Covid-19 shopping restrictions are going to be a problem for small businesses that brighten our high streets

I feel like I’m a pupil at an eccentric boarding school where the head teacher keeps rewriting the rules, writes Janet Street-Porter

The advantage has been handed to Tesco, Poundland and co (AFP/Getty)

Think of words that have gone out of fashion. Sideboard for example – who needs this large piece of furniture in a small flat in 2020?

Half a century ago, it was a different matter. My parent were the proud owners of a G Plan sideboard full of stuff for meals at the matching dining table in their front room. Table mats, fancy napkin rings, tiny stemmed glasses for sherry and cut glass water glasses that couldn’t go in the dishwasher were all stashed inside. Steak knives in special velvet boxes, a porcelain butter dish, ice cream dishes and a set of tiny knives (in a box lined with white satin) for fruit or cheese.

All these accoutrements sum up fine dining 1960s style – which rarely happened (other than at Christmas) in our semi-detached near the A40 in West London.

Back then, owning a posh sideboard was part of keeping up with the neighbours, a pastime beloved by people like my parents, who had managed to struggle up to the lower rungs of the middle class. My dad had studied at night, passing exams to qualify as an electrical engineer, my mum lied about her qualifications to get into the civil service – and their small attempts at social climbing offered family and friends plenty of opportunities for shopping. It was easy to buy them gifts, easy to write a wedding list. Christmas and birthdays were chance to spend a whole day being a consumer. Back then, it was normal to fill your home with stuff to show how well you were doing.

Now, shopping has been rebranded and gone from a harmless pursuit into something demonised as an activity which endangers the planet by creating waste. We’re said to have reached “peak stuff” – shopping, like class A drugs, is considered an unhealthy addiction. Since Covid arrived, it’s a way to potentially encounter a deadly disease which has claimed millions of lives. Shopping has been put under government control, with rules and regulations about hygiene, distancing and even what’s “essential”.

The restrictions on what can be sold are bizarre to say the least, not to mention confusing. Not least because unless consumers are free to spend on what they want (as opposed to politicians deciding) our economy will be even more f****d, even more jobs will be lost and even more people will be trying to live on the pitiful sums offered by universal credit.

Normally, this weekend would have marked the start of the big Christmas shopping spree, our city streets might be hung with festive lights, but what’s going on at street level is a very different story. This week, Sainsbury’s announced the loss of 3,500 jobs, John Lewis announced 1,500 would lose their jobs in their head office and Clarks, the shoemakers, may have to let 4,000 workers go. Meanwhile, Marks and Spencer announced the first loss (£87.6m) in their 94-year history.

These are all iconic brands, beloved by shoppers for generations. Old style shopping is dying fast, Covid-19 has accelerated the change from a tactile experience, a social activity and a chance to meet friends. During this national lockdown, we are being regulated to simply buy “necessities”, something the Welsh government managed to do in an extremely cack-handed way.

Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief medical and scientific officers respectively, might be the twin harbingers of doom, but the person who dreamt up the “permitted list” of shops which can remain open for the national lockdown is someone with a perverted sense of humour.

Tailors must close but not dry cleaners that carry out alterations. Clothing stores must close, but not supermarkets with aisle after aisle selling cheap clothing – from socks to school uniforms. Beauty salons must close, but not chemists selling beauty products. Pet shops are open, and garden centres, but not gyms – when we’re being told to exercise to stay fit.  

As a result, all our major department stores have closed with only food counters open. Oxford Street will be like a morgue and this could be the final blow for many retailers, who will never re-open. And why can pubs sell take-away beer along with food and yet restaurants have to shut, even if customers were sitting miles apart?

I feel like I’m a pupil at an eccentric boarding school where the head keeps rewriting the rules. I can go to the launderette, the ironmongers and hardware stores, but I can’t have a pal in my house for a meal. I can go to a fishmonger, where my hake or haddock is filleted on demand (albeit by a man wearing gloves), or buy stationery (because some office supplies chains like Ryman offer postal and money order services) and buy exercise sandals in a chemist (but not in a shoe shop).

Small traders, like furniture stores and clothes shops currently ordered to close, argue that the rules are arbitrary and unfair – and they’re right. Poundland is open – presumably because they sell frozen food – and so are craft shops.

Small retailers, from curtain and blind makers to home furnishing stores and antique shops, are the quirky businesses reinventing our high streets in towns like Whitstable – once full of rundown charity shops. These businesses are usually owner-operated, they bring character and charm to the shopping experience. But the government prefers to hand an advantage to Poundland, Tesco and co, in yet another batch of ill-thought out regulations.

It would have been far better to allow all shops to continue to trade, because the alternative is going to be the closure of so many small, yet vibrant, businesses. There’s been no evidence to convince me I am less likely to catch Covid-19 in a large retailer than in my local carpet shop.

At the current rate, expect kippers by post from me this Xmas.