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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At the weekend, a by-election in the Division of Farrer in New South Wales produced a striking political upset. In a seat that had been held by the Liberal Party or its Coalition partner the Nationals at every election since 1949, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, a party frequently compared to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, stormed to victory.

The result comes barely a year after the 2025 general election, in which the Liberals secured just 28 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives — the lowest tally in the party’s history. Following this by-election defeat, that number now stands at 27.

The seat of Farrer was vacated by former Liberal leader and prominent moderate Sussan Ley. During her leadership, the party backed rushed “hate speech” legislation introduced after the Bondi massacre, despite initial resistance. As I argued for UnHerd in January, these laws expanded state control over ordinary Australians, particularly by restricting free speech. By the time Ley lost the leadership to Angus Taylor, the Liberals had sunk to record-low polling of 18%.

Since Tony Abbott was removed as prime minister in 2015, the Liberal Party has, like its Conservative counterparts in the UK, increasingly functioned as a centre-right party in name only. It has embraced a mix of big spending, expanded government and technocratic managerialism, most clearly seen in its strong support for stringent Covid-era lockdowns and vaccine mandates. It has also adopted Net Zero commitments, despite earlier campaigning against them.

This pivot to the Left has allowed One Nation to outflank the Liberals on the Right. The party has tapped into concerns about immigration, energy, industry, jobs, agriculture, housing, Islamic extremism and the cost of living. Pollsters say voters have never been so disillusioned, negative and lacking in hope for the future.

Could One Nation launch a Reform-style insurgency in Australia? Since the 2025 election, Hanson’s party has consistently polled neck and neck with the Liberals, often in the high 20s, and has now begun translating that polling strength into electoral gains. The win in Farrer follows on from the election in South Australia in March, where One Nation won four seats in the state’s upper and lower houses of parliament, respectively.

Even so, like Reform, One Nation does not currently have the votes to win a general election outright. The more probable scenario is that the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation form a conservative coalition to oust Labor from power. But the scale of the Farrer by-election loss cannot be overstated. It was, after all, in this Division that Sir Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party in 1944 as a “chance to give a means of expression to the deepest feelings to hundreds of thousands of Australians who are frustrated by the present and who are seriously alarmed about the future” — those he called the “forgotten people”.

The Farrer result suggests that those forgotten people have now crossed the Rubicon to One Nation.