For generations, WHSmith was a familiar sight on British high streets. Nobody went there expecting an extraordinary shopping experience. You went in for a newspaper, a birthday card, some stationery, or perhaps to use the Post Office. It was hardly glamorous, but it was useful.
Then, in 2025, WHSmith sold its high-street business to private equity firm Modella Capital. The shops were renamed TG Jones, a name so determined to sound like business as usual.
Barely a year later, the new owners were restructuring the business, with up to 150 shops facing closure.
Here in Harrow, the future of the town centre’s Post Office has been thrown into uncertainty by plans for closure. In nearby Pinner, the picture is even gloomier, as it’s due to close in two days (22 October).
Losing a stationery shop is unfortunate. Losing the Post Office inside it is rather more serious. For pensioners, small businesses and residents who still rely on face-to-face services, it is not simply another empty shopfront.
But the problem goes far beyond WHSmith. It raises an uncomfortable question for Conservatives: what happens when the free market we defend begins undermining the communities we want to preserve?
We Conservatives believe in free enterprise, and rightly so. Businesses create jobs, generate wealth and reward those willing to work hard, invest and take risks. Competition forces companies to improve. Those that serve customers well succeed; those that don’t must adapt or eventually fail.
That is how a healthy market should work.
But conservatism is not just about making money. We also believe in strong communities, and leaving something worthwhile for the next generation.
And sometimes, those two beliefs collide.
The Left often accuses us of caring more about businesses than ordinary people. It is an unfair caricature of what Conservatives believe. Yet I wonder whether, in defending the free market, we have sometimes turned a blind eye to what certain businesses do with their freedom.
Because there is a difference between making money by building a successful business and making money by taking one apart.
Consider a simple example.
Imagine someone buys a struggling factory. They could invest in better machinery, train workers, improve products and spend years trying to make it competitive again. It is difficult and risky. But if they succeed, the factory becomes more productive, its workers keep their jobs, the owner earns a well-deserved profit and Britain retains its crucial manufacturing capacity.
Alternatively, they might discover that the factory’s land, buildings and machinery are worth more than the business itself. Sell the assets, pocket whatever returns are available, and leave the workers to worry about next month’s payroll.
That practice is better known as “asset stripping”.
Whether Modella fits the label, I can’t yet say. Too much remains undisclosed. But one thing is clear: everyone is looking at the same business, but not everyone will live with the same consequences.
The fund manager reads the balance sheet and thinks about this year’s bonus. The shop assistant thinks about whether she’ll have a job. And the pensioner wonders how many bus trips it will now take to reach the nearest Post Office.
Nor is this confined to the high street.
Think of manufacturing. Britain spent generations building factories, establishing industries that once outbuilt the Luftwaffe and led us to victory. But a factory that helped win the war can be sold in an afternoon, and the workforce, the supply chains or even the whole industry, dismantled within years.
Or consider financial services, where banks borrowed recklessly, piled into loans that would never be repaid, and bet that the good times would last. But when the bubble burst, losses didn’t stay in the City. They spread to every high street in Britain. I’m sure a lot of my readers remember the 2008 financial crisis much better than I do.
Details differ, but the danger is the same: A gamble by a few, a disaster shared by many.
So what should Conservatives do?
Certainly not demand that the Government save every struggling shop or dictate how businesses spend their money. Nobody wants to bring back British Leyland.
But neither should we pretend that every profitable transaction is necessarily good for the economy.
We should start by making it more attractive to build businesses than to dismantle them.
A company investing in new machinery and training its employees is creating something that generates wealth for years. That is why Conservatives made full expensing permanent in 2023, letting firms deduct every pound spent on new machinery from their taxable profits. However, an owner who loads a company with debt can still deduct much of the interest from its tax bill, whether it was borrowed to build something or to pay themselves. Loopholes like these must be fixed.
We should also revisit the rules governing sketchy business practices. We have done it before. After BHS collapsed in 2016, leaving a pension deficit of around £570 million, a Conservative government passed the Pension Schemes Act 2021, making it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, to put workers’ pensions at risk without reasonable excuse. This should apply to all areas of businesses. If an investor loads a business with debt, sells valuable assets or charges it substantial fees through discreetly affiliated companies, we need more transparency about where the money goes and who bears the risks.
And where essential community services are involved, we need a bit of common sense.
On paper, Post Offices are protected. Ministers have kept the requirement for at least 11,500 branches, with 99 per cent of the population living within three miles of one. But national averages were never designed for a whole chain shutting dozens of counters at once.
Hence, when a store with a Post Office counter is about to close, there should be sufficient notice of a possible closure, a serious effort by the Post Office and the Government to find alternative premises, and, if nothing else works, proper arrangements to keep services accessible to affected communities.
Ultimately, the answer is never to abandon the free market. It is to make sure the market rewards those who invest in communities and build lasting businesses in Britain, not those who extract short-term gains.
After all, we are Conservatives. And what’s left to conserve when Britain is hollowed out from within?