Sajid Javid outside the Home Office today (Picture: Reuters)

What impression do you get when you look at this photo?

Is it an overwhelming sense of competence, authority and strength?

Presumably that’s what Sajid Javid was going for when he struck this power pose outside the Home Office on his first day in the new job, staring into the middle distance to contemplate the full historic weight of his appointment.

But some people noticed something else.


He’s not the only Tory politician to stand like this. In fact, loads of them do it.

Here’s Theresa May, impressing the nation with her dominant stance:

So powerful (Picture: EMPICS Entertainment)

George Osborne favoured psychological signalling too:

Bow down (Picture: Rex)

And so did David Cameron:

Pure, undiluted authority (Picture: Sky News)

Is this some kind of body language conspiracy?

Have they all been watching this TED Talk?



This has been going on for years now, with the particular Conservative pose first commented on in 2015.

Type ‘Tory power stance’ into Google and you’ll get back dozens of images and memes, including some comparing them to Blackadder characters.

Who told them to do this?

Of course, it could just be a natural reflection of their inner sense of authority.

Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair has been known to do it as well.

Still work to do on the grimace (Photo by Fred Duval/FilmMagic)

But we like to think there’s someone at Tory HQ coaching all senior politicians on how and why they should be standing this way.

We asked the Conservative Press Office if this is in fact the case, and will update this when we hear back.

In the meantime, here are the questions the public wants to know:

I’ve just learned about the Tory power stance and I’m honestly speechless. Who told them to do this? Why? Not but why? pic.twitter.com/DojriO6486 — Mark Di Stefano ?? (@MarkDiStef) April 30, 2018

Where are they taught this? pic.twitter.com/SgQBHcPr1E — Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) April 30, 2018

Has anyone ever identified who first came up with the power-stance pose. — (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) April 30, 2018

Is it because they still want to be Power Rangers?

And is it working?

More on the Sajid Javid power pose – body language expert @darrenstanton tells me: 'That is off the scale power.' — kateferguson (@kateferguson4) April 30, 2018

Sajid Javid is inheriting a difficult situation at the Home Office.

The government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy is under scrutiny and his predecessor has admitted that many in immigration detention shouldn’t be there.

Let that sink in. The Home Secretary is admitting (in a letter to the PM) that large numbers of people in immigration detention are being unlawfully detained. https://t.co/pNbDFGMyQ3 — George Peretz QC (@GeorgePeretzQC) April 29, 2018

He said his ‘most urgent’ task is to make sure people caught up in the Windrush fiasco are treated with the ‘decency and fairness’ they deserve.

As well as this, he’ll have to work out what the UK’s post-Brexit immigration system should look like.

That includes whether or not the government should carry on with their failed attempt to bring net immigration below 100,000 a year.

So maybe he’ll be needing that power pose.

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