At least the Nordics were OK. You can always rely on that from a Dixons trading update. But there was no disguising the awfulness of the UK and Ireland performance that prompted Wednesday’s profit warning.

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At least the Nordics were OK. You can always rely on that from a Dixons trading update. But there was no disguising the awfulness of the UK and Ireland performance that prompted Wednesday’s profit warning. While John Browett’s transformation programme has achieved much, an 11% like-for-like decline can’t be spun as anything but a spanner in the works.

But the other thing you can always rely on Dixons to say is that it is outperforming the market, and while this week’s announcement might be one of 2011’s earlier profit warnings from a major retailer, it certainly won’t be the last.

Under Browett Dixons is going in the right direction. The stores and service are significantly better. But, to steal a phrase from Next boss Simon Wolfson, like many retailers he is trying to run up a down escalator. You can be sure Dixons’ rivals Comet and Best Buy are having no fun either.

The wider world is now waking up to what retail has been saying since the turn of the year, which is that the UK consumer is frozen with anxiety. Every retailer, even the supermarkets, is exposed, but those operating in discretionary markets like electricals where online competition is particularly strong are especially vulnerable. The big worry for Browett and his peers should be whether what is a particularly vicious consumer squeeze will accelerate the structural changes in these markets.

Retailers deserve better

“Why did the anarchists attack Fortnum & Mason? Because proper tea is theft”. How they chortled on Andrew Marr’s sofa on the BBC on Sunday morning, as the clean-up began not just as the Piccadilly department store, but also at stores across the West End.

A tacit consensus seems to have developed that as long as the people who shop there are rich - like Fortnums - or its owner is rich - like Topshop - civil disobedience against retailers is OK. The police seemed quite happy last weekend to sit back and watch while hooligans occupied shops and bonfires were lit in Oxford Circus.

The response simply wasn’t good enough and West End retailers must have better protection. Not just because trade is going to suffer badly if these episodes of mayhem are allowed to continue but, more importantly, people who go to do a day’s work in the capital’s shops shouldn’t have to face the intimidation and aggression being levelled at them.