Yesterday the government gave itself a new power over which shops may open on your street, and spent the same day explaining that it had no power at all over the thing everybody was asking about.
Crossbencher · 11 August 2026
Yesterday the government gave itself a new power over which shops may open on your street, and spent the same day explaining that it had no power at all over the thing everybody was asking about.
Start with the shops, because it was the announcement of the day and it isn't a silly idea. The BBC, the Independent and the Mirror all reported that councils are to get more powers to stop vape shops and betting shops opening on their high streets, with the Prime Minister making the case himself that local people should decide what a high street is for. Anyone who has watched a parade of shops turn into the same four trades understands the impulse. The Express carried the obvious objection: a council that refuses a tenant doesn't thereby find a better one, and the likeliest result of a veto is an empty window rather than a bookshop. Both of those can be true at once. What nobody on either side asked is why those four trades are the ones that can still pay the rent.
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