A Radical Shake-Up At John Lewis?

John Lewis attracts the attention of newsrooms like perhaps no other business.

Section heads who otherwise immediately stop listening the second the City editor starts speaking perk up when its JLP.

This is because John Lewis is the most middle-class business in Britain, and because newsrooms are the most middle-class workplaces in Britain.

(If you want to appal your colleagues, tell them you quite like Sports Direct.)

The question JLP is facing – I do not know the answer – is whether its present woes could have been avoided by niftier management.

Or whether its difficulties are an inevitable function of the changing/struggling retail scene.

Debenhams and House of Fraser couldn’t withstand the onslaught either and maybe John Lewis just isn’t that special.

We’ll get the latest evidence with results tomorrow and expectations are not high.

Which is probably good, from a PR point of view.

One view, gaining traction, is that the department stores and the supermarket – Waitrose – should split.

Waitrose could float on the stock market to raise some cash. The department stores can go where all clothes shops go in the end – to Mike Ashley heaven.

The trouble is, even if that is the most sensible plan – I’m not hearing that many others – the objections from staff and customers would be huge.

Maybe the first job of incoming management is to both harness that lingering affection, while persuading us that John Lewis is just a bunch of shops in the end.