The Post-Brexit Marmalade Betrayal

In a week apparently running low on genuine calamity, Westminster has heroically located one: the impending reclassification of things on toast.

The Prime Minister, apparently bored of governing, has turned his attention to breakfast condiments. Marmalade, we are told, faces a bureaucratic makeover so profound it may soon be forced to admit – brace yourself – what fruit is actually in it.

The crime? Under a shiny new deal with our European pen pals, jars might soon be labelled along the scandalous lines of “citrus marmalade” rather than basking in the glorious ambiguity of the current regime.

This, naturally, is being presented as the thin end of a very sticky wedge. Today “citrus marmalade”; tomorrow, one assumes, a Brussels directive requiring tea to be described as “hot leaf infusion”.

Lost in the hysteria is the faintly inconvenient detail that British shelves are already groaning under jars helpfully specifying “orange marmalade,” as if consumers might otherwise suspect it of being made from, say, turnips.

Nor is it widely advertised that the current definition was itself the product of earlier regulatory fiddling, enthusiastically encouraged by Britain. Sovereignty, it seems, was once perfectly compatible with paperwork.

But consistency is the enemy of a good panic. Far better to conjure images of officials prising open Paddington’s sandwich and relabelling it mid-bite.

Pass the outrage. And the citrus spread, or, whatever we’re calling it this week.