The PM’S war on waste shows a real dash of the Blitz spirit

Politicians are warned against offering “jam tomorrow”, lest the electorate punish them for bandying about some idyllic future prospect that never comes to pass. On the face of it, then, it seems uncharacteristically bold of Theresa May to be proffering jam right now. Especially at a time when the more nervous among us may already be stockpiling jars in anticipation of a no-deal Brexit.

Yet the Prime Minister deserves to be commended for explaining, during a Cabinet discussion on food waste, how she scrapes the mould off her jam in order to consume the “perfectly edible” area beneath. She should also be praised for insisting on flouting sell-by dates, after declaring that she prefers “common sense” to printed decrees.

It’s the sort of good, abstemious stuff one would expect from a vicar’s daughter. Moreover, it is clearly designed to be the type of advice that makes us feel we have a steady hand on the tiller, despite all appearances to the contrary.

One is reminded of Mrs Thatcher’s remark, in the year she became prime minister, that: “Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”

Those of us who grew up in the Seventies, with Forties parents, will need no introduction to the idea that one eats everything on one’s plate – no matter how gamey its guise.

With food waste, alas, an ever more modish problem, Mrs May’s old-fashioned admonitions clearly have a lot going for them. At 62, she missed post-war rationing by merely a couple of years, and is old enough to remember when no morsel found its way into the bin without savage emotional blackmail.

There would be handprogress wringing about the starving, talk of Spam, powdered egg, and whale meat (the latter pronounced inedible by bilious Brits, despite the Blitz spirit).

We were always to count our blessings and eat up our greens – whether or not said food started out green in the first place.

Still, there remain some individuals for whom scraping off mould does not come easily, despite the lingering shame of being responsible for wasted food. I count myself as one.

For some reason, I would happily saw green edges off hard stuff such as Parmesan, but consider it a deal-breaker should the rot be attached to soft foods – some superstition regarding the metaphysical properties of spores.

A few months ago, I had the misfortune to set up house with the eco-obsessed son of a war baby, who prides himself on eating anything. Our fridge is a horror story of saucers containing the festering ghosts of meals past: blackened avocados, lettuce turned to slime, lemons like cannonballs.

It is a spectacle so stomach-churning that it serves to make me more, rather than less, profligate, as I am reluctant to contemplate even the non-fossilised fare. I have had to impose Betts’s Law: if the dog won’t go near it then neither will we.

There are those who may now be reluctant to share a kitchen supper at 10 Downing Street. However, wastrels such as myself really ought to give up our squeamishness and all take a leaf out of Mrs May’s book of household management; on this, if not on the subject of boys’ jobs and girls’ jobs.