So the barbarians are at the gates again, and this time they come bearing the casket of WHSmith. Up to 150 of their High Street stores are to close, a rescue deal having been approved, which is a bit like a doctor approving a course of leeches for a patient already in a coma. The High Street revival, that chimera we have chased for a decade, now looks less like a phoenix and more like a damp squib. It is time we stopped pretending that a nation of Amazon Prime addicts and charity shop rummagers can sustain a retail ecosystem built for the Victorians.
Let us not mince words. WHSmith, for all its shabbiness and bewildering array of overpriced stationery, was a totem. It stood there, sandwiched between a Greggs and a betting shop, offering a faint pretence of middle-class respectability. You could buy a copy of the Times, a sad sandwich, and an inappropriately themed birthday card for a nephew you barely know. It was the spiritual home of the British commuter, a place of transient transactions and quiet desperation. Now its decline is being cast as a tragedy. But is it not rather a mercy?
The reality is that the High Street died long ago. We simply refused to administer the last rites. The broadband revolution, which began as a novelty, has become a cultural haemorrhage. We now live in a world where the physical bookstore is a museum piece, the record shop a fetish object for hipsters, and the department store a vast echo chamber of bankruptcy. The High Street has been reduced to a parade of vape shops, pawnbrokers, and coffee outlets that charge five pounds for a latte with a whisper of foamed milk. This is not a revival. This is a prolonged wake.
And let us consider the cultural implications. WHSmith, for all its failings, was a curatorial space. It allowed the unwashed masses to browse a selection of books chosen by someone other than an algorithm. Now we are left with the tyranny of the recommendation engine, which ensures that you will only ever encounter works that confirm your existing biases. The intellectual life of the nation is being flattened, and the closure of these stores is a symptom of a deeper decay. We are becoming a society of niche consumers, each trapped in our own digital bubble, and the death of the High Street is both a symptom and a cause.
Of course, the sentimentalists will wring their hands and speak of communities being ripped apart. They will decry the loss of jobs, the boarded-up windows, the sense of abandonment. But let us be honest: the High Street has been a ghost town for years, kept on life support by business rates relief and pensioner loyalty. The community that supposedly depended on WHSmith already migrated online, where they squabble on Facebook and order their toothpaste from Ocado. The real community, the one built on chance encounters and shared spaces, expired when the last independent butcher closed its doors in 1995.
The rescue deal itself is instructive. It is a workout, a financial viagra that will keep the brand alive in a diminished form, perhaps in airport terminals and railway stations. This is the natural habitat of the modern retail survivor: the captive audience of the nervous traveller, who will pay six pounds for a bottle of water and a forgotten book. The High Street, meanwhile, will be left to the charity shops and the pound shops, the tumbleweed and the graffiti. It is not a pretty picture, but it is an honest one.
What we are witnessing is the final stage of a long cycle. The retail apocalypse is not a crisis; it is a correction. We have too much space, too many shops, too many things. The British people have decided, through their wallets and their lifestyles, that they do not want a High Street. They want a warehouse in an industrial estate, a delivery van in the driveway, and a screen in their living room. This is not a tragedy. It is simply the way of things. Rome fell, the Victorian empire collapsed, and now the High Street is joining the dustbin of history. Let us not mourn. Let us instead ask what will replace it. But I suspect we will not like the answer.
