Theresa May

Theresa May was born in Eastbourne in 1956 and studied geography at Oxford. She worked at the Bank of England and in the payments industry and served as a councillor in Merton before becoming MP for Maidenhead in 1997. She became the first female chairman of the Conservative Party and was Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016, the longest-serving in decades. After the 2016 referendum she became Prime Minister and triggered Article 50 in March 2017. She lost her majority in the June 2017 election and Parliament repeatedly rejected her withdrawal agreement with the EU. She resigned in 2019, stayed on as an MP until 2024 and was then made a life peer. She is a former Prime Minister who sits in the House of Lords as Baroness May of Maidenhead and holds no government office.

Supporters describe May as a dutiful and resilient leader who tried to deliver Brexit while protecting the Union and the economy, and who launched the Race Disparity Audit and the net zero target. Brexit supporters argued that her withdrawal agreement kept Britain too close to the EU, while Remain supporters criticised her red lines and her decision to trigger Article 50 before a plan was agreed. Her record as Home Secretary is contested: the hostile environment policy was later linked to the Windrush scandal, in which long-settled Caribbean-born residents were wrongly threatened with deportation and in at least 83 cases deported. Critics also faulted her government's response to the Grenfell Tower fire.