I am happy to announce Britain may soon be cured of its utopian fetish about John Lewis and Waitrose — and capitalism will probably be better off as a result.
In 2012, Nick Clegg, then UK deputy prime minister, seeking new clothes for the coalition government’s economic policy, chose the employee-owned retailer’s model off the peg. “We don’t believe our problem is too much capitalism,” he said in a speech. “We think it’s that too few people have capital. We need more individuals to have a real stake in their firms. More of a John Lewis economy, if you like.”
There ought to be plenty to like. John Lewis’s “ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business”, which is hard to argue with. That was the first principle in the list that John Spedan Lewis, far-thinking son of the eponymous founder, passed down when he transferred ownership of the family company into employee trusts in the 1920s. Another policy is that the group is “never knowingly undersold”, a price-matching promise that was shaken by the rise of ecommerce, but still applies, with certain conditions.