More than one national newspaper went big this week on “The rise of the middle-class shoplifter”. Probably all of them did. I wouldn’t know. I only stole The Times and the Daily Mail. (The Guardian is such an awkward shape to slip under a raincoat).

But isn’t that strange? I mean, how do they know the shoplifters are middle class? Is it because, when raided by police after a six-month surveillance, the thieves were discovered to have a “lounge” with a “settee” in it, and a downstairs “toilet”? Was the stash found in a bidet? Or under the toilet roll cover? Were the net curtains found to be “hot”? Was the onyx mantelclock a fugazi? Were the criminals found, following Alan Clark’s famous sneer at Michael Heseltine, to have bought their own furniture?

And if, as Clark believed, buying his own furniture (as opposed to inheriting it) was what marked Heseltine out as merely middle-class, then what would he have been if he had filled his home with flat-pack television cabinets knocked out the back door of Ikea with help from a mate working on the inside? Even more middle class?

In a survey by the Centre for Retail Research of 42,000 shops in Europe, with combined sales of £262 billion, it was found that shoplifting in Britain had increased by 20 per cent to £4.9 billion of stuff last year, keeping us “top of Europe’s shoplifting table” (Get in! I had no idea we were that good — this result presumably means that next year we get to defend our title without having to go through the qualifying rounds. It’s so much less stressful that way).

And the people who are keeping us there, it seems, are not the usual disenfranchised tracksuit-wearers with fighting dogs and bad teeth.

“We are seeing more instances than before of amateur thieves stealing goods for their own personal use rather than to sell on,” said Neil Matthews of the shop security firm Checkpoint Systems (those uniformed goons who look you up and down like you’re Ronnie Biggs when you drop into Sainsbury’s after work to pick up a pint of milk — although now I suppose I understand why they do).

“This is epitomised,” he went on, “in the uprising of the middle-class shoplifter, someone who has turned to theft to sustain their standard of living.” Picking my way through Mr Matthews’ terrifyingly sloppy use of English (the “uprising” of the middle-class shoplifter is not quite upon us yet, and will be a horrible thing when it comes — and I hope it is not too middle-class of me to point out that things are epitomised “by” not “in” other things), it seems that he is saying that what distinguishes middle-class shoplifters is that they steal things they actually want to maintain their lifestyle. Whereas the working-class thief steals things to sell on and buy the things he needs to maintain his lifestyle — such as, presumably, crack cocaine, cigarettes, gassy lager in cans, hooded tops, black trainers, racing papers, studded dog collars and all sorts of awful fatty snacks.

He can do this, of course, through what I believe (from watching television programmes about old-fashioned burglars without an honours degree or a second home in the Dordogne) is called a “fence”. He will know plenty of these through his contacts among the conventional criminal classes. But a middle-class shoplifter does not have this option. As far as he is concerned, a “fence” is a thing for peering over to make sure the uPVC windows in his neighbour’s new conservatory are not in contravention of local planning regulation 12, section 9, paragraph iii (“materials in keeping”).

So the middle-class shoplifter, adrift and alone in his nefarious endeavours, lifts only that which he directly needs. And this turns out to be designer label clothes and luxury foods including, according to Mr Matthews, “expensive cheeses, fresh cuts of meat or nice fish”. Fish? Eeuuw. Middle-class ladies are bolting out the “in” door of Waitrose with their pockets full of mackerel? That’s really, really grim. And don’t forget, being middle-class shoplifters, it is likely that those pockets are made of natural fibres.

While it might just about be feasible for some chav to drop a couple of pounds of scallops (diver-caught, naturally) down the front of his plastic tracksuit, they’re going to make a hell of a mess in the fluffy front pouch of the lambswool cardigan you just robbed from the ladies’ department at John Lewis.

And then there is the question of ethics. Suppose your middle-class felon finds, when casing the organic grocery section for something to steal for supper, that the British produce is all muddy and loose and difficult to conceal, but the Kenyan green beans are easily wrapped and shaped perfectly for the inside pocket of his blazer? He could get clean away. But what about the food miles? What about the wasteful packaging?

And those avocados. You’ve slipped six of them into your briefcase but now you see from the box that they’re Israeli. How do you square that with your lachrymose empathy with the benighted children of Palestine? Do you dare, for the sake of the dead at Sabra and Shatila, to unload your Zionist fruits here and risk capture by the security man?

Nor is it just food that presents a problem to the ethical tea leaf. Does the middle-class jewel robber, before surreptitiously slipping a Tiffany solitaire into his inside pocket (if there’s room with all that mackerel), risk discovery by demanding to see written proof that the diamond in question has not been sourced from a conflict zone? Or, no, wait, the middle-class shoplifter presumably feels himself entitled to swipe the diamond even if it has been sourced from a conflict zone, because her great dilemma is wanting to wear diamonds but not wanting to provide money to fund child armies to shoot poor little black babies with flies in their eyes. If she steals it, however, instead of buying it, then she is not funding anything. Indeed, she is punishing Tiffany for stocking gemstones of which the production is not likely to foster world peace and harmony. (I should point out here that it’s possible Tiffany doesn’t stock conflict diamonds — I wouldn’t know, I’m so posh I don’t use shops at all, everything I have, I got from looting my tenant farmers).

And if the middle classes are muscling in on the shoplifters’ action then who is to say they won’t soon be diversifying into other areas of crime? Perhaps car-jacking — hybrid vehicles only, of course, on the basis that, morally, it is better to steal an electric Wiz, or at least a Prius, than to buy a petrol-powered 4x4.

And I suppose you will know that you’ve been the victim of a middle-class mugging when you’re confronted in a dark alley and told to hand over your daughter’s recently awarded primary school place at the point of a fishknife.

• In other news, a celebrity misfortune story was written up by one paper this week as: “Bullock kicks Dimbleby off the air.” Which is all very well, but does Sandra have what it takes to host Question Time?

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