LIKE freshly cracked tendrils spreading across a frozen pond, British politics appears more and more fractured, yet it would seem our warring political leaders have something heretofore undiscovered in common.
Both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are united in shared opining on jam. Jam as in edible preserve, not as in the jam in which we currently find ourselves.
Incapable of cooking up a cohesive formula as to how to get us out of the sticky mess that is Brexiting Britain, Mrs May has been revealed to be capable of a type of rank frugality in the store cupboard, which, presumably, she intends the rest of the country to assume once we’re living on corned beef and tinned potatoes.
Or, Spam and canned peaches, as the chairman of Tesco, John Allan, told ITV’s Robert Peston this week. Asked how supermarkets will cope in the event of a no-deal Brexit, Mr Allan replied: "We can build up stores of long -life food, and provided we’re happy to live on Spam and canned peaches, all will be well.”
Mrs May, it was leaked, told a Cabinet meeting she scrapes the top from mouldy jam and makes it Brexit Secretary. Sorry, bins it and eats what’s underneath.
But perhaps Mrs May is confused with Jam families. Remember the acronym du jour circa 2016? As is the rage with politicians, Mrs May chose a demographic to target – in this case, “just about managing” upper working class and lower middle class families – and promised to target policies at making their lives easier. Now we have a just-about-managing Prime Minister.
One of the specific attributes of the Jams was low resilience to economic shocks. Still, just scrape the mould off, eh?
This controversy is not the first time conserve has left a party leader in a sweet stew. Mr Corbyn, who, you’ll remember, makes his own jam, generated outraged headlines in 2017 with the admission that he doesn’t like strawberry. “Nice kids, terrible taste in jam,” he tweeted of a bunch of youngsters from a children’s centre in Leyland, Lancashire, who had been hoodwinked into baking cupcakes with the Labour leader.
Mr Corbyn’s fruit mix of choice? Apple and blackberry.
An interesting choice. At first glance, a bit uppity, a bit not of the people. But look again. Strawberries don’t come cheap, while blackberries and apples can be foraged for free from Great British highways and byways. Presuming you’ve stockpiled some sugar, this might be something to bear in mind come March 29.
As we deal with a global environmental crisis, a debate between the importance of individual choices and the necessity of forcing corporations to make more environmentally sound choices rages on.
Mrs May is leading from the front, telling us, a patient public, that food shouldn’t be binned because it’s past its best-before date. Shoppers, she apparently said, should use “common sense”. Given the gobsmacking lack of sense – common or otherwise – being demonstrated by the Prime Minister or any of her party, this appears cheek of a dizzyingly high level.
She has a point, though, and it is here I must confess I find myself, for the first time, entirely simpatico with Theresa. It is rare indeed that I eat in-date food. I’m still using spaghetti with a 2013 date on it, to no ill effect.
(Public Safety Announcement: The Food Standards Agency does not advise eating food that is obviously rotten or mouldy, especially for vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, children and the elderly.)
I eat out of date fruit and veg, milk and eggs well past the sell-by stamps. Still here.
Mould, though, is another matter. The spores tend to infect an item entirely and merely scraping the visible rot away will do little to make the entity safe for consumption. There’s a metaphor there.
As a Conservative, it’s predictable that Mrs May is suggesting that successfully enduring the ills of a Brexit food shortage will fall to the individual and their ingenuity in stretching their single egg ration to last a family of five. As Mr Allan might say, every little helps.
But there’s something tragicomic about the Prime Minister’s advice. Much as she tries to make herself relatable to the general populace, an ordinary woman, scraping her jam in a field of wheat, she appears as one computer-generated by an alien race whose research of Earthlings extended only to reading a Wikipedia page on humans with “citations needed”.
Appearing on the One Show with husband Phillip in 2017, Mrs May was quick to explain that chores in her household are divided into “boy jobs and girl jobs”.
Mr May described how the home is run. “Well,” he said, “I get to decide when I take the bins out. Not if I take them out.”
The clue to the main property of jam is in its alternate name -–preserve. It’s designed to last. If Mrs May’s jam is being left long enough to turn mouldy then surely it’s a sign that she is unsuited to jam, jam is not for her. Her jam, which she committed to buying, has gone off thanks to disinterest.
She is more like toast: done.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel