It’s no revelation that the British economy is in a mess, and it’s no revelation that Britain’s Labour government rarely misses an opportunity to make things even worse.
And so the country’s finance minister (chancellor of the exchequer) is now asking British supermarkets to put a cap on prices on certain staples. That’s bad enough, and so is the inducement she is offering these retailers to fall into line — the relaxation of certain regulations.
And what are these regulations?
According to the Financial Times, they could include packaging rules. This refers to (of course!) net zero regulations under which retailers are charged for the packaging they use. On top of that, the government could delay “costly changes to rules around healthy food.” The latter relates to the futile and patronizing war against obesity.
These are regulations that should never have been introduced in the first place. That their relaxation can now be used by the government to induce supermarkets to adopt a bad (and, if these arrangements last any length of time, probably counterproductive) pricing policy is just another reminder that regulation should be confined to the essentials. The essentials include neither net zero nor the war against obesity, as the government has just proved by offering them as a bargaining chip.