Scotland's First Minister John Swinney has proposed a price cap on certain "essential" supermarket food items, a policy announced in April to launch the SNP's manifesto and framed as a response to food costs affecting public health and nutrition. Columnist John MacLeod criticises the plan as an outdated, Seventies-style intervention reminiscent of state-controlled prices, arguing it misreads how markets actually set food costs and risks repeating the economic dysfunction of that era.

The proposed cap would target specific product lines such as bread, eggs, rice, chicken and cheese at major supermarkets, and has already been condemned by Ewan MacDonald Russell of the Scottish Retail Consortium as a "wrong-headed gimmick". Critics point instead to rising taxes, National Insurance increases, high energy prices linked to net-zero policies, and global factors such as the conflict affecting oil prices (diesel reaching 192.9p a litre in Stornoway) as the real drivers of food inflation, arguing a price cap would not address these underlying causes.