With two active wars raging, energy bills rising, a cost of living crisis grinding on and a doctors’ strike looming over Easter, Priti Patel has found the issue she wants to fight for: marmalade.
The shadow foreign secretary took to X this week in a state of apparent outrage after reports suggested that the UK’s proposed post-Brexit food deal with the European Union could require British marmalade to be relabelled as “citrus marmalade” on supermarket shelves. The response from almost everyone else in British politics was, in essence, the same: are you serious?
It then emerged that the government had confirmed marmalade would not, in fact, need to be renamed at all – meaning Patel had launched a culture war over a jar label that does not need changing.
What actually prompted the row
The story began with reporting – primarily in the Daily Mail – suggesting that the UK government’s planned sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the EU could require British marmalade producers to adopt new labelling that includes the word “citrus.”
The background is genuinely arcane. In the 1970s, Britain lobbied for marmalade made from citrus fruits – specifically bitter Seville oranges – to be given special protected status in EU food law, meaning other fruit spreads had to be labelled as jam. Since the UK left the EU, Brussels has updated its regulations to allow all member states to market non-citrus spreads as “marmalade” from June this year. As a result, to maintain clarity about what is what, citrus-based marmalade would need to be specifically identified as “citrus marmalade” in EU member states.
The question of whether that change would also apply in the UK, as part of the SPS alignment deal being negotiated, is what prompted the story. The answer, it turned out, was no – but that didn’t stop the outrage from getting ahead of the facts.
Patel’s post – and the reaction
Patel, whose Essex constituency is home to the Tiptree marmalade brand, posted her response on X with considerable urgency: “Labour is now attacking the great British marmalade! No idea Keir is so desperate to fit in with his EU pals and unpick Brexit, he’s now looking to rename British marmalade to align with the EU. When Labour negotiates, Britain loses big time….”
The response was swift and, for Patel, rather unkind. Her tweet attracted significantly more replies than likes – a reliable indicator on X that things have not gone as intended. Labour MPs lined up to deliver their verdicts.
Luke Charters, the MP for Outer York, was particularly cutting: “So here we have it. The Tory party’s latest faux culture war. With two actual wars raging, a senior Tory politician has chosen to get into a sticky situation over toast toppings. The country deserves better than this bitter marmalade.”
Stella Creasy described the entire episode as “nonsense on stilts” – before adding a further observation that will have stung: many marmalade brands in the UK already carry a fruit-based descriptor on their labels. Orange marmalade. Seville orange marmalade. The thing Patel was furious about happening was already, in many cases, something that British marmalade jars say perfectly voluntarily.
The government’s response – and the irony
The government moved quickly to confirm that marmalade will not have to be renamed as a result of the EU food deal. A government source pointed out that marmalade on UK supermarket shelves is already usually labelled as “orange marmalade” or “Seville orange marmalade” – suggesting the practical change, if any, would be minimal.
In other words, the culture war that Patel launched was over a jar label that does not need changing, on a product that already largely carries the descriptor she was furious about requiring, with regards to a food deal that is intended to reduce trade friction and – according to the government – lower supermarket prices for British consumers.
The timing also deserves a moment’s reflection. Patel was reportedly responding to the Daily Mail’s coverage. This is the same week that a former Goldman Sachs chief economist described Brexit as a “colossal economic shock” causing more permanent damage than the Iran war energy crisis. It is the same week that Keir Starmer announced the most significant EU reset of his premiership in response to a deteriorating relationship with Trump’s America. It is the week that energy bills are rising and the NHS is heading for a six-day doctors’ strike over Easter.
And the issue Priti Patel chose to go to the barricades for was marmalade.
The deeper point
There is something almost poignant about the episode as a commentary on where Brexit culture wars now stand. Those who campaigned loudest for Britain to leave the European Union promised the country a new era of global opportunity – trade deals, regulatory freedom, reclaimed sovereignty, sunlit uplands.
Nearly ten years later, with 63% of the public telling pollsters they would vote to rejoin the EU if given the chance, and with a former Conservative Treasury minister describing Brexit as a “colossal economic shock,” the most passionate defenders of the leave vote are fighting over whether marmalade labels need to say “citrus” on them.
If that is the hill the Brexiteers have chosen to die on – if the precious sovereignty that made it worth disrupting 47 years of economic integration is now being invoked to protect the right to call orange jam simply “marmalade” – it might suggest, as one commentator put it, that the sunlit uplands never quite arrived.
Paddington Bear, at least, has been spared. His marmalade sandwiches remain safe.
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