Theresa May

Theresa May became prime minister in the week after the Brexit referendum and spent three years unable to get a withdrawal agreement through her own party. She was a vicar's daughter and a Bank of England employee before politics, and served six years as home secretary - the longest run in sixty years - where she cut police numbers, cleared the deportation of Abu Qatada after a decade of appeals, and set up the hostile environment policy that later produced the Windrush scandal, when British citizens who had arrived from the Caribbean as children were detained and deported because they had never been issued papers. She had campaigned quietly for Remain and took office on the resignation of David Cameron, saying Brexit means Brexit. Her decision to call an early election in 2017 with a twenty-point lead lost her the majority entirely and left her governing with the Democratic Unionists. The withdrawal agreement she negotiated was defeated in the Commons by 230 votes, the largest government defeat in parliamentary history, and twice more after that. She resigned in 2019 in tears outside Downing Street. Her one unambiguous legislative achievement was the Modern Slavery Act of 2015, and she has kept working on that subject since leaving office. The Windrush scandal broke in 2018 while she was prime minister and forced an apology and a compensation scheme that has itself been criticised for being slow. She had also promised on the steps of Downing Street to govern for those just about managing, a phrase that outlived the policy. She stayed in the Commons until 2024 and voted against her successors repeatedly.

• Lived: 1956 CE – ?
• Nationality: British
• Roles: head_of_government