Leading article: Supermarket sweep

Monday 04 April 2011 00:00 BST
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Some day soon we will not need to spend money with anyone but Tesco. The supermarket has long had the lion's share of the groceries market. It has expanded aggressively into the retail of clothes, books, CDs and electronics. Tesco will set you up with home broadband, open you a bank account and flog you insurance. It will even sell your pet insurance.

And now the supermarket plans to trade in used cars too through an internet site called Tescocars.com. Each vehicle purchase will apparently be worth 2,000 points on a Tesco loyalty card – which will get you a generous amount of Tesco Value baked beans. And customers can even request that the new vehicle be delivered directly to their home. Tesco will probably cram the boot with Tesco shopping too and petrol from a Tesco filling station if the buyer asks nicely.

We wait in eager anticipation of what will be next: Tesco homes? Tesco churches? Perhaps a Tesco political party, leading, one day, to a Tesco government? It would foolish to rule it out. Such is the reach of the supermarket that a new slogan is surely in order. The present one – "Every little helps" – does not really capture the supermarket's dominance or its ambitions. We suggest: "Tesco: global domination at affordable prices".

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