The department store has abandoned its scheme to build 10,000 affordable homes for rent – but, as James Moore says, its attempt to diversify from the high-street retail sector was Never Knowingly Under-ambitious I t must have seemed like a great idea at the time. Six years ago, the John Lewis Partnership – the hallowed retail group whose department stores have long kept middle-class homes in tasteful furnishings and dependable white goods, while its Waitrose supermarkets replenish our larders –