Analysis: Healey’s profiteering warning risks blaming retail for an inflation shock it cannot control

Chancellor John Healey’s warning that shoppers must not be “taken for a ride at the pump or the till” was designed to show households that the government is ready to confront businesses.
Politically, the intervention is understandable. Economically, it risks identifying the wrong culprit.
Healey simultaneously acknowledged that there was “no significant evidence” of price gouging during the current cost-of-living crisis, and told major retailers that ministers were