In the summer of 2020, when the world was emerging from the hardships of Covid and we needed to get back into the habit of enjoying ourselves, Westminster Council took the bold decision to allow the streets of Soho in central London to be transformed into one great big al fresco dining area. Every evening, the roads would be closed to traffic, and local establishments were encouraged to put out tables, chairs and umbrellas on the tarmac.

We enjoyed ourselves so much that the initiative was repeated the following year. It was an impressive sight, and for a minute our capital city, on those balmy nights, looked a bit like Rome or Barcelona. But the boring practical details – traffic flow, deliveries and rubbish collection – got in the way, and the experiment was abandoned.

And so we come to the long, hot, unrelenting summer of 2026, and Soho after dark now feels less like Trastevere or the Placa de Catalunya than the streets around a football stadium on match day. Not so much al fresco dining, more “vertical drinking”, the absurd, health-and-safety-inspired description for what most people term as standing up, having a pint.

Either way, there is a battle for the soul of Soho now taking place that has much wider implications, for........

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