This was perhaps the most heavily-trailed Kleenex moment in recent TV history. The advance clips of Sir Keir Starmer’s interview with Piers Morgan suggested that the Labour leader would well up on-screen as he recalled his parents’ deaths and the fate of a family pet that was killed in a shed fire.
We’re accustomed to seeing our leaders in tears. Mrs Thatcher wept after delivering her farewell address outside No. 10 in November 1990. She held it together for the speech itself but cracked up when she walked away from the microphone and towards her official car. Photos of her inside the vehicle showed her biting her jaw while her eyes brimmed over with emotion. ‘Tears in the back seat,’ ran the Daily Mirror headline.
Before he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown sobbed at the memory of his daughter, Jennifer Jane, who died of a brain haemorrhage within weeks of her birth.
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