A decade ago, “This is a local shop for local people” was the catchphrase of a parochial, psychotic couple in the brilliantly twisted TV series The League of Gentlemen. Now it’s become the rallying cry of progressives in search of an alternative to the excesses of global capitalism. Local has moved from being the preserve of the small-minded to the ideal of the high-minded, overtaking sustainable, fairly traded and organic to become this season’s must-have ethical prefix. But apart from perhaps porridge and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, nothing is an undiluted good, and there is a dark side to this new localism that we have to address.