Over the weekend, you may have read about the case of Walker Smith who was fired from Waitrose after having worked for them for 17 years for confronting a shoplifter attempting to steal Easter Eggs from his branch in Clapham Junction.

It’s the latest example of the rise in shop lifting affecting our high streets up and down the country.

In January, there was a particular incident where someone entered the Pier Avenue Butchers Shop in Clacton, picked up some meat and brazenly walked off without paying. At the time, the shop owner Gary Brame, said that all the shops in the town centre are facing daily problems with shoplifting.

Then just last week Marks & Spencer wrote to the government calling for more action to deal with this problem, which in their words is becoming “more brazen, more organised and more aggressive.”

They say that across the UK there were around 5.5 million incidents of shoplifting last year. Of course that doesn’t include the very many incidents that are not reported.

It’s clear that this is a problem that is only getting worse despite what some commentators might say.

What’s worse even than that is when shoplifting and other so-called “petty” crimes are reported, the police often no longer investigate them.

Sadly though that’s exactly what happens if you essentially decriminalise shoplifting up to £200, which is what’s happened over the last five years.

It’s no surprise then that the result is that what people think is acceptable behaviour rises up in terms of its danger and its threat and its intimidation.

It now seems that we are now a country that favours criminals over law enforcers. Britain truly is broken.

When I announced I was coming out of retirement to come back into politics one of the reasons I cited was societal breakdown.

The case of Walker Smith is just one example of the societal breakdown so many people are concerned about. It’s time to change politics for good.