High streets 'hollowed out' - Burnham targets bookies and vape shops

The Prime Minister says high streets have been 'hollowed out' over decades of decline and has vowed to crack down on the spread of betting shops and vaping outlets, the Daily Mail reports. The Guardian carries an opinion piece arguing that 'people power is coming' for betting shops littering high streets, while the language of regeneration returns to the political vocabulary.

'Hollowed out' is the phrase doing work here - it implies something was removed from the inside, leaving only a shell. The high street once anchored a town's commercial and social life; what replaced the butcher and the ironmonger wasn't another kind of shop but a different economic model entirely. Bookies and vape shops pay the rent the previous tenants couldn't, which makes them a symptom rather than a cause. The question the phrase avoids is what economic change made the original high street unviable, and whether restricting the replacement tenants returns the street to its former state or merely leaves the units empty.

The betting shop has been a high street fixture since the Betting and Gaming Act legalised off-course betting in the early nineteen-sixties. Vape shops are newer, a consequence of regulatory arbitrage - vaping was lightly regulated compared to tobacco, creating a retail opportunity. Both occupy premises at rents the previous economy can't support. Restricting them is popular but doesn't answer the prior question: what business model fills the gap if they go.

What to watch: whether any pilot scheme restricting these outlets produces new retail investment or simply accelerates closure. The high street's decline predates both bookies and vapes; removing them tests whether the diagnosis was correct.