Will the state of the high street have political consequences for the UK?

New PM Andy Burnham has made the renaissance of high streets one of his top priorities for good reason. As well as being places for shopping, they are often the heart of a community, both physically and socially. Whenever pubs, cafes, bookshops or supermarkets close, there can be political fallout.

In August 2024, the normally quiet neighbourhood of Walthamstow in London was in uproar. More than 1,500 residents had signed a petition to ‘safeguard the soul of our beloved neighbourhood’. The cause? The possible opening of a branch of Gail’s, the upmarket bakery chain, which locals feared would overshadow the independent shops that they loved.

Walthamstow residents lost the fight, and a Gail’s is now open on their high street. But the episode captured something felt much more widely across the country. A June 2025 Ipsos poll for the Sunday Times found that 59% of respondents felt that there were too few good shopping options in their local area, and 57% lamented the lack of independent shops on their high street.

When local shops disappear, it affects more than just where people buy things: it changes the feel of a whole neighbourhood. Researchers and urban thinkers have long recognised this. Jane Jacobs, writing in the 1960s, argued that small independent shops are essential to making city life pleasant and vibrant (The Death and Life of Great American Cities). To quote the UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, high streets are the ‘beating heart of local communities’.

More recently, urban planners have pointed out that these shops are what make neighbourhoods walkable and liveable (Speck, 2022). They are central to ideas like 15-minute cities (Moreno, 2014), where everything you need is within a short walk or cycle from home; cities for the people, where places are designed around human scale and everyday life rather than cars and workplaces (Gehl, 2013); and restorative cities, where the built environment actively supports mental wellbeing (Roe and McCay, 2021).

Sociologists make a similar point from a different angle. Local shops aren’t just places to spend money: they’re also spots where people can unwind, chat and feel part of a community – a break from the pressures of daily life and a spiritual tonic (Oldenburg, 1999; Klinenber, 2018).

Given the importance of local shops in community life, their decline can also have serious political consequences. Commentators have started drawing a connection between the state of the high street and the rise of populist parties. Writing earlier this year in the Guardian, John Harris argues that ‘the UK’s high streets have reached a tipping point – and Reform will reap the benefits’. Jim Armitage in the Times makes a similar prediction, suggesting that the next elections will be shaped by high street decline, with Reform UK best placed to benefit.

Indeed, populists have often been seen as the political home of the ‘somewheres’ – people deeply attached to a particular place and community – as opposed to the ‘anywheres’ – people with portable identities and careers who can thrive wherever opportunities take them (Turner, 2000; Goodhart, 2017). When the identity of a neighbourhood is seemingly under threat, support for populist parties tends to grow.

What does research say about the link between high street changes and electoral outcomes?

Research shows that when the high street declines, people are more likely to turn to populist parties. Analysis of survey data between 2013 and 2016 shows that people living in areas that lost more pubs were more likely to say that they would vote for UKIP – the party that eventually became Reform (Bolet, 2021).

A different study takes a broader view, looking at empty shopfronts rather than just pubs: again using survey data, the authors find that people in areas with more vacant retail units were more likely to support UKIP (Fetzer et al, 2025).

This is not just a UK phenomenon. In France, a note for the French economic council documents how communes that lost local amenities like bakeries and butchers were more likely to experience Gilets Jaunes protests (the mass movement that swept France between 2018 and 2020) and higher rates of abstention at elections (Davoine et al, 2020; Algan et al, 2020). The closure of bar-tabacs – the French cultural equivalent of the British pub – has helped to drive up support for the Rassemblement National, France’s main far-right party, particularly in rural areas (Subtil, 2026).

But as the Walthamstow story shows, it is not just about pub closures or empty shops. Voters are responding to something broader: the kinds of shops that are present in their neighbourhood.

Another study by Wolton et al (2025) draws two distinctions: first, between consumer-facing outlets like restaurants, bars, personal services and retail shops, and other types of businesses; and second, between independent shops and chain brands like big supermarkets or coffee chains.

The findings are clear. When an area loses independent consumer shops, support for UKIP in local elections goes up and Labour loses votes. Chain stores and other types of outlets do not have the same electoral impact. The effect is strongest for shops that have been around long enough to become part of the neighbourhood, and for the kinds of places that matter most for community life, such as pubs, cafes, supermarkets and bookshops.

Which party ends up losing votes as UKIP/Reform gain? Labour. Perhaps Andy Burnham’s emphasis on the high street is not just about helping citizens, but is also electorally savvy.

Why does the state of the high street matter politically?

Several explanations have been put forward for why high street decline might fuel support for populist parties. One straightforward possibility is that people simply move. As a neighbourhood loses its best shops, better-off residents, who tend to vote for mainstream parties, leave for more attractive areas, while those who are economically worse off, who tend to be drawn to populist parties, stay put.

This is a plausible story, but it is probably not the main one. High street decline has similar electoral effects in both struggling and thriving areas, which suggests that it is not just about who is left behind. There is also evidence that residents actually change how they intend to vote as they watch their local high street deteriorate (Wolton et al, 2025).

Another possible explanation is that when local shops disappear, people simply have fewer opportunities to interact with one another. Jane Jacobs (1961) argued long ago that casual encounters on the street – such as popping into a local shop or chatting with a neighbour outside a café – are what build a sense of trust and mutual respect in a community.

Researchers today call this generalised trust or thin trust – the feeling that you can rely on the people around you, that strangers will help if it’s needed and that it is worth engaging with your community (for example, Putnam, 1993). At the same time, current data imply that the number of independent shops in an area has little effect on how much residents trust their neighbours (Wolton et al, 2025).

This leaves us with two possible explanations. The first suggests that we should look less at how people feel and more at what they actually do in their neighbourhoods. Rather than measuring abstract notions like trust, we should ask whether people participate in local organisations that bring residents together and help them to improve their area.

The American political scientist, Robert Putnam, called this social capital – the networks and institutions that allow communities to function and act collectively. There does seem to be a connection here: areas with more independent shops also tend to have higher levels of participation in local clubs and community organisations (Wolton et al, 2025).

The last possible explanation is about safety. If a high street is busy with people patronising independent shops, shopkeepers and consumers naturally watch over each other and deter petty crime. Jane Jacobs called this the eyes on the street (though her argument was more nuanced: she emphasised that what matters is having a variety of different types of shops, so that people are out and about at all times of day and evening, not just during peak hours).

At a time when many people feel that crime is getting worse (79% of respondents agreed with this in the June 2025 Ipsos poll mentioned above), the loss of that informal sense of safety may help to explain why high street decline pushes people towards populist parties. That said, no research has tested this directly, so we are speculating.

What role for policies to protect the high street?

The transformation of the high street has real consequences for local economies, communities and politics. As Alan Milburn, former MP for Darlington, put it,‘[t]he collapse of high streets was as damaging for the local psyche as the end of the factory’ (quoted in Payne, 2021).

Recent research in economics and political science backs this up. And because private businesses rarely consider the wider social and political benefits of a thriving high street when making their investment decisions, there is a strong case for government intervention.

The UK government has not been standing still. The Pride in Place Strategy offers financial support for local residents to lead change in their communities, with £20 million allocated across 244 neighbourhoods in England, Scotlandand Wales. One of its three pillars, alongside better community and public spaces, is to bring back thriving high streets in towns that have seen their centre hollowed out.

Even so, the main thrust of the government’s high street policy is about cutting red tape rather than direct investment, making it easier for local councils to take over empty landmark buildings, and for business owners to invest in shopfronts and street decoration. In that sense, the approach is more passive than active.

More ambitious policies are possible and arguably necessary.

First, UK policy-makers should fix the tax system that punishes physical shops. The single biggest structural disadvantage facing independent retailers is the business rates system. It taxes the physical presence of a shop on the high street while leaving online competitors largely untouched. A small bookshop or café pays rates on its premises, while Amazon’s warehouse pays a fraction relative to turnover.

This inequity should be ended or turned in favour of high street premises. Andy Burnham’s decision to cut the business rate for pubs and music venues by 20% is a good start, but it does not go far enough. The currently touted proposal of increasing the business tax thresholds to protect small shops and targeting warehouses would make a real change.

Second, policy-makers should find ways to make the high street easier to reach on foot, by bike and by bus. Campaigners and urban planners have long argued that cars are one of the biggest obstacles to vibrant city life. Cars are often thought to bring customers, but in practice they tend to discourage the kind of leisurely street life that makes high streets thrive. It is pedestrians, not drivers, who browse and shop. More bike lanes, parking moved away from the main street and better public transport links would all help to bring people in and encourage them to linger in a safe and pleasant environment.

A holistic approach here is critical. Punishing cars without offering alternatives would depress the high street and hand a victory to populists. Evidence from Italy highlights how green policies targeting cars can end up benefitting a populist party (Colantone et al, 2024).

Next, UK policy-makers should help communities to bring the ‘right’ shops back. Better access is only half the picture. There is little point bringing people to a high street if there is nothing worth going to. So, improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure should be paired with subsidised rents of commercial spaces. Again, the changes implemented by the new government – giving councils the power to block betting and vape shops – are promising, but they are partial solutions.

Beyond betting and vape shops, when a valued commercial property comes up for sale, the community that depends on it currently has no say in what replaces it. Scotland’s Community Empowerment Act 2015 offers a model: it gives community groups a statutory right to register an interest in land and buildings, and to be notified when they come up for sale, with time to prepare a bid.

A similar right could be extended to communities across England and Wales, specifically for commercial properties on designated high streets. In the extreme, temporary public ownership (by local councils preferably) could be allowed to bring in the kinds of independent shops, cafes, bookshops and food stores that make a high street worth visiting. Private owners could be paid the rents of those places or receive compensation funded by special levies.

Finally, the state must step in to help local outlets to compete with online giants. Independent shops now face competitive pressure from big chains as well as global companies like Amazon, as more consumers turn to online shopping. Your corner shop should not have to build an app to survive. Publicly backed local platforms, shared click-and-collect services or cooperative delivery logistics could help small retailers to reach customers without each having to build their own e-commerce operation from scratch.

Several French cities (Ma Ville Mon Shopping) and UK cities (the Totally Locally initiative) have experimented with municipal online marketplaces that aggregate local traders. Making it a government policy is one way to give local shops a fighting chance against online competition.

These policies require political will and dedicated funding. But the case for them is strong. According to the Community Life Survey 2024/25, 59% of UK residents say that they are proud of their local area, yet 30% feel that their neighbourhood is getting worse.

The political stakes are also real. The research reviewed in this article suggests that when high streets decline, populist parties gain. Neglecting the places where people actually live their daily lives is bad urban policy and hands a ready-made grievance to those who argue that mainstream politicians have stopped caring about ordinary citizens. An active strategy of revitalising the high streets is one of the most tangible ways in which governments can push back against this narrative.

Where can I find out more?

The structural transformation of the public space: high-street changes and populism: Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) paper by Stephane Wolton, Samira Gasimova, Ricardo Paccioretti, Giuseppe Palladino and Pieter Scribante, summarised at VoxEU.

Drinking alone: local socio-cultural degradation and radical right support – the case of British pub closures: 2021 paper by Diane Bolet, published in Comparative Political Studies.

Local decline and populism: 2026 paper by Thiemo Fetzer, Jacob Edenhorfer and Prashant Garg, forthcoming in Economic Letters.

Palaces for the People: how social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization, and the decline of civic life: 2018 book by Eric Klinenberg.

The 15-Minute City: a solution to saving our time and our planet: 2024 book by Carlos Moreno and colleagues.

The Road to Somewhere: 2017 book by David Goodhart.

Broken Heartlands: A journey through Labour’s lost England: 2021 book by Sebastian Payne.

Small shops and social cohesion (English summary): 2020 report by Yann Algan and colleagues written for the French Council of Economic Analysis (CAE) – see also the full study in French (Davoine et al, 2020).