From where I’m standing, I see a lot of noise from people complaining that the high street is dying in the UK.

My hot take on all this is: What did you expect? The high street shopping experience in the UK is the same as it was for me growing up in the early 2000s, just as it was for my mum, who talks about it from her youth, and as it generally seems in older footage dating back to the 1950s.

What value do your generic clothes stores, department stores, electronics shops, or WHSmith even have? They sell you the same products at overpriced prices. For me, that’s just verbally selling low-quality goods that I can find in many other stores.

The styling, experience, and overall aesthetic of the British high street are all incredibly dated, giving you no reason to shop there.

Aren’t you tired of everything morphing into the same thing, selling you cheaply made stuff from the other side of the planet in shops like Matalan, Peacocks, and so on?

Our standards are so incredibly low, yet it’s something we should be saving? Sephora, UNIQLO, and Korean beauty/restaurants are all doing great because they actually keep investing in their image and desirability, constantly. They don’t stop just because they had success in one area. This is something I find that the UK does quite poorly, outside of maybe football, automotive, and cinema.

Meanwhile, when you try to find most British brands, it’s always some obscure website, or you have to dig through layers of searching online to find something that isn’t awful quality, like what you’d find in H&M or Primark.

Going from shopping in East Asia to the UK, you’d genuinely think the UK is a near-third-world country. Everything on the high street is a near copy of something you could have found 20-30 years ago. People keep wanting to keep businesses alive that don’t innovate, who sell goods that are as cheap as possible and hold no real value. Just look at the food—putting an Oreo in Cadbury is considered some wacky, crazy thing. Have you seen even our McDonald’s or KFC compared to other countries? Incredibly boring and safe.

The UK has not kept up with an evolving world. Brands like Lotus were falling apart and failing before being sadly bought by foreign companies.

We need to innovate and actually create something desirable. Brands like TopShop and Debenhams failed because of a lack of innovation. The British high street has become a wasteland of boredom, copycats, and a lack of competition.

A generally crap website, like Amazon for example, does so well because they offer one thing that people want: quick products. That’s a tiny innovation, yet it has catapulted them to success. Meanwhile, many UK high street stores fail to make even small changes to meet basic consumer demands, like convenience and speed. Just a recent personal experience: I tried to buy something from House of Fraser during Black Friday and had never shopped there before.

I wanted to return an item, but I couldn’t return it in store, and I was forced to pay £5 to return it. Why? It makes shopping there so unappealing after the one time I tried. This, to me, is a reflection of British businesses at the moment: they don’t care about wanting you to come back. The British high street remains stuck in the past, unable to keep up with the evolving expectations of today’s shoppers or, well, anyone who wants something more than just the ability to use a debit card to pay for things.

Just look at loyalty schemes/cards in the UK. Genuinely crap and boring, whereas in East Asia you can buy a loyalty membership that usually has 4-5 different tiers, offering everything from permanent discounts after reaching a certain spending threshold, to free parking, and small things like exclusive shopping for seasonal items. The UK doesn’t have the ability to sell an ecosystem or lifestyle. Even something like Westfield is really boring and outdated compared to East Asian department stores.

In my opinion, UK businesses keep disappearing, and new foreign brands are winning because we have lost our ability to innovate and compete. Were Wilko, BHS, or Woolworths even businesses worth existing, without their long-established presence?

Yet, newer brands like GymShark are doing great because they understand that they cannot just lay flat and do nothing. You need to actually understand the consumer, rather than relying on sales statistics in an office building. No one is going to buy your products or services if they themselves aren’t actually worth something.

Additionally, I see British retail not utilising the cultural strengths we already have. Just look at Fortnum & Mason, bursting with tourists, because their products have unique packaging, styling, and an overall shopping experience that plays well into what can be seen as “British.” Whereas NEXT, River Island, M&S, Guess, Jigsaw, Lindex—do any of these scream “different” to you in any way? And I’m talking about the bigger players here, compared to, say, Zara or UNIQLO.

British retail to me is this: boring, a copy and paste of each other, no risk, no innovation, waiting to be overtaken. We need to compete and have higher expectations. I mean cmon, why do you think coffee shops are ever increasing in amount, but your general baker who’s been baking a generic white bread loft, with the same recipe since opening isn’t? The issue isn’t the original loft of bread, it is the lack experimenting, adding and removing things off their menu that is, improving their branding, the social media presence, hell, even their Google Maps listing.

Stop supporting zombie businesses.

Hello all,

I could do with a bit of a morale boost. I'm quite seriously considering leaving the Party, and am wondering what keeps you all motivated?

The more I sit back and think about the last 14 years - the lies about immigration, the decline of our infrastructure, the loss of social cohesion, our declining economy - the more I wonder what the point of the Conservative government was.

Don't get me wrong - I think Labour are worse - but let's not pretend that we didn't hand Labour a poisoned chalice. I find myself wondering how I'd "sell" the Conservative party on the doorstep anymore. Why would I trust anything the party comes out with, after the outright lies we (or, rather, our successive PMs) told about immigration - for example?

What do you all think? How do you stay motivated - what keeps you convinced that the Tory party is the place to be, and the best thing for the country?

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It's the penultimate week before Christmas.

The main focus is the Finance Bill, which writes much of the Budget into law. MPs will spend two sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday debating it as a committee of the whole House.

Martyn's law gets another hearing on Monday.

The bill responds to the 2017 Manchester Arena attack and requires venues to take stricter measures against terrorist attacks.

And we also get two ten minute rule motions.

These rarely become law. They're more of a vehicle for raising awarness of an issue. The topics are tighter sentencing for tool thieves and... outlawing cousin marriage.

MONDAY 9 DECEMBER

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill – report stage and 3rd reading
Applies to: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland
Requires venues where large groups gather to implement protective measures against terrorist attacks. The level of protection required depends on the size of the venue and nature of the event. Known as Martyn's law after Manchester Arena attack victim Martyn Hett, whose mother has campaigned for stronger security measures at venues.
Draft bill (PDF) / Commons Library briefing

TUESDAY 10 DECEMBER

Marriages (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Bill
Bans first cousins from marrying each other. Ten minute rule motion presented by Richard Holden.

Finance Bill – committee of the whole House
Applies to: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland
Writes many of the measures announced in the Budget into law.
Draft bill (PDF) / Commons Library briefing

WEDNESDAY 12 DECEMBER

Theft of Tools of Trade (Sentencing) Bill
Takes financial losses, including lost income, into account when deciding sentencing for the theft of work tools. Ten minute rule motion presented by Amanda Martin.

Finance Bill – committee of the whole House
Continued from Tuesday.

THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER

No votes scheduled

FRIDAY 14 DECEMBER

No votes scheduled

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Given the rise of populist, anti-intellectual, pro-Russian ideology in Western conservatism, what resources are available that aim to counteract this ideology and define conservatism (ideally social conservatism) as distinct from this ‘new’ ideology?

I realise that I’m throwing a bunch of individual ideological trends together, but it seems more and more that these have become a separate ideology, distinct from the conservativism of 10 years ago.

View Poll

There was a thread yesterday bringing up disappointment with Badenoch's messaging about identity issues.

So like her or hate her; what electoral performance would you expect her to deliver to not get sacked after an election assuming she does not "win" the election outright - in which case no sane party would replace her.

--

For me it would be getting at least 33% of the vote or 280-300 seats possibly then you could argue she has made "headway" through labour majority.

But if she cant beat Micheal Howard in the popular vote (32%) or isn't within at least close to David Cameron in 2010 in terms of raw seats (306). Then I would have to say my expectation as a party member is she has to go even if the performance was better than the 2024 wipeout.

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/starmers-mcdonalds-joke-would-be-called-racist-if-made-by-a-tory-kemi-badenoch-claims-13267983

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Foreign criminals who avoided deportation committed more than 10,000 offences in a year

A quarter of offenders from overseas went on to reoffend in UK after being released from jail and remaining in the country

Foreign criminals who avoided deportation committed 10,000 offences in a single year, official figures show.

Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data has revealed that a quarter of foreign criminals went on to reoffend in the UK after being released from jail and remaining in the country.

Each of the 3,235 foreign offenders freed from jail accounted for three crimes on average, giving the total in the year to March 2022 of 10,012 further offences. That represented a rise of 25 per cent on the previous year’s total of 8,021 offences committed by 2,462 freed foreign criminals.

Over the four years of the data, released by the MoJ in a parliamentary question, foreign offenders were responsible for around 40,000 crimes. Offences ranged from murder to knife possession and drug-dealing.

As well as including criminals who avoided deportation, the data also included offenders who returned to the UK to commit their crimes after being deported.

The Home Secretary is required by law to deport any foreign criminal jailed for more than a year but has discretion to remove those jailed for under one year if such a move is considered to be in the public interest.

Rupert Lowe, the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth, who extracted the data from the MoJ, said: “Everyone who commits a crime should be deported. Why are we tolerating this, particularly when we see the reoffending rates are so high?”

Mr Lowe also urged the Government to be more open with information on the amount of crime committed by migrants, including those who entered legally and illegally.

Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, has proposed legislation that would require the Government each year to present a report to Parliament detailing the nationality, visa and asylum status of every offender convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous 12 months.

Mr Jenrick said: “Tens of thousands of offences a year would be prevented if the Government took a zero tolerance approach to deporting foreign national offenders. The public expects robust action.”

There are currently more than 10,000 foreign criminals held in UK prisons, accounting for some 12 per cent of the total, with Albanians topping the list, followed by Polish, Romanian, Irish and Jamaican.

Ernesto Elliott, a Jamaican criminal jailed for knife crime, went on to murder a 35-year-old man in a knife fight after being released from prison.

Elliott was due to be on a deportation flight on Dec 2 2020 after being convicted of knife crime, but he and 22 other serious criminals submitted last-minute appeals – including human rights claims – which led to them avoiding deportation to Jamaica.

The 23 criminals had been sentenced to a combined 156 years in jail. Their appeals came just days after 60 celebrities, authors and other public figures signed an open letter opposing the flight.

Elliott was jailed for at least 26 years for murder after the knife fight in a street in Greenwich, south-east London, in broad daylight. Onlookers who witnessed the bloody, eight-minute confrontation suffered “significant trauma”, police said.

In a second case, a Jamaican drug dealer who evaded deportation from Britain for a violent crime went on to kill a young woman in her own home. Lloyd Byfield, 48, was jailed for life as a judge expressed concern that failure to remove him from Britain had left him free to kill an innocent woman.

At least five dangerous criminals deported for crimes including firearms offences were jailed in the 18 months to 2022 after returning to the UK to continue to run their crime empires.

One Albanian gangster who sneaked back into the UK after deportation and lived freely for years was finally caught with two loaded guns and £70,000 worth of cannabis.

Mauricio Myftaraj was jailed for 15 years over firearms and drugs offences after police raided his home where they also found 40 rounds of ammunition, gunpowder, ball bearings and £20,000 in cash.

He was deported in 2015 and banned from returning after he was jailed three years earlier for a firearms offence. He managed to return illegally and continued his involvement in serious and organised crime.

Flogert Farruku, who was found acting as a “gardener” at a £60,000 cannabis farm, had previously been deported after being caught doing the same thing. He has now been jailed once more, and again faces deportation upon his release.

An MoJ spokesman said: “It costs tens of thousands to hold an offender in prison and since the new Government came into power, we have returned 14 per cent more foreign national offenders than in the same period last year.

“As the public would rightly expect, we continue to work closely with the Home Office to deport more foreign national offenders, keeping our streets safe and saving taxpayers millions.”

It comes as an illegal immigrant previously deported for a drug offence has been jailed again – this time for transporting £100,000 worth of cannabis around the UK. Armando Gjoka, 24, from Albania, was jailed for 20 months after he was caught by police who discovered 10 vacuum-sealed bags of the class B drug in the car.