Consumers have made it perfectly clear that they they like the convenience and prices offered by supermarkets, but they will visit small shops if they provide something better. While Left-wing ideologues look through rose-tinted glasses at the expensive, slow, poor service, dirty small shops of the past, consumers prefer to make rational choices about where they shop.

The policy unit at ActionAid has also jumped on the anti-supermarket bandwagon too, demanding that competition authorities make the supermarket sector less competitive. They blame supermarkets for the low prices developing countries get for their agricultural products, and that supermarkets must be forced to pay more. Their approach to raising incomes in developing countries is misguided: instead of using the state to artificially force up prices, they should work with developing country producers to move up the value chain, to deliver real value that creates wealth.

For more on this, read my article from The Business newspaper: Smaller shops? What we need is bigger supermarkets.