# Laughing Theresa May Laughing Theresa May is a video clip of the UK Prime Minister throwing her head back and cackling in the House of Commons on March 8, 2017, while Jeremy Corbyn spoke. The strange, forced-sounding laugh spread within hours on Twitter and Reddit and became one of the most mocked political GIFs of that spring. ## Origin Catalyst event: On March 8, 2017, during PMQs in the House of Commons, Theresa May was caught on the parliamentary broadcast throwing her head back and laughing while Corbyn attacked her government[1]. The original footage is preserved in a YouTube upload of the exchange[4]. Earliest known meme post: Within hours, Twitter user @youngvulgarian tweeted the isolated clip with the caption "What the hell was that," a post archived at the tweet ID 839450026254413824[5]. According to Know Your Meme, that tweet cleared roughly 1,800 likes and 1,500 retweets inside 24 hours, which is what kicked the clip out of Westminster-watcher circles and into the general timeline[1]. - **Platform:** House of Commons broadcast / Twitter (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2017 ## Overview Laughing Theresa May is a short clip of the then UK Prime Minister tilting her head back and letting out a stiff, wheezing cackle from the government front bench during Prime Minister's Questions[1]. The unusual delivery, which arrived while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was mid-critique, quickly got framed online as villainous, robotic, or vaguely hair-ball-adjacent[2]. The format that stuck was the loopable GIF. Users pulled the two-second cackle out of the parliamentary feed and treated it as a reaction to anything jarring or bleak, while edit-happy Twitter accounts pasted the clip into new contexts, most famously a version where May appears to swallow a whole fish[3]. On the subreddit side, the raw loop landed on /r/BetterEveryLoop and the fish edit hit the front page of /r/gifs, giving the meme parallel lives as straight reaction fodder and as surreal remix bait[1]. ## How It Spread Later that same morning, Twitter user @davidsonhrj posted an edit that spliced a fish into May's open mouth, making it look like she was gulping it down mid-laugh[1]. That version reportedly picked up more than 18,000 likes and 14,000 retweets in its first day and became the single most-shared derivative of the clip[1]. Reddit ran with both cuts in parallel. The clean loop hit /r/BetterEveryLoop, the fish edit topped /r/gifs, and a glitched remix from user Lazzars went up on /r/brokengifs the same day[1]. Once the loops were seeded across the big default subs, the clip had the reach it needed to jump into mainstream coverage. UK and US outlets picked it up almost immediately. The Sun ran a roundup of the viral reaction under the headline about May's "bizarre laugh" during pre-Budget PMQs[2], the Daily Mail compared the laugh to a cat coughing up a hairball[3], and Mashable filed a short piece on the awkward Parliament moment[6]. The tone across all three was less political analysis and more "look at this weird GIF," which is what cemented the clip as a meme rather than a news beat. ## How to Use The clip is typically deployed as a reaction GIF to something absurd, awkward, or menacing, with the loop cut tight so only the head-tilt and cackle play. A common convention is to pair it wordlessly with a screenshot of bad news or an unhinged quote, letting the laugh do the work. Remixers often replace the empty air in front of May's mouth with an object, following the template @davidsonhrj set with the fish edit. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Laughing Theresa May? It is a viral video clip of UK Prime Minister Theresa May laughing loudly in the House of Commons on March 8, 2017, that spread as a reaction GIF and remix template[1]. ### Where did Laughing Theresa May come from? It came from the live PMQs broadcast on March 8, 2017, when May laughed while Jeremy Corbyn was speaking, with the clip archived on YouTube[4] and pushed viral by a tweet from @youngvulgarian the same day[5]. ### What does Laughing Theresa May mean? Online, the clip was read as villainous, robotic, or awkward, and outlets like the Daily Mail compared the sound to a cat coughing up a hairball[3]. ### How do you use Laughing Theresa May? People typically use the tight GIF loop as a reaction to something absurd or bleak, or remix objects into May's open mouth in the style of the fish-swallowing edit that went viral in the first 24 hours[1]. ### Is Laughing Theresa May still popular? It is a classic 2017 political reaction GIF that still circulates in UK politics threads, though its peak was the March 2017 news cycle covered by The Sun and Mashable[2][6]. ## References 1. [https://x.com/i/status/839450026254413824]() 2. [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3053478/theresa-may-memes-go-viral-after-pm-performs-bizarre-laugh-during-pre-budget-pmqs-session/]() 3. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4295408/Theresa-May-laughing-looks-like-cat-coughing-hairball.html]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abva6vdENJM]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/laughing-theresa-may]() 6. [https://mashable.com/article/theresa-may-laugh-parliament]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/laughing-theresa-may Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library