After much hooplah over when Theresa May will resign as Prime Minister given the dumpster fire of Brexit and instability that the UK currently faces, she finally pulled the trigger and made a big statement announcing that she will be stepping down as leader of the Tory party (they’re the UK’s Conservative party for those who are unaware) on June 7.
But perhaps the most surprising thing about May’s announcement wasn’t that she was stepping down – we’ve been expecting that for a while now. No, the thing that caught people off-guard was her nearly breaking out into tears towards the end of her speech.
PM @Theresa_May makes a statement in Downing Street https://t.co/eg4ElQMXVR
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) May 24, 2019
Extraordinary that @theresa_may almost in tears at the end of her statement that she resigns 7 June. And leadership election starts following week, as I disclosed yesterday. #MayExit
— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 24, 2019
Oh @theresa_may , why didn’t we see that emotion more? Things could have been so different….
— Heidi Allen MP (@heidiallen75) May 24, 2019
Given how May has been seen as something as a cold figure with the emotional range of a robot, the image of her nearly crying came out of left field for everyone. While some were sympathetic to her tears, regardless of their political affiliation or thoughts of her tenure as PM, others weren’t quite as nice and didn’t buy May’s rare show of emotion.
May’s tears, as well as a couple of notable incidents in Australia recently where politicians got emotional, brought up a very interesting question: when is it okay for a politician to cry?
During the recent 2019 Federal Election campaign trail, Bill Shorten’s mother was the target of a controversial articles by Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Brisbane’s Courier Mail which suggested that Shorten had omitted facts when citing the struggles of his late mother as an inspiration for his political life. When Shorten issued out a response to the articles, he was overwhelmed with emotion and struggled to hold back tears.
Here is @BillShortenMP’s response to the Daily Telegraph article about his Mum #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/tO7jqrNg3W
— Justin Stevens (@_JustinStevens_) May 8, 2019
The reaction to Shorten’s tears and response was almost entirely in support of him, so much so that even Andrew Bolt of all people stuck up for Bill.
On the other end of the spectrum, Pauline Hanson got completely piled on by nearly everyone (including us) when she recently appeared on The Today Show and had a cry over how all the people in her party has let her down time and time again, which in her defence is pretty true. Just look at the fallout over the Al Jazeera’s One Nation gun lobbying documentary.
The Simpsons Fits Perfectly With Pauline Hanson
She's more of a Shelbyville idea…
Posted by GOAT on Tuesday, 30 April 2019
So why is it that Shorten got sympathy from the public for showing emotion while Hanson and May got dumped on?
Maybe it has something to do with their political leanings, their reputation, or even their gender. Who really knows. For what its worth, my guess is that Bill was far easier to sympathise because people were attacking his late mother and that’s an indefensible low blow,
But for Pauline and Theresa? They were basically crying over how hard their jobs were. People whinge about their jobs all the time so it’s hard to feel sympathy for politicians who make a big show of doing that exact same thing for the cameras.
Perhaps the throughline out of all of this is that politicians are just human like the rest of us (well most of us as Trump is of a completely different that doesn’t have a pair of tear glands) and are prone to moments of weakness at the most random of times and places.
People get emotional over many things all the time and so maybe the question shouldn’t be when is it okay for politicians to cry but should we care what politicians are crying about. Or maybe we’re just putting too much stock into the whole crying thing and should focus on something else instead.