Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Women think that David Cameron is out of touch for good reason

Well, the great breadmaking debate hots up. David Cameron neatly sidestepped the heffalump trap that Nick Ferrari put in his path in an interview on LBC when he asked him the price of a Value Loaf in Tesco or Sainsbury. As you and I know, dear reader, Mr Cameron would no more eat that stuff than his own fingernails, and I for one applaud his good sense. If you can afford not to, don’t. But his elegant solution to the problem of not knowing that loaf-shaped carbohydrate costs 47p (he thought bread costs ‘north of a pound’, which is true of the kind he eats, only double that) was to say that he makes his own bread, from flour milled in the Cotswolds, a process which takes all of 30 seconds in a breadmaker as a way of getting his children to eat granary loafs.

And, you know what… they do! Eat that, Mumsnet.

Already the matter has got the pundits going. Xanthe Clay of the Telegraph has opined on the PM programme that breadmakers suck. And, given that chez McDonagh, we make bread pretty well every night, to bake the next morning, may I say that she’s right; five or ten minutes’ work will give you a fab loaf, with just flour, water, salt and yeast. And for those Tory MPs seeking to show how completely in touch they are, may I say that you can purchase economy strong bread flour, 1.5kg in Tesco for all of 80p, and Christ only knows how they do it.

Anyway, a debate about the price of bread makes a nice change from the price of milk, which caught Boris Johnson out last night. Nadine Dorries’ gibe at Messrs Cameron and Osborne, as posh boys who don’t know the price of milk, stuck because it’s true.

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