I blame Napoleon. His disparagement of Britain as a “nation of shopkeepers” launched a prideful national obsession with the retail sector – and with one retailer in particular. If Messrs Marks and Spencer had been available to the Duke of Wellington, he would probably have put them in the vanguard of his attack on the French and lent his name to innovative pairs of underpants instead of boots.

As we gorge ourselves on retailers’ Christmas trading statements, now seems as good a time as any to declare a truce. We can go on saying M&S is a bellwether. It is the largest clothing retailer in the FTSE 100 and the market leader in apparel, after all, with a share of nearly 10 per cent. But does its fate really point to the fate of the nation? Hardly. Put all our retailers together and even their paid lobbyists claim they account for only 11 per cent of the country’s total workforce and 8 per cent of gross domestic product. As for M&S, it employs fewer people than Tesco, J Sainsbury or Wm Morrison and its market capitalisation is smaller than each of that food retailing trio. While I feel for the staff who will lose their jobs as a result of store closures, if M&S went to the wall, Woolworths-style, the total number employed by the sector nationwide would drop by less than 3 per cent.