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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The latest poll from More in Common shows support for the Green Party falling by three points to 10%. BMG, Ipsos and JL Partners show similarly sharp declines. While this isn’t supported by every pollster, averages produced by Electoral Calculus and Election Maps UK show a distinct downturn in Green support.

In the run-up to the local elections last month, the party and its leader Zack Polanski were the subject of a run of negative news stories. That, however, did not stop the Greens from making a net gain of 441 councilors and taking control of five councils, including three London boroughs. If the air is now leaking from the Green balloon, we need to look for something that’s happened since the local elections. And in that regard there’s a very obvious culprit: the upcoming Makerfield by-election.

The Green Party campaign there got off to a bad start when its first candidate, just hours after being announced, withdrew from the contest over social media posts in which he labeled arson attacks on ambulances in London a “false flag” operation. Then there was a spectacularly unhelpful intervention from former Green leader Caroline Lucas, who urged her party to stand aside to give Andy Burnham a clear run against Reform UK.

Of course, the Greens can’t always win the “progressive primary” — that is, the informal competition to be recognized as the “Stop Reform” party. This worked for them in Gorton and Denton, but elsewhere tactical voting has favored other Left-of-center parties. Makerfield, however, poses a much bigger danger: marginalization not just in one constituency, but almost all of them.

It’s a mistake to regard Polanski as the Nigel Farage of the Left. Farage first became Ukip leader in 2006 and has 20 years of hard slog behind him. Polanski hasn’t even had one year as a party leader, and the rise of the Greens to major-party status has been astonishingly rapid. On the principle of easy come, easy go, their gains are vulnerable to the next progressive-sounding candidate to come along. Right now, that’s Burnham.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester has sold himself to his party as a radical. He’s dangled the prospect of taking key assets, such as the water industry, back into public ownership and loosening the constraints of the international money markets on Government action. Inevitably, he’s already had to backtrack on some of those hints. On immigration, he’s had to tack to the Right to placate the culturally conservative Makerfield electorate. But that won’t matter if Burnham beats Reform in one of its target seats. He’d be the new hope for the Left, and Polanski would be yesterday’s news. In those circumstances, expect further Green losses to Labour.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the Green position has deflated. At the 2015 general election, the party won a then-record 3.8% of the vote. But, just two years later, its support more than halved as Left-wing voters flocked to Jeremy Corbyn’s banner. One might therefore conclude that the Green vote is vulnerable, but a distinction should be drawn between the party’s short-term and long-term prospects.

The Green advantage among younger voters — women in particular — is overwhelming. Crucially, the factors driving younger voters toward the populist Left are hardwired into the economic status quo: spiraling student debt, worsening job prospects, and a housing market designed to bleed them dry to the benefit of landlords. Without a rescue plan for members of this lost generation, the economic scarring effects will remain with them as they get older — and thus so will their resentment against the status quo.

The question, then, is not whether a growing proportion of the electorate will vote for anti-system parties, but why on Earth wouldn’t they? Of course, it may be that Burnham has a grand plan to change these fundamentals and kill off the Greens for good, but that’s pretty hard to believe.

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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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