The Big Mood: dancing on the grave of Theresa May’s political career
One week, one mood: Moya Lothian-Mclean’s deep-dive into the feel of the week.
Society
Words: Moya Lothian-Mclean
Magnanimity in defeat; a noble concept. However, extremely 2016. Get in loser, it’s three years post-Brexit, post kinder politics and now we celebrate the fall of our enemies in any way possible. Like improvising a ballroom-influenced (the queer type darling, if you thought of Strictly I’m sorry, but this column is probably not for you) dance to the sound of Theresa May finally hanging up her kitten heels.
27-year-old Kelsey Ellison has form in going viral – she was the vogueing Hermione (and if you’re unaware of what that means, congrats on having a life). But this little performance goes beyond; Ellison has brought a metaphor to life. She is literally dancing on the Prime Minister’s political grave. Nothing quite says: “Your so-called ‘legacy’? The one you’ve been desperate to preserve? Shat all over it. It’s covered in shit,” like a death drop to the sound of someone’s tears.
Ellison was far from alone in celebrating the end to Maybot’s torturously slow decline. By the time the PM stepped up to that podium it felt like we’d witnessed the death-from-disease of a childhood pet who, sensing its fate, had refused to come near enough to the house to receive a kindly bash on the head.
Her tears, received sympathetically by some, acted as a reminder to others of all the times she hadn’t wept: for Grenfell victims, for the legions of families cleaved in two by her Hostile Environment, for those left homeless and destitute by the relentless rollbacks on the welfare state.
There were Simpsons memes…
Gemma Collins redubs…
…and mockery of those who urged people to take a high road that’s actually impassable thanks to budget cuts…
But head and shoulders above the rest twirled Ellison, her ‘tribute’ embodying the mood of the nation: brief, euphoric ebullience as finally, the most ineffectual leader of the last three decades powered down for good. Of course, this was swiftly followed by an abrupt and emotional crash as everyone realised the next PM – and fifth unelected premier of the average millennial’s lifetime – is likely to be a Machiavellian cartoon bear. And so the beat goes on. Big mood.
