On July 14, the day after Theresa May assumed office as prime minister of the United Kingdom, she created a Department for International Trade to help the country negotiate trade deals after it leaves the European Union. The leader of that department is the conservative politician and prominent “Leave” campaigner Liam Fox, who believes British businesses must start thinking about exports as a duty rather than an opportunity. “We have become too lazy, and too fat on our success in previous generations,” he told a private gathering last month. “The demand is out there. You could be too,” urges the ministry’s website, Exporting Is Great.
Remainers always thought that making exporting great again, on the back of the battered pound sterling (which hit a new 31-year low against the dollar this week), was a bit of magical thinking; services-oriented Britain, after all, hasn’t had that kind of economy for a long time. And on Monday, Fox’s Department for International Trade posted a listing that, while in itself inconsequential, seemed to confirm that impression.
First, what Silicon Valley memoir made Brexit supporters think anyone needed to innovate jam?
Second, why would France—the world’s second-largest exporter of jam—need jam from the U.K.?
Third, how will the British innovate marmalade without no-tariff access to Spanish oranges?
Like all of the ministry’s export listings (rabies vaccines for Romania, gas chromatographs for Poland), this isn’t an abstract suggestion—the post suggests there’s a “fine food representative” out there looking for export-ready, high-quality jams and marmalades. (It would be “highly appreciated” that they be labeled in French, though—so much for the U.K. regaining its cultural independence.)
Still, it’s an uphill battle. The EU jam market is self-sufficient; production levels exceed consumption levels. And while France leads the EU in jam consumption, it has an even greater advantage in jam production. (This is from a great Dutch report on the European jam industry containing sage lines like, “jam consumption is strongly linked to bread consumption.” Where would we be without economists?) As it happens, France’s Bonne Maman is one of the largest nonsupermarket brands of jam in the U.K. Selling jam to the French is like bringing coal to Newcastle.
Maybe there’s an innovative Welsh jelly-maker who can turn that around?
Maybe. But high-quality, innovative, British jams just aren’t what they used to be.
