The Germans have done it again. In a move that will surprise precisely no one who has ever watched a German engineer obsess over tolerances, a German court has ruled that Milka’s shrinking chocolate bar constitutes a form of consumer deception. The bar, it seems, got smaller while the price stayed the same. Shrinkflation, the pundits call it. The judges call it illegal. And now the British consumer watchdog, that bastion of slow-moving bureaucracy, is sniffing around and suggesting that UK brands might have to follow suit. How very edifying.

Let us pause to admire the sheer predictability of this. The Germans, a people who brought us the sausage purity law of 1516 and a national obsession with recycling bins that would make a Roman emperor blush, have once again imposed order on a chaotic world. Their court system, for all its flaws, still believes that a contract is a contract and that a 100-gram bar of chocolate should not mysteriously become an 85-gram bar without a word of explanation. It is the sort of pedantic rigour that made the Holy Roman Empire a laughingstock and the Volkswagen Beetle a masterpiece. And it is exactly what we need.

Over here, in the soggy archipelago of deregulation and self-service checkouts, we have a different approach. Our consumer watchdog, Which?, issues reports. It tuts. It writes sternly worded letters. It might even name and shame. But it does not, as a rule, haul Cadbury before a judge in Birmingham and demand that the Dairy Milk bar return to its former glory. Why? Because we have internalised the logic of the market. We tell ourselves that if the bar shrinks, we can simply buy a different bar. We tell ourselves that inflation is a force of nature, like the weather, and that corporate profits are a kind of divine right. We have become a nation of passive consumers, shuffling through the supermarket aisles with a vague sense of grievance but never quite summoning the Teutonic fury to sue.

This is not just about chocolate. It is about national character. The German court’s ruling is a reminder that consumer protection is not a favour to the little guy. It is the bedrock of a functioning market. Without it, capitalism degenerates into a game of three-card monte where the house always wins. We in Britain seem to have forgotten this. We have Lady Bracknell’s prejudice against anything that smacks of regulation, as if the invisible hand were a benevolent deity rather than a cold, calculating machine. The result? Our supermarket shelves are filled with products that have quietly shed ounces and millilitres, and we accept it with the same lethargy with which we accept rail strikes and potholes.

There is a historical parallel here, as there always is. The late Victorian era saw a similar tension between laissez-faire capitalism and the nascent consumer movement. It was the age of patent medicines, adulterated bread, and the great margarine scandal. The British response was piecemeal: a few acts of Parliament, a few prosecutions, but never a full-blooded campaign to defend the Queen’s subjects from the depredations of the free market. The German response, by contrast, was systematic. They created cartels, standards, and a legal framework that treated the consumer as a citizen with rights, not a sucker to be exploited. And which society is more stable? Which one has fewer food riots? The answer is obvious.

So now the British consumer watchdog is “considering” following the German lead. It will consult stakeholders. It will commission studies. It will produce a report the colour of a bureaucratic sunset. And in the meantime, your Milka bar will continue to shrink, slowly, year by year, until it is the size of a postage stamp and costs the same as a small car. The Germans have drawn a line in the sand. They have said: this far and no further. We, on the other hand, are still trying to decide whether lines are compatible with the principle of free trade.

It is time for a change. Let us abandon our national affection for the shoddy and the short measure. Let us demand that a pound be a pound, and a chocolate bar be a chocolate bar. And let us hope that the British watchdog, for once, grows a backbone. Or at least adopts a German one.