Can Labour fix the high street as Debenhams teeters?

Thousands of jobs have been lost in retail and the high street is in a poor state of health. But you can't uninvent Amazon and the convenience of internet retail. So does it need more Mike Ashley, who has at least proved he can make retail work in the current chilly climate?

Boarded up shops are increasingly the norm on the British high street (PA)

“Our high streets are dying and the Tories aren’t doing anything about it. Our communities, hundreds of thousands of jobs and our economy – local and national – depend on thriving high streets,” Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey tweeted over the weekend.

Labour reckons 100,000 jobs have been lost in three years and the politicians may be right. There are more cuts coming too. This is not a good time to be working in retail.

Lots of people have put forward ideas for saving the high street. Some of them have even had a go at putting them into practice but no one has yet found an answer.

Ms Long-Bailey says it’s time to reform business rates and take action on parking charges. She also suggests keeping a register of landlords with empty property.

How should we grade those suggestions for originality? Let’s be generous, a C? Given the government’s flailing efforts are worthy of nothing more than an F, it could be worse.

The trouble with Ms Long-Bailey’s first suggestion is it is often seen as some sort of magic wand.

Sort out the property based levy, so the theory goes, and hey presto, the high street will fill up with shops again.

That view is naive at best even if it were possible to find a realistic way to make the Amazons of this world – with their out of town sheds – pay more, while charging the bricks and mortar brigade less, and at the same time keeping the Treasury happy without generating unforeseen consequences and a cacophony of protest from the losers.

High parking charges aren’t helpful. Nor are the complex rules about where you can and can’t leave your vehicle, and for how long. Ms Long-Bailey isn’t wrong to wag her finger at the private operators that indulge in something that often looks like extortion and research suggests consumers might be more inclined to visit their high street if parking was free.

But nothing’s going to change the advantage, in terms of convenience, online clicks have over high street bricks.

There are people that like spending their weekends shopping but lots don’t, and they might be inclined to stay online even if it gets more expensive.

It is, however, still possible to make a success of owning shops in the current chilly climate.

JD is doing just fine. So is Primark. Sports Direct’s mercurial founder Mike Ashley deserves every bit of the criticism he’s endured over worker treatment and the way the business is governed but he’s still in the game.

An uncomfortable question about the troubled Debenhams is whether it wouldn’t be better off in his hands, long term.

The department store chain is in an unenviable position. It has too much debt, is crippled by long leases on unfavourable terms and has too many dowdy and unprofitable stores. It’s struggling to compete with Amazon and its online peers with its hands tied behind its back, and Mr Ashley is breathing down its neck through Sports Direct’s near 30 per cent holding. Who’d want to swim in that shark tank?

KPMG has been called in to give it a go but can it do better than Mr Ashley? Is the best way for Labour to revive the high street – whisper it quietly – a little more Ashley?

There has to be a better way forward than that, and it wouldn’t take much to improve upon the government’s efforts, such as they are.

But at the same time there are no magic wands and you can’t turn the clock back.

It’s time to recognise that and move forward.