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Greedy supermarkets threaten retaliatory price rises against shoppers

A group of supermarkets have joined forces to threaten retaliatory price rises against shoppers.

What are they retaliating against, you ask?

Specifically, higher taxes. And all despite the fact these companies are absolutely raking it in:

Greedflation at the supermarkets

In their article covering the story, the BBC wrote:

Grocers including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons signed a letter to Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of her Budget next month, along with Lidl, Aldi, Iceland, Waitrose and M&S.

They claimed households would “inevitably feel the impact” of any potential tax increases on the industry, such as higher business rates for supermarkets.

‘Inevitably’.

Is that ‘inevitably’ because there’s no other way, or ‘inevitably’ because our political class has bought into the idea that the rich must get richer every year at the expense of the rest of us?

We’re old enough to remember when supermarkets competed to lower costs to win over customers; this new scheme sounds like pre-meditated price fixing to us. Also, ‘lol’ at the BBC referring to them as ‘grocers’, as if these were high street merchants and not soulless, billion-pound mega corporations.

The letter has some top concern trolling in it, including this:

our ability to deliver value for our customers will become even more challenging and it will be households who inevitably feel the impact

They’re not worried about their profits; they’re worried about the customers.

Won’t somebody think of the shoppers?

While the BBC mostly focusses on the supermarkets’ sob story, they also include a couple of paragraphs of reality halfway down:

The UK’s largest supermarket said the higher National Insurance rate had cost it £235m this year, however, Tesco has upgraded its earnings outlook for the year, with expectations of full-year profits of between £2.9bn and £3.1bn.

Lidl revealed this week that its profits had surged threefold. Sales jumped by 7.9% as pre-tax profits hit £156.8m in the year to 28 February, up from £43.6m a year earlier.

This comes immediately after this:

The boss of Tesco, Ken Murphy, has previously said that “enough is enough” on business taxes.

We certainly agree ‘enough is enough’, you greedy crook. How dare you rake in hundreds of millions above expectations and then cry poverty when it comes time to pay your share?

It would be one thing if you’d kept prices low, but as we all know, this is happening at the same time that costs have skyrocketed.

Scandalous behaviour.

And people aren’t standing for it:

‘Food Profiteering’

In a 2023 investigation, Unite the Union showed:

how profits of the UK’s biggest companies had jumped 89% over the pandemic. We explained how high inflation was initially triggered by “external shocks” including pandemic, war and droughts; but pushed higher by companies boosting profits all along supply chains, in sectors from energy to food.

The report also found:

  • “Even as their customers struggle with high food prices, the two biggest supermarkets, Tesco and J Sainsbury, are paying out a massive £1.2 billion to their shareholders this year”.
  • The ‘big 3 supermarkets’ had combined net profits in 2021/2 of £3.2bn: double the £1.6bn before the pandemic in 2019.
  • When food inflation skyrocketed in 2022, Tesco and Sainsbury’s “made their highest underlying profits for many years”.
  • The Cost of Living crisis “allowed the big supermarkets to push their profits back up to the high levels seen over a decade ago, when the Big 3 controlled over 70% market share and enjoyed what The Guardian has called “world’s highest” retail profit margins”.

Looking at Tesco’s five-year record, it’s obvious they’ve managed to maintain these obscene levels of profiteering.

The question now is will Labour allow these greedy food barons to push us around, or will they put a stop to this mafia-like behaviour?

Featured image via public domain logos

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.