Monday is D-Day, with Britain’s retailers having to stump up a total of £2.5 billion in quarterly rent, and if yesterday is anything to go by, a number of chains are not going to be able to write the cheque.

Yesterday we saw the clearest sign yet that the economic storm is rippling through to the high street.

John Lewis, the bellwether of the high street, suffered a 22 per cent drop in furniture sales and indicated that even its relatively well-off shoppers had begun to get worried about the wider world.

JJB Sports’s executive directors may have resembled the Keystone Cops, but the share price reaction to its results and the uncertainty hanging over its balance sheet reflect the nerves in the City.

Meanwhile, another two retailers at the bottom end of the food chain called it a day and called in the administrators. Rosebys, the curtain and home furnishing specialist, is the latest in a long line of victims this year in sectors linked to housing.

It seems a long while ago that Sir Stuart Rose, Marks & Spencer’s executive chairman, stood up and issued a profit warning that wiped more than £1 billion off the group’s stock market value.

Much has changed since that day in July, but on Thursday we are likely to get further evidence that things have stayed much the same at M&S. Like-for-like sales in the second quarter of its financial year could have fallen by as much as 7 per cent.

Some analysts believe M&S will make only £600 million of profit this financial year - a far cry from the £1 billion reported for its previous year.

Retailers are facing a perfect storm. Shoppers are worried about paying off debts and about whether they will be in a job next year, and so are stopping spending. Meanwhile, costs are going up as higher energy bills feed through the back door.

At the same time, even the weather has begun to conspire against the retailing sector. While everyone else will be enjoying the sun forecast for the weekend, managers of clothing stores packed with autumn attire will be thinking that someone, somewhere just does not like them very much.

However, just as the turmoil in financial markets is sorting the weak from the strong in banking, the credit crunch is merely accelerating structural change that many have for some time been predicting for the high street.

The boom times have left the retail sector with a vast array of competing stores and brands. However, with so much new space coming on the market, and the rapid growth of the internet, something had to give at some point. The credit crunch has exposed those retailers with poor offers and inefficient cost bases. As the tree shakes in the economic storm, the rotten apples are falling to the floor.

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