Raise a toast! British marmalade survives a storm in a jam jar

Ours is a world in flux – rising sea levels, the price of oil – so it’s good to know there are things that can still be relied upon. Marmalade will keep its name. Hallelujah!

Fans of the breakfast preserve feared it would be rebranded “citrus marmalade” under a new trade deal between the UK and the EU.

Reform’s Richard Tice wasn’t having any of it. “No bungling Brussels bureaucrats should be telling Brits how to label our delicious marmalade,” he said. “Hands off our marmalade.”

“What would Paddington think!” cried the Daily Mail, remembering the bond Queen Elizabeth had forged with the fictional bear over their shared love of the fruit spread.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel called it “marmalade madness”.

Fear not. “The only ‘marmalade madness’ is the Tories and Reform boiling over with rage about jar labels that won’t need to change,” a government spokesperson said.

In the 1970s marmalade was given a special status under EU rules. It was made only from oranges, typically bitter ones from Seville. Brussels relaxed those rules after Brexit to allow “marmalade” to refer to spreads made from any fruit. Those spreads have another name in the UK: jam.

An exemption has been made to allow manufacturers sending products overseas to substitute the word “citrus” for the name of the specific fruit used to make the marmalade. Which means that “orange marmalade” or “Seville orange marmalade”, the terms used already by most British brands, would be acceptable.

The government plans to readopt some EU food regulations to boost trade and cut red tape – seen as part of a wider move to align Britain more closely with Brussels – but insists there is no need to “spread alarm”. Toast, anyone?