Out came the wowsers when Tony Abbott rocked up to a pub | Caleb Bond

Albo, Abbott and ScoMo walk into a bar … then the predictable hypocrisy begins, writes Caleb Bond.

When is a skol not a crime? When a Labor prime minister does it, it would seem.

Anthony Albanese chugged his beer at Enmore Theatre on Monday night, egged on by the crowd who were there to see band Gang of Youths.

It would not be a surprise to anyone familiar with Enmore and surrounds in Sydney’s inner west – I had the misfortune of living there for a brief time – that Mr Albanese received unconditional support from the throng.

They love him so much around there that there’s a mural of the bloke in the local shopping centre.

So he skols the beer. Everyone was happy. The man’s a hero, a man of the people. Everyone reports on it in jovial terms – how good is this Aussie bloke?

But you can bet your boots many of those people in Enmore Theatre were the same ones who spat chips when Liberal prime ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison dared to publicly indulge in a frothy.

Out came the wowsers in 2015 when Mr Abbott rocked up to a pub where a local footy team was celebrating an awards night.

They offered him a beer and he downed it in six seconds. The footy boys loved it.

But then Sydney Morning Herald political reporter Judith Ireland said the drink didn’t “sit quite right” because it was an “unmistakably and assertively macho act amid a chanting group of hyped-up dudes”.

Drinking beer is sexist when Mr Abbott does it. Yawn.

University of Technology Sydney cultural studies professor Julie Robert said it was “problematic” for him to “showcase his masculinity” in such a manner. The Guardian’s Melissa Davey sneered that, “despite the AFL making efforts to raise awareness about the impact of binge drinking among young people in particular, the AFL Sydney praised Abbott on Twitter”.

Mr Morrison copped the same sort of nonsense when he was snapped having a beer during an international rugby league game in Fiji.

All the lefties on Twitter carried on about how it was a bad look, he was a bogan, a PM shouldn’t drink in public, etc. Sue Pieters-Hawke – the eldest daughter of renowned and celebrated beer skoller Bob Hawke – bizarrely suggested Mr Morrison drinking a beer was different to her dad drinking a beer.

“Comparing them is like chalk and cheese, to put it mildly,” she tweeted.

“Can you imagine ScoMo campaigning against apartheid or for higher wages, for starters?”

No such outrage for Mr Albanese.

All prime ministers, no matter their political stripes, should be able to enjoy a beer without it being turned into some nonsense about binge drinking or public image.

Politicians, shock horror, are people too. But, as is often the case, if the left didn’t have double standards they’d have no standards at all.