Is it any coincidence that the British high street is dying a slow and painful death under Labour? The public finances are in an even bigger mess than the 1970s, but, of course, this dangerous, dithering and dogmatic Government knows best.

So instead of prioritising spending restraint over more tax increases, and redoubling efforts to boost growth, this mob of mayhem presides over crisis after crisis.

Being taken back to the 70s is a terrifying prospect for anyone who remembers the pitiful state of the economy for much of the decade.

Few places exhibit evidence of this ineptitude quite like the once-thriving thoroughfares of our bustling towns and cities.

Labour, historically and most recently, has done so much to harm this country and its way of life.

The appalling assault on businesses launched by Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just seen the life sucked out of the high street, and so it is not difficult to see why some experts are predicting that the next financial crisis might be lurking just around the corner.

When even Poundland and charity shops are closing at a rate, there is clearly a problem. Clearly, we should all be terrified at what could happen next if the experts are right.

But others must also shoulder their share of the blame for ​the ruin being wreaked from Paisley to Penzance.

More than 13,000 shops have closed since 2024 due to high costs, ​including vicious VAT and business rate raids, reduced consumer spending, and online competition. Today, one in seven shops stands vacant.

​And few have stuck two fingers up to the communities they claim to champion than banks and building societies, with one in particular the worst offender.

Since 2015, Lloyds Banking Group, one of the UK’s largest financial services organisations with 30 million customers and 65,000 employees, has shut more than 1,000 branches.

And this after it was given £20.3 billion of taxpayers’ money amid the 2008 financial crisis to prevent collapse. The bailout was triggered by disastrous losses from the acquisition of HBOS.

Things were so bad that it was once 43% owned by you, the public. So you might think they would be “by your side” as per its long-standing marketing slogan, designed to demonstrate support, reliability, and partnership.

Last year, it reported a 12% increase in pre-tax profits to £6.66​ billion.

​But this year it plans to close a further 95 branches in a devastating rolling programme of cuts that further isolates and alienates communities.

A​ more treacherous act to the people – disproportionately pensioners – it claims to serve is hard to imagine, especially when a company spokesman trots this drivel in a statement: “We’re giving our customers the flexibility to bank wherever and whenever they need us.” Except, of course, any number of towns and cities where ​they have cut and run.

Between January 2015 and December 2024, some 6,609 bank branches closed. Today, only about 38% of the network from a decade ago remains operational.

There was a time was when businesses were ​unashamed champions of the high streets they inhabited and served. Not now.

Ms Reeves embodies the same pattern that has marked every Labour Government in living memory – tax more, spend more, and borrow even more.

Under Labour, we are not only seeing the life sucked out of the high street, but the life being sucked out of Britain too.