The ‘tide may be turning’ on shoplifting according to our ever-hopeful Prime Minister – despite the fact shoplifting offences have soared by 133 per cent over the past five years. It is hard to know whether we are being gaslit or trolled. Perhaps both.

In a speech to the union of shopworkers yesterday, Starmer said it is ‘disgraceful’ that shop workers have to take abuse from customers, and that shop owners can have their ‘lives and livelihoods ruined by persistent shop theft.’ He announced he was scrapping the rule that thefts under £200 are ‘not properly investigated’ by police.

Somehow the Prime Minister was simultaneously ‘not blind’ to the magnitude of the nation’s shoplifting problem, and wanted to emphasise that overall shop theft was down and the number of people charged up by 17 per cent. Ever a master of doublespeak, Starmer did not disappoint.

The PM seems to have been spurred into action by the public outrage over recent high-profile cases. The sacking of Walker Smith, the Waitrose worker I wrote about a few weeks ago, has been followed by a similar incident: Sean Egan was dismissed after 29 years of service at Morrisons after he attempted to stop a repeat shoplifter – who allegedly spat in his face. Some 200 members of the local community staged a demo outside the supermarket in protest after Egan was dismissed for not following the chain’s ‘deter-and-not-detain’ policy.

But, as the Telegraph reports, union bosses are now – with spectacular timing for our hapless Prime Minister – explicitly ordering even supermarket security guards not to intervene against theft. Instead they are to ‘watch, report and be an expert witness for police’. One would have thought CCTV might do that, and rather more cheaply.

You have to ask what purpose these security guards now serve. The official answer seems to be deterrence, though it is unclear how they can deter anyone when the shoplifters know full well that the guards are not allowed to intervene. The general secretary of the Security Industry Federation (SIF), Daniel Garnham, has been pushing for a nationwide ‘joined-up approach’ – against intervening. As he put it, currently ‘security workers moving between different stores and contracts are often expected to work to different rules in different places’. By pushing for a unified approach any tactical ambiguity will be lost. Shoplifters will henceforth be in no doubt whatsoever that they will not be engaged by security and will therefore feel even more emboldened in their crimes. Back slaps all round.

As for the Prime Minister, his apparent determination to clamp down on shoplifting is curious given his government has abolished most prison sentences of less than 12 months, thereby ensuring that basically no shoplifters will ever go to prison. And this at a time when new research by the Centre for Social Justice has revealed not only that two thirds of convicted shoplifters reoffend, but that in the past five years the average number of repeat offences has nearly doubled from five to over nine per reoffender. That is to say, it’s the same wrong ’uns time and time again.

Shops are responding simply by locking ever more items behind barriers, and in cages. Last week Greggs began re-fitting stores in a trial to remove self-service displays, instead moving products behind anti-theft counters.

What is to be done about this sorry state of affairs? First and foremost, shops need to back their heroic staff that do take it upon themselves to go above and beyond and intervene. The wording of the SIF directive is telling: ‘someone else’s stock is not more important than your safety, your career or your licence… do not put yourselves in harm’s way for those who may not support you afterwards’. That is the nub of it: as the cases of Walker Smith and Sean Egan make clear, criminals walk out arms laden; the valiant shop staff are walked out P45 in hand.

We also must seriously ask what we can expect of the security guards, or we might as well not bother having them. Of course a guard intervening might involve an element of danger. But there is likewise an element of danger being a nightclub bouncer who has to deal with aggressive and drunk members of the public. If someone breaks the rules of the nightclub, the bouncer ejects them, forcefully if necessary. Why shouldn’t supermarket guards do the same? It would help if instead of scrawny urban scarecrows the supermarket guards looked a bit more like nightclub bouncers; that is, someone you wouldn’t want to come across down a dark alley else your face may end up more purple than a rare châteaubriand.

Finally, what of the police? Implicit in this whole approach of video recording and documenting is a continued reluctance to engage criminals in real-time to prevent an offense. Instead, across the board, we increasingly see police required to consult the evidence at their desks and mop up after the fact. We need direct, immediate intervention – by somebody – or shoplifters will continue to defraud both shops and the honest rest.