Theresa May will be only the second woman ever to told hold the highest public office in the United Kingdom, but she is no stranger to political life.
Britain’s presumptive prime minister, who now stands alone in the line of candidates ready to succeed current PM and Conservative leader David Cameron, has been sitting in the House of Commons since 1997.
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She could take over from Cameron as early as Wednesday. Much like Canada’s sole female prime minister, Kim Campbell, May will not face the electorate before being sworn in, and has said she does not believe a snap election is advisable.
As the U.K. (and the world) continues to reel in the wake of the Brexit referendum, here’s a look at the life and career of the woman who will try to steer Britain into calmer waters.
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Who is Theresa May?
May, now 59, was born in England, the daughter of an Anglican church minister from Sussex. Her working life prior to politics was largely spent in the financial sector, including a stint at the Bank of England starting in the late 1970s.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, she served as a financial consultant, while also holding office as a London city councillor.
It took three tries before May was finally elected to the federal Parliament as MP for Maidenhead in 1997. She has held the office ever since, in addition to a succession of increasingly high-profile government positions — the latest of which is Home Secretary.
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May has held that cabinet-level position since 2010. Her office oversees crime policy, counter-terrorism, immigration and passports, and the security service, MI5, is directly accountable to her.
On the personal front, May has been married to her banker husband, Philip May, since 1980. The couple were unable to have children, something the normally private May has said was very difficult for them.
One of her chief competitors for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom, came under fire late last week after suggesting that having children made her more sensitive to the long-term implications of Brexit. She has since apologized.
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May’s love of non-traditional footwear, including one famous pair of leopard-print pumps, is well established.
What can we expect from the new PM?
In a word, calm.
May has built a reputation as a tenacious but extremely level-headed politician, weathering numerous security challenges (including riots, shootings and terrorist attacks) during her time as Home Secretary.
Like the United Kingdom’s only other female PM, Margaret Thatcher, she has also built a reputation as someone who doesn’t much care about being liked.
In a wide-ranging feature on her published Monday, the Guardian newspaper described May as intensely private and “driven less by ideology than by morality, a very personal sense of right or wrong.”
Her record bears this out. Among other moves, May has repeatedly banned the English Defence League, a far-right group accused of overt racism, from holding marches. She also banned controversial Indian Muslim preacher Zakir Naik from entering the United Kingdom, and was found in contempt of court in 2012 for disregarding a legal agreement to free an Algerian from an immigration detention centre.
Since 2010, she has pushed major reforms to an allegedly corrupt police service, been a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, advocated for more women in Parliament, and taken a hard-line on drug policy.
May is no stranger to controversy as a result of her various decisions. In 2013, she came under fire for supporting the use of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act 2000 to detain David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who worked with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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May’s stance on immigration has been firmly in line with her Tory background, and she has advocated strongly for a reduction in net migration to the U.K. from other countries in the European Union. That said, she stood behind Cameron and the “Remain” campaign during the recent referendum.
Now, however, May seems resigned to the results.
“Brexit means Brexit. The campaign was fought, the vote was held, turnout was high and the public gave their verdict,” she recently said. “There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door and no second referendum.”
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Veteran Conservative MP Kenneth Clarke summed May up as a “bloody difficult woman,” a description she seemed to welcome.
“I am a bloody difficult woman,” she told reporters in response to the comment. “The next man to find that out will be (European Union president) Jean-Claude Juncker.”
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