And so Wilko goes next month. Another store permanently closes its doors in Watford.

It joins the roll call of shuttered shops and is the latest in a long line; Debenhams, BHS, John Lewis, and Clements are all part of Watford’s retail history now. 12,500 jobs will be lost.

It’s demise wasn’t inevitable despite the current cost-of-living crisis. If you go around paying millions in shareholder dividends while your business is massively in the red, there will be trouble in store.

Britain’s economy has shrunk, the Office for National Statistics has just announced. That means we are all still feeling the pain in our pockets and purses.

It’s not just the size of the economy that’s shrinking. The curse of ‘shrink-flation’ is upon us all. The price of a product may remain the same, but the size of them on the supermarket shelves gets ever smaller, so you get less for your money.

I am sure, like me, you have noticed this. When I go round the supermarket totting up the prices of my items on the way, I get less far round before reaching my budget limit.

The Government would have us celebrate the price at which food is going up is now ‘only’ 13.4 per cent. That’s still outrageous, and it is baked-in as those prices are never coming down. Inflation upon inflation.

While prices rise our schools crumble. The concrete crisis shows what a mess broken Britain is in. I believe in this country. After 13 years of the Conservatives, during five of which, the Liberal Democrats backed them to the hilt, we’re being short-changed.

It’s a real-life nightmare. Polling day provides the escape.

  • Cllr Matt Turmaine is Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Watford