Politics can often frustrate ñ in fact to frustrate appears to be the raison d'être. Logic rarely comes into the equation, as it is all too rare that common sense sits at the top of the agenda.

The tenants at London's wholesale markets must be wondering what they can do to break the stalemate that exists between their respective landlords or, if that cannot be achieved, how to sting those landlords into the sort of action that has positive long-term implications.

Perhaps they can learn from history. The uprising of the supermarkets 20 years ago was ignored by the vast majority of wholesalers until it was too late. Prevarication was the downfall of too many wholesale traders in the 1980s and 1990s.

The inability to predict the scale of expansion of the multiples, and through that the lack of urgency to effectively act to limit its effect, has to be looked at now as bad judgement. The signs of consolidation in the catering sector are unmissable ñ but are catering suppliers in the markets paying attention?

The supermarkets would have expanded anyway, whatever measures the wholesale sector had taken. The fragmented nature of the catering sector has suited wholesale markets until now. It will consolidate, and the trade has to be ready before it happens, not when it is too late.

Tenants should not sit back and wait. With strong tenants' associations, it is unlikely they will be allowed to. The landlords hands are tied with the existing impasse and that suits neither of them. Tenants must take this opportunity to secure their own future, or be sentenced to another 20 years of finding someone else to blame. l