent, quirky stores such as Boddy’s books or Romer Parrish, a magical toy store in my childhood, are long gone, though the latter has been recreated at Beamish Museum in County Durham by popular demand from the people of the town.

The fate of Romer Parrish is on one level a sad story about a vanishing business and a lost past, but it is also testament to our emotional connection with the bricks and mortar shops that form part of our lives. High Streets are not just about buying things, they are about bumping into friends, mother-and-daughter bonding, coffee with a neighbour, making childhood memories, going into town to see the Christmas lights, the Fenwicks or Fortnum’s window.

Online shopping is brilliant for efficiency, convenience and price, but it doesn’t stir the feelings or warm the heart. Labour should be supporting our High Streets, not pulverising them with an ill-considered and destructive tax raid.