23-07-2025
Britain's tacky cities show we're no longer a rich country
Every now and then you realise a stout oak you loved has been covered by ropes of ivy to the point of oblivion, which feels like an apt metaphor for the burgeoning chains of tourist shops smothering our great cities with their lucrative but charmless tat.
Edinburgh's Royal Mile is now home to 72 gift shops, alongside 42 cafés and restaurants, 13 bars and three kilt specialists. You might as well rename it The Wee Jimmy Krankie Theme Park and abandon all claims to majesty. London's Oxford Street is defaced by American-themed candy stores (estimates range between 20-30 at any given time) spawning a host of investigations over high prices, business tax evasion and counterfeit goods, as they pop up, vanish and reappear with renewed vigour like Japanese Knotweed.
Which begs the question – why aren't we all out on the streets, like the people of Barcelona, Palma and Lisbon, demanding change? I've been on holiday in Greece, where a crazy influx of visitors is bringing tensions to a head. I apologise to taverna waiters for being part of the contagion, explaining that I feel the same every summer in my hometown of Cambridge, now fielding 8.1 million visitors a year.
The city's medieval splendour feels blighted by cruddy stores selling the same Cambridge University sweatshirts you see hanging in the West End. King's Parade is rendered bland by its Costa and Fudge Kitchen, while Indelibly Cambridge and the King's Parade Vape Store are intolerably indistinctive. I'm gaining notoriety as 'the indisputably crazy' woman who yells 'watch out' at grown tourists while pedalling furiously towards their soft, stationary 'I heart Cambridge' hoodies.
How many Cambridge teddies, totes and T-shirts do milling visitors need? Meanwhile glorious independent boutiques like Ian Stevens Leather Goods, the best place in the world for bespoke belts, are priced out of existence. Stevens departed Magdalene Street for Norfolk last summer taking the heady elixir of tanned hide, history and craftsmanship with him.
Despite the city attracting 8.1 million visitors a year, its Labour-run council is constantly fretting about how it can make Cambridge more 'visitor friendly', as if arguably the most ravishing architecture in Christendom, along with world-class museums, galleries and the gorgeous Cam rammed with punts, is not enough. They're steaming ahead with a £75m 'civic quarter project' to redevelop and modernise the town's Market Square, Guildhall and Cornmarket.
The project involves stripping out the centre's historic cobbles to enhance access and endless 'sustainability goals', but in practice means the bustling stalls and wide range of wares (fruit, veg, flowers, cheese, bike repairs and second-hand books) will be reduced and blandly revamped for people who aren't residents. Meanwhile, the real environmental outrage – the pollution of the River Cam by sewage, leading to truly shocking E. coli test results – remains unfixed. My younger son and all his friends have been sick as dogs after swimming. And what about the looming, long-term domestic water crisis across the region?
But who cares when you can rent out shop outlets to vendors of Chinese-made mementoes and keep our cities in lookalike mode with their Starbucks, Sweaty Bettys and Five Guys. I was in Bath earlier this year and I swear for a nanosecond I thought I was back in Cambridge – even the constant weekend hen parties felt the same.
