The closure of former WH Smith stores around the UK is sobering on many levels. The publications they sold were there to be perused, to broaden horizons

Towards the end of the 1970s, the brief but spectacular career of those punk rockers and folk devils the Sex Pistols was followed by The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, a rather tawdry drama-documentary. It recast their rise and fall as a huge scam, summed up by a slogan on a T-shirt worn by their former manager Malcolm McLaren: “Cash from Chaos”.

Back then, that motto was a neat representation of his personal brand of cultural mischief. But the culture always takes unexpected twists and turns – and 50 years on, an almost-identical maxim seems to be defining the fate of an increasing chunk of the British retail economy. While Andy Burnham pledges to restore life to town centres, a private equity outfit is busy buying up national retail chains and then shutting down scores of their outlets, while seemingly operating in line with its boss’s most celebrated quotation: “Where there’s chaos, there’s opportunity.”

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

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