London Briefing: Napoleon disliked the British for many reasons, not least because they were, according to the great general, a "nation of shopkeepers". Others have agreed with him, not least the founding father of modern economics, Adam Smith, who thought the English government unduly influenced by the nation's shopkeepers.

Shop-keeping has rarely loomed large in the affections of our leaders and greatest thinkers, which is a shame really, since any sensible interpretation of economic history would place the role of the small merchant firmly at its heart.

Half a century ago, owning, or at least running, your own shop was an aspiration held by many ordinary working class people. In south Wales I can remember mobile grocery stores (potato sellers with clapped out vans) coming down our street twice a week. With impeccable originality the chap who used to sell sprouts and cabbage to our mothers was nick-named "Veg". His dream was to swap the van for a more fixed location. I think he died in transit.

The local newsagent was a source of great wealth - or so it seemed to us. I recall two (at least) successive owners, each of which had served their small merchant apprenticeship driving an ice-cream van, saving up the necessary cash to buy the lease on the coveted shop. Once acquired, the local store became a wonderful generator of profit, but only at the expense of working 364 days a year, each day starting early and finishing late.

My first ever paid employment came courtesy of that little newsagent's in Llanrumney.

It is not a very politically correct thing to say, but the British quickly lost interest in running businesses like this. A walk down any high street today suggests that the Anglo-Asian community has come to dominate the ownership and running of these shops.

Why this should be the case is something of a mystery. Some people think that the indigenous Brits became lazy and simply gave up working the hours necessary to be a small merchant.

What is true is that the business of running a small shop has become much harder. The hours are even longer and the range of products and services on offer has had to expand into several unlikely areas.

Competitive pressure from the big boys has meant that the small shopkeeper has become a threatened species.

Even though our leaders have usually despised the small merchant, the government has begun to fret about the possible disappearance altogether of the shopkeeper. We even have an all-party small shops group in parliament. And, according to a leaked draft report, that august group of men and women is concerned that the shopkeeper will become extinct within a decade.

It appears that the corner shop is closing at a rate of 2,000 a year in the face of an onslaught of competition from the big four: Sainsbury, Morrison, Asda and Tesco.

According to the MPs, the shrinking retail sector is putting intolerable pressure on wholesalers. There will soon come a point where the wholesaling sector will no longer have enough retail customers - the small shopkeeper - to remain viable. And when the wholesalers go under they will take what's left of the shopkeepers with them.

Should we be concerned about this Darwinian process? Is it not just another example of the market place in action? The fact that the big four are so dominant surely reflects our individual choices to shop with them rather than locally. We have witnessed the demise of many an industry over the last half century: what is so different between shipbuilding and retailing?

Fifty years ago, we made 96 per cent of the world's ships, today we make hardly any at all. And we just shrug and accept that change.

It may be that we are belatedly recognising that the shopkeeper has played a bigger role in our culture than we have been prepared to acknowledge. Napoleon may have been accurate in his description but wrong in his disparagement.

Once we end our connection with shop-keeping something important will have been lost.

More prosaically, our friends in the parliamentary group are worried that we will further isolate small and/or disadvantaged communities that are poorly served by the supermarkets. Their concerns are, I think, too little too late. The corner shop is destined for the same graveyard as the coal mines and the shipyards.

Chris Johns is an investment strategist with Collins Stewart. All opinions are personal.