WHILE self-indulgent MPs prance for the media about how their consciences won’t let them fight for the party or the manifesto they were elected to fight for, there’s a crisis on our high streets.

We’ve grown used to the collapse of household-name firms like Woolworths, Toys R Us and Maplin and the decimation of previously common outlets from House of Fraser to Debenham’s. Remaining firms from Tesco to M&S are shutting stores and cutting jobs.

An unreconstructed politics has no answers to the death of the high street. Just as the prophets of globalisation claimed there was no alternative to “flexible” contracts — job insecurity — and the shift of manufacturing abroad, complacent Tories blame the loss of retail jobs on unstoppable trends such as online shopping. But as with every sector from transport to the Post Office the real culprit is the short-termism and myopic lack of ideas typical of modern British capitalism. The need for high street shops is still there. It’s our political and business leaders who are failing to respond.