How to save Royal Mail

The government’s ‘cost-of-living tsar’, Just Eat co-founder David Buttress, was appointed last month as a Canutian gesture against the inflation tide. He says his role is to encourage retailers and utilities to offer discount deals that might relieve short-term pain for consumers. But wouldn’t it be good if he also had powers to shame companies or sectors for profiteering by whacking their prices up far ahead of inflation? Any firm for which energy or scarce raw materials are major cost elements has possible reason for scorching price rises; many others do not.

Buttress could start by looking into hire-car rates, which have doubled (and more) across Europe since 2019 – stinging holidaymakers who prefer to brave airport queues rather than endure Channel port gridlock in their own cars. International operators such as Avis, Europcar, Hertz and Sixt offer the excuse that having reduced their fleets during the pandemic, they can’t rebuild them fast enough to meet summer demand because global microchip shortages have restricted supply from car factories.

These companies used to be able to buy new cars at deep discounts and sell them profitably at the end of the season. Now they have to pay a premium and bear the depreciation – and have fewer hires in total across which to spread their overheads.

OK, so their costs have gone up a bit. But sufficient to justify a hire-fee increase for a family runabout from around €35 per day to more like €100? Or are they by any chance price-matching upwards to the highest level at which customers, confused by many differing inflation signals, will shrug and hire the car anyway? If you think you’ve spotted opportunist overpricing in other sectors, email martin@spectator.co.uk.

Merci beaucoup

Sizewell C nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast – for which Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has given the go-ahead against the advice of the Planning Inspectorate and the cries of local campaigners – will be capable, we’re told, of meeting 7 per cent of UK electricity needs.