We love to hurt the one we love. The one we love is Tesco – it has twice the market share of its nearest competitor – but we love to bash it. The Office of Fair Trading joined the bashers when it referred the groceries retailers to the Competition Commission. Thank heavens the Commission has had the sense not to join in the knocking.

Tesco is successful because it is good. It offers cheap prices, high choice, good quality, and services such as mother-and-child parking, bag-packing and in-store loos. It does not force customers to shop there, they choose to.

Most shoppers have a choice of supermarkets within easy travelling distance and some prefer Tesco even if it means a longer journey.

Its main rivals are highly-capitalised corporations – Wal-Mart, Morrison and a Sainsbury that could soon be owned by the Qatari government. If they want to build or buy more stores, they can. It is not Tesco’s size that made it big.

If Tesco’s land bank hinders rivals’ expansion plans, why did the competitors not plan for their own future by buying in advance too?

It could all go wrong for Tesco: a rival may beat it on price, quality or service; its own standards could fall; fickle customers could simply seek change. But it is not for state agencies to tilt the playing field to punish a company for success.

The Competition Commission’s preliminary findings have thus got it right in suggesting no Draconian controls.

If shoppers don’t like Tesco they can go elsewhere: for the moment, they still like the store even if they also like to grumble about big business.

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