THERESA May will hopefully be familiar to readers of the National. She’s been the Home Secretary for the last six years, making her the longest serving holder of that office.
She was, briefly, a muse for our Photoshop guy, who used his computer art magic to turn her into Neo from the Matrix to illustrate concerns around the so-called Snoopers Charter and as Cruella De Vil for some reason that we can’t quite remember. He’s very excited about the prospect of her becoming prime minister.
When considering how the 150,000 Tory party members vote, it’s worth remembering that rather than Europe, or any Home Office policies, what could tempt them to back May, is that there’s a really good chance they’ll have met her.
May, a former chairman of the Conservative Party, turns down very few invitations from local associations.
She has wanted this job for sometime, and she knows that means having to get party members on board. That’s why she’s spent as many nights as she can spare glad-handing activists in the leafy backwaters of Tory Britain.
Though, also worth noting, that some activists have never quite forgiven her for warning that some people viewed the Tories as “the nasty party”.
Born in October 1956, May, like Leadsom, went to a comprehensive, before heading up to Oxford. She is married to Philip, a banker who works for investment firm Capital International.
The two were introduced at a Conservative Party student disco by Benazir Bhutto, who went on to become prime minister of Pakistan. She grew up in Oxfordshire, the only child of a Church of England vicar.
Before being elected to parliament in 1997, May worked at the Bank of England.
Rather depressingly, immigration is going to be a key part of the campaign against May, it is her department that has failed to deliver the Tory party manifesto commitment of taking net migration down to below 100,000 a year.
If Tory activists hate anything, it’s immigration targets being missed.
It was also part of her argument against Scottish independence. Voting for an independent Scotland would lead to uncontrolled immigration and see passport control on the border, she said when she campaigned up here in 2014.
When appointed to Home Secretary, she was also given the Women and Equality brief, where she came in for flack from the LGBT movement, as she’d a history of voting against equality, including on the age of consent and against greater adoption rights for homosexuals. Though she had voted in favour of civil partnerships. May later said she had “changed her mind” on gay adoption, and has been a firm advocate of equal rights.
But changing her mind isn’t something May – described by Ken Clarke, in a moment of unguarded, honesty, as a “bloody difficult woman” – does very often. The recent stooshie over EU nationals illustrates the sort of prime minister she might be.
May has said the status of EU nationals living in the UK should form part of the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, and that as such, she cannot guarantee that they will be allowed to remain in the country.
Despite angry opposition from her own party, despite being very much on her own, May has not backed down, not one bit. Even when it would have suited her to do so.
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