Get to know your prime minister
Theresa May is set to become Britain’s second female prime minister today.
The incoming prime minister is set to call Downing Street her home after the Queen will confirm her role at Buckingham Palace today.
The contest for Britain’s next PM was set to last until September. However, energy minister Andrea Leadsom unexpectedly quit on Monday paving the way for May to become the UK’s 76th prime minister.
Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about Theresa May:
1. May was born in 1956 in Eastbourne. Her father, a vicar, Rev Hubert Brasier was killed in a car crash in 1981. Her wheelchair-bound mother Zaidee died a few months later after battling multiple sclerosis.
2. May studied geography at Oxford University where she met her husband Philip.
3. Her first job was at the Bank of England.
4. She entered parliament in 1997 as the opposition’s member for Maidenhead. She held roles including the shadow portfolios for education, employment, work and pensions and House of Commons leader.
5. She briefly served as the Conservatives’ first female chairman.
6. May became home secretary in 2010. She is the fourth woman to occupy one of the four great offices of state.
7. Children are an “ultra-sensitive subject” for May. In an interview with the Telegraph in 2012, May said: “It just didn’t happen. This isn’t something I generally go into, but things just turned out as they did. You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have.”
8. May wanted to be Britain’s first prime minister and was miffed that Margaret Thatcher beat her to it.
Her university friend Pat Frankland told BBC Radio 4 in 2011: “I cannot remember a time when she did not have political ambitions.
“I well remember, at the time, that she did want to become the first woman prime minister and she was quite irritated when Margaret Thatcher got there first.”
9. May did not get along with his colleagues, according to former Lib Dem minister David Laws.
He said recently: “She would frequently clash with George Osborne over immigration. She rarely got on anything but badly with Michael Gove. She and Cameron seemed to view each other with mutual suspicion.”
10. She’s a “bloody tough” woman, Tory veteran Ken Clarke was heard telling Sir Malfolm Rifkind last week. “Theresa is a bloody difficult woman but you and I worked with Margaret Thatcher.”
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