Can Mike Ashley defy high street reality?

Separating heroes from villains in the great retail survival struggle is like spotting bent coppers in Line of Duty — whose sixth series, I’m pleased to report, has just finished filming. The plot just keeps twisting. Sir Philip Green, as I said last week, is seen as an irredeemable baddie; and most commentators (though not usually me) put sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley in a similar category, as an opportunist with a track record as a harsh employer. But now here he is, trying through his company Frasers Group to launch a last-ditch rescue for Debenhams, despite having lost £150 million last year in previous pursuit of the department store chain.

He can’t save all 124 shops and 12,000 jobs — but even saving half or a third of them would be remarkable. The point about Ashley is that he has no interest in cashing out, and a burning urge to prove his critics wrong. In the best on-screen drama, the have-a-go maverick always beats the odds: let’s see if Ashley can defy today’s high-street reality.

Then again, there’s a division between big retailers that have flourished this year and opted to return business-rate reliefs to the Treasury, and those that haven’t. The first category includes Tesco, paying back half a billion, the discounters Aldi and Lidl at £100 million each, and Pets at Home (beneficiary of the lockdown puppy boom) at £29 million. On the other side, or still thinking about it, are Marks & Spencer and the John Lewis Partnership, which includes Waitrose — both saying that strong food sales have merely offset damage on the non-food side — as well as the Co-op, arguably our most community-minded retailer.

Should we think badly of those who cling to windfalls they might not have needed? That’s a hot question in a year in which the Chancellor has sprayed money in many directions and taxpayers would clearly wish him to recoup any that was wasted.