Bashing supermarkets is popular – and often the chains deserve a whack. Memories are fresh of how big food retailers had to be shamed during the pandemic into returning the business rates relief that was intended for shopkeepers whose doors, unlike theirs, were shut on government orders. But here comes an accusation of greed that looks wide of the mark: grubby profiteering during the food inflation shock.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, gave the profiteering thesis a whirl last week when he claimed wicked supermarkets were “raking in eye-watering profits” and called for the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate. Which accounts is Davey reading? Evidence of super-normal profits – which is what one assumes he means – is hard to spot in the audited numbers of Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the two biggest operators.
