Two things are now clear about UK Christmas sales. First, they weren’t cataclysmic. The British Retail Consortium laments the worst Christmas since its “retail sales monitor” series began – but that was in 1994, after the last recession. This season, like-for-like sales fell 3.3 per cent, but the car industry, for one, would kill for such figures. Allow for the December value added tax reduction and, Credit Suisse reckons, the underlying decline was 1.8 per cent. Similarly, the 2.5 per cent gain at Tesco, which has a third of the grocery market, represents a 3.5 per cent rise, VAT-adjusted. So this was not Tesco’s worst Christmas since the 1990s, but only its worst since last year.

Second, price-led formats are thriving – Aldi, the German-owned discounter, says total UK sales rose 22 per cent in December. But that does not foreshadow a lasting structural shift. Aldi is growing fast, but from a puny base and mostly by adding stores. Its market share increased from 2.6 per cent to 3 per cent in 2008, good for the year but hardly stunning after a decade and a half in the UK. The discount segment’s 6 per cent grocery market share has barely changed for years.