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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Who’s eligible to play in the WNBA? According to their collective bargaining agreement: “only players who are women”.

In simpler times — that is, before the proliferation of laws and guidelines that enshrined “gender identity” as a facet of, or replacement for, sex — no further clarification would be necessary. But these are complicated times, when the answer to “What is a woman?” is so hotly contested that Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh made a whole movie about it.

Now the WNBA is under pressure to come up with an answer of its own. That pressure started after WNBA star Sophie Cunningham offered her opinion on whether trans women — that is, males who identify as women — should be allowed to play on girls’ and women’s teams. Cunningham favored “protecting women’s sports”, which she said had nothing to do with “hating trans”.

“I think that I am here to extend love”, she said. “But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” Seemingly unable to believe that a woman could be so forthright, a reporter later gave her the chance to backtrack, but she stood her ground. “I said what I said and I think it’s kind of common sense,” she repeated.

Outrage ensued, but so did an outpouring of support for Cunningham; she was booed at some games, but her Adidas shoes almost sold out within a day of their release.

Piggybacking on the drama, former Boston Celtic Enes Kanter then declared himself — or herself — both a woman and a WNBA prospect. “If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA,” he wrote on X. “I am definitely not here to mock, make fun of, or disrespect any community or personal choices.” All he wanted was for the current rules, embraced by the WNBA, to be applied equally. He ended with: “See you at training camp.”

Not long after, Royce White, once the first-round draft pick for the Houston Rockets, announced his own intention to try out for the WNBA, predicting he’d be “unstoppable”. A third man, YouTuber Adam Francisco, declared his eligibility for the 2027 draft as well.

Their announcements put all the more pressure on the WNBA to clarify the definition of woman. This week, ESPN reported that the WNBA task force failed to establish eligibility rules for trans players. It was a punt — or, in basketball terms, a behind-the-back pass. It claimed that, since there are apparently no “immediate eligibility matters” to attend to — no trans women trying to join teams — then why hurry to craft a policy, or explain who fits the category of “woman”?

Except, of course, people including Kanter and White are doing exactly that. The WNBA dismissed these stunts as “bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others”, but that could not be further from the truth. They are exposing the flaws of the very policy the WNBA is refusing to amend to keep them out. They are shining light on the loopholes.

Besides, as the mother of a high-school athlete, I can say from experience that policies allowing males to identify their way into girls’ sports — or that fail to define women and girls — create loopholes that allow boys to compete in girls’ sports. A few weeks ago, for example, my daughter competed against and lost to Alysa Liu’s younger sibling — a male identifying as female. But perhaps the worst part is what happens when girls object: they learn very quickly that they can’t make their feelings known, or they risk expulsion from teams. Any dissent about the inclusion of males leads to the exclusion of females.

This is why the WNBA must clarify that women are adult human females, and that only they can join the teams. Sophie Cunningham pointed out that laws like Title IX were designed to foster and protect women in sport. “That’s why you have some of the greats of women’s sports,” she said. Without it, men would be the ones winning medals and standing atop the podium. We’ve already seen former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas do just that.

If the WNBA doesn’t ensure that it remains a league for women, Cunningham could find herself guarding Enes Kanter next year. And, more likely than not, Kanter would be the one walking away with the win.

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Lisa Selin Davis is the author of Tomboy. She writes at Broadview on Substack.

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