The crying game

Guest article by Andy Mac

It was just before 3pm on December 11th last year when I received the telephone call informing me that the man I had looked after for almost 18 years had finally succumbed to his cancer. Despite a torrid year, I had kept my promise that I would visit him until the end, so that he wouldn’t feel alone. He was more than just someone I cared for through work. I had formed a bond with this individual that could only be described as a form of fraternity: Looking out for him more or less continuously both within work and without it for nearly two decades. By the time he passed, circumstances had compelled me to look for an alternative care career, so I was busily looking after a younger lad when the call came through. I had seen the gentleman in question just a couple of days before and was due to visit him again that very afternoon after the end of my shift. Sadly, it was not to be.

My colleague took over the personal cares as I answered the phone. When I hung up, with that feeling in the pit of my stomach that only news of a bereavement can induce, I phoned my manager down at the office to explain the situation. She came immediately to relieve me from duty. At no point during the twenty minutes between receiving the dreadful news and leaving the site did I let the young lad in my charge know I was upset. Given his intense learning difficulties, not only would he have not understood my circumstances, but being an individual with a high degree of sensitivity he would probably have been very upset to see me racked with grief. It was only when I got into my car to drive away that I finally let the tears flow. Eight months on from that dreadful day, it still hurts me to mention the events of that afternoon. But mention them I must as an example of when it is, and isn’t, appropriate to show emotion.

In contemporary British society, where social emphasis is on ‘rights’ rather than responsibilities, and where performative shows of crying and/or hysteria are more about seeking attention than they are about attaining an eventual catharsis, we shouldn’t really be shocked when we see the pathetic Wokerati – with their pearls for clutching, silk kaftans and Waitrose loyalty cards – wailing incessantly. What is a considerable revelation is when the second-most powerful figure in the country sits in our primary legislative chamber blubbing like an 8-year-old who’s just seen ‘Watership Down’ for the first time! In my nearly four decades of an interest in our democracy and political system, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something more toe-curlingly cringeworthy than the sight of Rachel Reeves with tears streaming down her face as she sat behind that pathetic excuse of a Prime Minister.

What brought it on? Who knows! We’ve since been told it was a ‘personal issue’. Maybe she was distraught because the speed at which she and her execrable party is destroying this country is not quite as rapid as she’d hoped for. Maybe it was because she’d had a phone call from her housekeeper, bringing her the sad news that her dead goldfish had to be flushed down the lavatory. Maybe it was because Keir Starmer covertly farted in her direction and her acute nostrils couldn’t abide the malodorous stench of a tofu-infused flatus. To be fair, I couldn’t really give a s**t what the reason was. All I am certain about is that such a ridiculous display of unprofessionalism and an inability to cope has no place in a seat of government – not least with the world’s mainstream and social medias focused on her.

Oh, and please spare me the ‘let’s give her some latitude because she’s a woman’ schtick. To get into politics at all – man or woman, you have to have a laser-guided sense of ambition. Furthermore, to get to the top in politics requires a ruthlessness becoming of a World War II panzer general! It’s a bit late to turn on the Greta Garbo act, unless it was a deliberate ruse to curry sympathy from a British public who’ve long since rumbled the virtue-signalling acts of this deeply insincere government. Whatever the reason is, I think this is a good point to suggest to our benighted Chancellor that is she wishes to weep with such intensity (in private, of course), then she should weep for the elderly who spent last winter unable to heat their homes adequately whilst the Third World garbage that floats on to Kent beaches daily received warm hotel rooms and three square meals a day. She should weep for the contemptible state of our border security, and how the governments of the last 20 years have cared more about soliciting the opinions of their mates at Davos than they have either the safety or the wishes of the British electorate. She should weep for the parlous state of our economy, as she uses the whims of her sectional backbenchers as the lodestar for fiscal guidance instead of what is good for hard-working taxpayers and wealth-creators. She should weep for the state of our city centres – blighted by rubbish, empty shop spaces, money-laundering emporiums, and culturally-incompatible parasites and their criminal practices. She should weep for the thousands of girls raped by Pakistani Muslims – Muslims who have subsequently found sanctuary in the darkest corners of Labour’s secret societies and controlled civic institutions. She should weep for the fact her party was too cowardly to proscribe a group of Hamas disciples before the local elections for fear of losing that sacred coveted Muslim vote (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/04/palestine-action-ban-considered-months-before-raf-break-in/).

I could easily weep when I think about what’s happened (and IS happening) to my country on a daily basis. But I desist. Not because I think we’re heading for a happy ending. I happen to believe civil disorder on a massive scale is inevitable in Britain when you think of the powder keg that’s been created. No, I desist because I have the strength of character to devote my energies to doing good for people. That’s a quality Rachel Reeves will never possess.