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Prime minister Theresa May has cruelly been nicknamed the ‘Maybot’, for her robotic and unemotional responses to meeting real people in real situations.

There’s the awkward dancing in South Africa earlier this week, the royal curtsies that just seem to get lower and lower, and the inability to convince her own cabinet that she can guide the UK through Brexit.

She’s clearly not ‘one of the cool kids’ in politics, but why is it so hard for her to gain popularity with the public?

After so many years of maintaining total control, the unlearning process is extremely difficult.




It appears May just cannot ‘let go’.

This is learned behaviour and I believe she has worked extremely hard to get a handle on her emotions and that this behaviour has only been amplified since she became prime minister – so much so that these otherwise natural emotions have now become defunct.

Especially when compared to her counterparts, who seem to flawlessly manage charming and down-to-earth without much effort.

Take for instance Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands.

Rutte made headlines when, while walking into a building with his colleagues in The Hague, he dropped his coffee cup.

Without thinking, he looked up and saw a uniformed cleaner holding a mop and instantly asked her for it and – to the astonishment of his gathered ministers – started mopping up the spilled coffee.

He made sure he did the job properly to the delight and applause of the cleaners, who were now gathered around him.

This two-minute incident was captured on video and went viral on YouTube within hours.

It did wonders for Rutte’s reputation and image, because prime ministers don’t do this – do they?

Our emotions react to an event much quicker than our thinking does. This wasn’t planned or thought through, and he was comfortable allowing his immediate emotional response to have free reign.

So, he mopped.

The Maybot doesn’t seem to have this natural instinct.

She was at it again just after she landed in Cape Town in South Africa this week, where she was greeted by a happy and welcoming bunch of children dancing for her arrival at their school.

Despite all the previous criticisms of her inability to engage, she gave it a good go, but it all came out wrong again.

She’d had the time to prepare, but the excessive planning of how she ‘should’ act just made it look awful.

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Many have commented on her body language and how petrified she appears when connecting with real people or when asked for a spontaneous response.

It’s an inner battle with emotions that comes through, and we all cringe in embarrassment at her total lack of empathy.

Some might say that we Brits are far too reserved to ever have this ‘cool’ spontaneous thing that many foreign leaders seem to excel in.



I mean who will ever forget Ed Miliband and his clumsy encounter with a bacon sandwich? While the photographer of the infamous picture admits it was unplanned, the unsuspecting Ed Miliband became the antithesis of cool.

Then there was William Hague who came out wearing a baseball cap. To me, this read as a futile attempt to appear cool, and again, it just wasn’t natural and looked contrived.

There’s a new generation of heads of state like Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron, that just seem to have this ability to be authentic and empathise with all they meet.

Jacinda Ardern, is another young and recently appointed prime minister with that golden touch of empathy and charm. Her openness and authenticity has boosted her already high standing within New Zealand.

These politicians never appear to rehearse or plan to do the right thing, it just happens, again and again.

Business psychologist and author of the book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, said: ‘If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.’

Goleman nails it – some people have it and others don’t.

Are you just born with it?

Or can you work on it?

May is clearly working very hard at it, but with little progress.

To compare once again, when President Barack Obama visited Dublin in June 2013, he was accompanied by all the usual American security protocols.


After a televised address to the people of Ireland, with the streets crowded with happy well-wishers wanting to catch a glimpse of the President, Obama took an unscheduled and surprise 10 minute walkabout.

President Obama demonstrated his humility, courage and most of all his empathy.

Can you imagine the prime minister doing this?

Most people can’t, because there’s an empathetic connection missing in the minds of the British people when trying to relate to Theresa May.

Many would say this is a clear deficiency of May’s but that might be a bit harsh, because this type of social behaviour is more about the ‘special ones’ who have a gift of natural empathy.

But, it’s high time May found her true calling – which isn’t leadership – and certainly not as prime minister in such troubled times.

The job, when done successfully, will always demand that you’re able to emotionally connect with anyone and everyone.

And May? She just can’t do it.

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