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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One begins to suspect that if Shabana Mahmood had complete free rein as Home Secretary, she might actually have had a shot at restoring the Labour Party’s reputation on immigration. She doesn’t, so she won’t. But still, she might have.

Consider her latest initiative. One of the biggest hurdles facing the Home Office when it comes to policing migration is the sheer difficulty of deporting people. So, Mahmood has taken the obvious, logical step: if a country is going to make it difficult to deport its citizens, then the United Kingdom will make it more difficult for their citizens to get visas in the first place.

At present, this initiative is narrowly targeted, with only three African nations subject to the new regime. But it has already managed a good success rate, with both Angola and Namibia now cooperating with migrant returns; the third, the Democratic Republic of Congo, has seen tough new visa measures imposed instead.

Two questions remain. The first is whether or not the Government is prepared to take the same tough tone with larger countries, with which Britain has more significant diplomatic and commercial interests. For example, Home Office civil servants have repeatedly told me in the past about how intransigent India is when it comes to processing deportees; New Delhi is also extremely preoccupied with securing visa rights for its citizens. On paper, that makes it a good target for Mahmood’s new approach, but is she prepared to get tough? If not, then this programme — for all its obvious promise — will remain a mere gimmick.

The UK would do well to look at Australia, which has for some time operated a very similar programme under which citizens of so-called “countries of concern” face extremely strict visa restrictions. Last year, the Labor government in Canberra proposed a comprehensive blacklist for several countries, including Russia and Iran.

Britain isn’t shy about taking inspiration from Australia on immigration policy, from offshore processing — which Canberra carries out on the tiny island nation of Nauru — to the famous points-based visa system. Yet, ministers have repeatedly made the mistake of adopting a policy which sounds superficially like an effective Australian initiative, only for it to lack the teeth of the original. The most famous case of this came when Boris Johnson adopted the “points-based system” but then handed out the points so liberally that it produced the “Boriswave”.

That leads, however, to the other question: given the obvious logic of this visa policy, and Britain’s longstanding habit of borrowing Australian policy ideas, why has it taken this long for the Government to adopt, even to a very limited extent, the “countries of concern” approach? In another world, that would be the sort of question which Kemi Badenoch’s promised interrogation into why the Conservatives “talked Right, but governed Left” in office might have answered. That interrogation, of course, never took place. But if Mahmood does expand this new scheme to the worst-offending countries, the Tories are going to need an explanation for why they didn’t do it first.

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Henry Hill is Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome.

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