San Francisco’s shoplifting epidemic is shocking to behold. But we shouldn’t imagine that the same couldn’t happen here. In fact, we’re well on our way. According to the British Retail Consortium, theft from stores across 10 UK cities is up by 26%. More, “incidents of violence and abuse against retail employees have almost doubled on pre-pandemic levels.”

On Tuesday, Asda Chairman Stuart Rose told LBC that “theft is a big issue. It has become decriminalised. It has become minimised. It’s actually just not seen as a crime anymore.”

In the absence of an adequate response from the authorities, retailers are beginning to take defensive measures. For instance, home furnishings company Dunelm is now locking up duvets and pillow cases in cabinets; Waitrose is offering free coffees to police officers to increase their visibility; and Tesco plans to equip staff with body cameras. 

The “progressive” response to this phenomenon isn’t quite as deranged as it is in in the US. Nevertheless, British liberals have responded as expected. A piece in the Observer is typical. You’ll never guess, but apparently it’s all the Tories’ fault: “Starving your population and then ‘cracking down’ on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable.”

But as the writer ought to know, the issue here isn’t the desperate young mum hiding a few groceries in the pram. Nor is it the schoolboy pilfering the occasional bag of sweets. Rather, the real problem is blatant, organised and sometimes violent theft of higher value items. Criminals who never previously thought they could get away with it increasingly now do — thus presenting a material threat to retail as we know it. 

But instead of addressing the issue head-on, the writer blames the victim: “Once goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking.” How terribly irresponsible of them! On the other hand, perhaps the open display of goods isn’t just a convenience for customers, but instead the hallmark of a high trust society. 

In fact, modern shops are a minor miracle of civilisation: public spaces, stacked high with products from all over the world, that passing strangers may freely inspect and handle, but which aren’t looted by anyone who feels like it.

Surely, that’s something worth defending. But if you’d prefer to abandon retailers to their fate, then don’t moan when they do what it takes to survive. Some will close, of course, and others will move their operations online. Those who stay open will guard themselves and their stock behind plexiglass and electronic tags. And then there’s the hi-tech solution: the fully automated and completely cashless store, in which customers have to be authenticated to even get in. 

Remember that retail facilities like this already exist. One day, when they become the norm, we’ll remember what shops used to be like. Then, we’ll ask why no one stood up for them.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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Tucker Carlson once again finds himself defending Abdul El-Sayed, the Bernie-backed Democrat running for Senate in Michigan. In his Friday newsletter, Carlson offered support for a resurfaced remark El-Sayed made in 2021, contending that Americans “fail to center” the millions of people “scarred” by America’s response to 9/11. Once a Trump supporter, Carlson is now using his large platform to poke holes in Republican campaigns.

“There is nothing remotely crazy about those remarks,” Carlson wrote. “They are approximately as scandalous as a weatherman declaring that clouds carry rainwater. El-Sayed did not celebrate airplane hijackings or cheerlead Al-Qaeda; he simply said that the U.S. conducting terrorism of its own in response to 9/11 was not exactly an appropriate reaction. He is obviously right.”

The former Fox News host’s intervention could complicate the Republican case against Mike Rogers, a conventional conservative challenging El-Sayed for the Senate. Rogers and other Republicans have sought to make El-Sayed’s comments about 9/11 a central line of attack, but Carlson has given conservative voters an alternative interpretation from a commentator they already know and, in many cases, have followed for years.

This should concern Trump because Carlson is not attacking the Republican case from the political Left; he is doing so from within the broader Right, where his arguments may be more difficult for conservative voters to dismiss as simply partisan. That is important to note because it means that GOP talking points that would once have gone largely unchallenged in conservative media are now being picked apart by one of the Right’s most prominent commentators.

Whether that translates into lower enthusiasm for Rogers, weaker Republican turnout or fewer votes in Michigan in November remains an open question. But the fact that Carlson sided with El-Sayed over Rogers speaks to his foundational conviction that interventionist American foreign policy has done much more damage than Washington is willing to admit. The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t only embarrassing quagmires that destabilized the region but must be remembered as deeply unjust adventures that slaughtered innocent civilians.

For Carlson, however, the problem runs deeper than the failures of any particular war. His most important break with the Right came when he condemned America’s use of nuclear weapons against Japan, arguing that it was wrong to kill civilians even in the pursuit of victory. Seen in that light, his opposition to Trump’s Iran War is not a temporary disagreement with the president. He sees it as MAGA reverting to an older American habit: allowing fear of an external threat to override the moral limits on what the United States is prepared to do abroad. The same logic that once turned communism into an existential threat, and later produced the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, can, in Carlson’s view, turn pre-emptive violence into a form of self-defense.

Not only did this worldview wreck our foreign policy, the argument goes, it also wrecked our economy, our culture, and our national soul. This explains Carlson’s willingness to jump off the sidelines and describe the El-Sayed campaign as “literally Trumpian” or defend El-Sayed’s 9/11 audio against Rogers.

El-Sayed’s Left-populist critique of the American response to 9/11 shares a foundation with Carlson’s. US foreign policy was unjust — not only because it harmed Americans, but because the damage wreaked upon civilians was wholly disproportionate.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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