Tesco’s like-for-like sales fall in the UK is big news, but Phil Clarke didn’t seemed fazed by the challenge ahead today

Tesco is big news today, judging from the number of calls coming into the office asking us to talk about its first half figures on television. The overall profit performance in the first half wasn’t bad at all but inevitably attention has centred on the disappointing like-for-like showing in the UK, where comp sales fell for the first time in longer than any of us can remember.

To his credit Clarke hasn’t tried to shift the blame entirely onto the market, although he rightly pointed out that consumer confidence is weak and that expensive petrol is mopping up a lot of consumer spend. Tesco’s large non-food offer clearly doesn’t help its performance either.

But six months into the new job, the new CEO was once again very open about the issues Tesco faces. Price is clearly part of it and being addressed through the Big Price Drop, but he spent a lot of time talking about things like merchandising and the quality of the assortment in non-food, and giving stores more staff hours to improve availability and presentation in fresh produce.

He was also very open about slowing the development of the Bank, putting technology upgrades on hold while service issues - which it seemed to be implied were have been quite severe - are ironed out. Sales growth in Poland and Korea has also been slower than hoped.

But for all that bad news, the Clarke’s mood was relaxed and calmly answered the various questions thrown at him by the journos. There was a fair bit of good news in there too, notably about the progress of the US and of online, and he’s still in his honeymoon period as chief exec, which means he can - within reason - use the challenges it faces as an opportunity to shape what the Tesco of the Clarke era starts to look like.