Yesterday in Brexit news: stockpiling bodybags. Today: scraping the mould off jam. Because this is where we are now. Never mind the special place in hell Donald Tusk hopes is reserved for key Brexiters, we are already there. Truly, daily, the flames are licking.

There was a time when waking up in the morning and seeing the headline, “Theresa May: I scrape the mould off the top of jam and eat what’s underneath” would be surprising – it’s the kind of thing someone randomly and without context would come out with in group therapy to an awkward silence. But no longer. There was a time when an MP moaning that there was a lack of positivity around Brexit news – which was prompted by the aforementioned news of stockpiled bodybags – would have struck me as odd. But no longer. (The MP was Kate Hoey, by the way, to absolutely no one’s surprise).

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May piped up about her jam habits in her latest cabinet meeting, presumably to placate those who may have expressed concern about the fact we’ll all be soon roaming the street cannibalising each other, making 28 Days Later look like a romantic comedy. May urged people to use “common sense” to make a decision on whether foodstuff remains edible.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that May, steering the country through the most destructive course of action it has ever taken in peacetime for the sake of clinging to power, is not in a position to give any lectures on common sense. And that’s not even mentioning the field of wheat. Or the common sense that tells us that jam hardly ever goes off, given that it’s basically a jar of sugar. For May, bad jam is better than no jam. Even better, an endless traffic jam through Kent.

Weirdly, this is not the first time the leader of one of our two main parties has brought up jam in this Brexit era. In 2017, we had the headline, “Nothing has quite sparked debate like Jeremy Corbyn’s opinion on jam”. This was because Corbyn, well known for making his own jam (apple and raspberry), admitted to schoolchildren that he did not like strawberry jam, which they had professed to be their favourite. Fair play to Corbyn for later doubling down and rinsing the schoolchildren of Leyland on Twitter: “Nice kids. Terrible taste in jam.” (To further shade strawberry, Corbyn later shared his raspberry recipe on Instagram.)

It’s OK though, it’s not as though all of this is going down while the entire country is collapsing with the velocity of Lennie Small playing Jenga. It’s not like people are dying on the streets, or dying after being put on planes to unfamiliar countries, or dying trying to access correct mental health treatment. Eating mouldy jam won’t kill you, but this government might. That’s probably why we need to stockpile all these bodybags. Come to think of it, that is actually great thinking. For the one and only time in my life, I can say with full confidence, that Kate Hoey was right about something.

• Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist