Thieves have achieved what Marx could only dream of: the abolition of private property
Daily Telegraph
13 August 2025
Theft is wrong. Private property is sacrosanct. Shoplifting must be stamped out. We are governed by malicious, ignorant fools who cannot grasp the importance of such precepts, and who are vandalising our social order through their negligence, arrogance and suicidal empathy.
Take the grotesque moral inversion exhibited by Labour when it tells shopkeepers not to place “high value” items close to store entrances, in effect blaming the victims of crime for enticing shoplifters. A minister, Dame Diana Johnson, complained that “some stores…put bottles of alcohol at the front of the store which obviously people will nick.”
Note the use of the colloquial “nick”, which trivialises the violation, demonstrates an inability to take shoplifting seriously and implies that it is a cheeky, opportunistic, almost child-like act of rule-bending.
The rest of Johnson’s intervention is equally reprehensible. Why would a passer-by “obviously” feel compelled to grab a bottle if they happen to see it? What kind of excuse is that? Why couldn’t they choose not to steal? Do they entirely lack agency? Are we “noble savages”, unable to control our impulses, or are we civilised, demanding self-control, deferred gratification and respect for moral tenets such as “thou shalt not steal”?
Labour, in common with many Tories, civil servants, charities and the police establishment, succumbed long ago to “progressive” woke ideology. This divides the world into oppressors and oppressed, powerful and powerless, bad and good. Shop-owners are part of the capitalist class, and regardless of whether they are a major chain or the local independent corner shop, are tainted: they control the “power structure” and are inherently guilty of racism, sexism and every sin.
Shoplifters are defined, equally reflexively, as oppressed, latter-day Jean Valjeans, after Victor Hugo’s character in Les Misérables jailed for 19 years for stealing bread for his sister’s starving children.
Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, was asked by the Big Issue last year “if you saw someone shoplifting essentials in a supermarket, what would you do?“ Khan’s answer, in which he also cited people stealing nappies: “I suspect I’d l take my wallet out, and I would pay for it.”
Yet in 99.99 per cent of cases, this would be the wrong strategy. It would hand moral victory to the thieves, legitimise their lifestyle choice and laziness, send a message that it’s fine to steal food, promote warped incentives, militate against work and self-reliance, and promulgate the incorrect view that shoplifting is the only way for tens of thousands of perpetrators to survive.
If they are not themselves hungry, thieves are seen by woke extremists as righteous activists fighting for “equity”. They are freelance socialists: the Tory-Labour duopoly hiked taxes to a near 80-year high, and drastically raised welfare spending, but that is not (and, short of full communism, can never be) good enough, so “social justice warriors” are engaging in their own redistribution.
“La propriété, c’est le vol!” – property is theft – as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the anarcho-Leftist thinker, put it, so shoplifting is a victimless crime, or so this deranged logic implies. This is nonsense: there are many real losers, including the shop’s owners (usually hardworking immigrant heroes), supermarket shareholders (including pension savers), employees whose wages will be depressed, consumers who pay higher prices, and people in high-crime areas turned into food deserts. Staff and security guards are harassed and assaulted.
Yet a store owner who understandably put up a sign criticising “scumbags shoplifting” was told by police to consider changing the wording because it was offensive. Once again, the victim is turned into a perpetrator. The authorities police speech rather than crime.
Matthew Barber, Thames Valley Police Commissioner, insists the public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters. Yes, in theory – but can we be sure the authorities will stand by citizens who make an arrest, or help to immobilise a thief? Won’t they be sued, or arrested, or beaten up by thugs? As on cue, Dame Diana warned the public against stepping in to confront thieves, claiming it isn’t “appropriate”.
Stealing from shops has been largely decriminalised. The police recorded a 20 per cent jump in shoplifting in the year to March 2025, despite extra security tags in shops, their highest level since statistics began in 2003.
The public, and the populists, are right, and the elites are wrong: this cannot go on. It is not just that Bonaparte was right that we are a nation of shopkeepers. Western civilisation and capitalism cannot survive if we cease to believe in, and enforce, private property rights. Doing so is what made Britain great.
Alan Macfarlane’s The Origins of English Individualism reveals that England embraced private, individual land ownership – as opposed to feudalism, or control vested in clans or extended families – in the 13th century, hundreds of years earlier than most of Europe. Markets emancipated the Englishman, and led to early geographic mobility, autonomy in choosing spouses, the nuclear family, and material possessions.
We were not a peasant, collectivist or conformist society; we were “modern” in outlook, and fought to limit the state’s powers. England was an original WEIRD nation – Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. We trusted strangers and focused on individual achievement, not group loyalty. This culture was one of this country’s greatest gifts to the world. Anything that undermines it, including glorifying shoplifting, is a catastrophe.
Shortly after the war, Lee Kuan Yew, later Singapore’s prime minister, visited London where he spotted a newspaper kiosk in bustling Piccadilly that relied on the honour system. Anonymous customers dropped coins into a box, took out the right change, and picked up papers, unsupervised. They could have stolen but chose not to.
Such honesty was a revelation for Lee, and the inspiration for Singapore’s low-crime obsession, and it should galvanise Reform and Tory politicians. Stealing from shops symbolises our decline; it should be taboo. We need to become a high trust society again, and that requires waging a pitiless war on shoplifters.
Comments
Post a Comment