Shoe fanatic whose ‘secret dream was to become Prime Minister’ has reached 10 Downing Street
The vicar's daughter who says she was always used to the idea of public service
OUR next Prime Minister has been seen as the quiet woman of British politics, she has been called a sphinx, a Soviet spymaster and an ice queen.
But she has a ruthless determination to get the job done, which has in the past seen her compared to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
And now this determination looks like it will see her taking the top job in British politics by succeeding David Cameron as the next Prime Minister.
During the EU referendum campaign she backed Remain but stayed out of the limelight and let events unfold around her.
This approach appears to have worked as she has far more support from MPs for her leadership bid than her Brexiteer rival Andrea Leadsom.
And she is seen as a unifying candidate with 199 Tory MPs, from both sides of the EU referendum debate, choosing her as their preferred Tory leader and person to ultimately lead the country.
The clear favourite to be PM rarely discusses personal matters but she has spoken recently about her heartbreak about not being able to have children.
She said she and her husband found comfort in their happy marriage and from other things in their lives that they were “blessed with” when they found out they could not have children.
“Of course we were both affected by it. You see friends who now have grown-up children, but you accept the hand that life deals you,” she told .
She added: “Sometimes things you wish had happened don’t or there are things you wish you’d been able to do, but can’t.
“There are other couples in a similar position.”
The couple met while they were studying at Oxford University and were introduced at a Conservative Association dance by the late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
She said: “He was good looking and there was an immediate attraction.
“We danced, though I can’t remember the music.”
Mrs May said they wanted to have children but found they could not, adding: “It just didn’t happen, so you know, it’s one of those things.”
Not wanting to reveal details about the help they sought for their fertility problems, she added: “I’m a great believer that you just get on with things.
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“There are lots of problems people have. We are all different, we all have different circumstances and you have to cope with whatever it is, try not to dwell on things.”
She is the longest serving Home Secretary in 100 years and has declared people can judge her on her record.
This includes scrapping the Labour plan for ID cards, reforming police stop and search powers and having a tough stance on immigration.
Her stance on immigration appeals to the right of the party, even though it did not approve of her speech to the Tory conference in 2002, in the days of opposition.
She confronted the audience by saying voters considered them to be “the nasty party” and added: “Twice we went to the country unchanged, unrepentant, just plain unattractive [and] twice we got slaughtered.
She told them the days of the Tories hankering after “some mythical place called Middle England” were over.
But she is also very well-known for her shoes and has been nicknamed the Imelda Marcos of politics.
While she is most known for her leopard-print kitten heels, her footwear obsession has seen her go to functions wearing some very bold choices.
Last spring she joined the Queen, the Prime Minister and other dignitaries to welcome Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto, and chose to wore a pair of black patent leather, leopard-print over-the-knee boots.
And at a party conference in Blackpool in 2007 she was pictured sporting some very bling gold hologram wellies.
Theresa May told Oxford pals 42 years ago she saw herself at Number 10
THERESA May, the stealth candidate who did not “tour TV studios”, always secretly wanted to lead the country.
In her first term at Oxford 42 years ago she told student pals she saw herself at No10.
Close friend Alicia Collinson said: “We were at breakfast and she said something about wanting to be prime minister.”
It was an impressive ambition for a former grammar school pupil at a time before Margaret Thatcher became Tory leader.
The then Miss Brasier was equally forthright when it came to finding a husband. She met Philip May at a Conservative disco in 1976. She is said to have made it clear to him later that he had to “make an honest woman of her” if he wanted the relationship to continue.
In 1980 her vicar dad Hubert Brasier married them in Wheatley, Oxfordshire.
But he died after a car crash the next year. Months later mum Zaidee passed away from multiple sclerosis.
Later, the Mays learned they could not have children. A friend said: “They desperately wanted it. It upset them enormously.”
Mrs May’s first job was with the Bank of England. She lost her first bid to be a Tory MP in 1992 but won Maidenhead in 1997.
She became Shadow Education and Employment Secretary after just two years and has been Home Secretary for six.
Mrs May overcame European human rights laws to deport hated terrorist Abu Qatada.
That steely determination will be essential when negotiations for Britain’s EU divorce begin.
Since becoming Home Secretary the register of members interests reveals she has been given three pairs of leopard heels from the shoe store Russell & Bromley, along with discount cards for LK Bennett, Amanda Wakeley and Hobbs.
Now 59, she says she knew she wanted to be a politician when she was 12 – in part because she was a vicar’s daughter.
The only child of Hubert, a clergyman, and Zaidee, speaking in 2012 she said: “You don’t think about it at the time, but there are certain responsibilities that come with being the vicar’s daughter.
“You’re supposed to behave in a particular way.”
At school she was taller than the other children and walked with stooped shoulders because she was self-conscious.
And she described herself as a swot, saying: “I shouldn’t say it, but I probably was Goody Two Shoes.”
Her love of cricket started when she was a girl and would listen to Test matches on the radio with her dad.
Geoffrey Boycott was her childhood pin-up and she tried to get the cricket legend a knighthood in last New Year’s New Year Honours.
It was blocked by Government officials because of his conviction in a French court in 1996 for assaulting his then lover Margaret Moore– he denies ever hitting her and says she slipped and injured herself.
May is said to admire the way he just solidly got on with what he was doing, being a loner and gradually breaking down the opposition.
In many ways she is similar, with colleagues saying she likes to work through problems herself, helped by an inner circle of officials and special advisers, and will going through documents until the early hours of the morning before making a decision.
Her disciplined attitude to life does not encompass cooking, revealing top TV chef Delia Smith is too “precise” to be in her collection of 100 cookbooks.
Speaking on last week’s Peston on Sunday show she says she prefers cooking where she can “throw a bit in here, a bit in here and bit there”.
She refuses to buy her groceries online because she likes pushing a trolley through the Waitrose in Twyford, in her Maidenhead constituency.
Speaking to the her friend Catherine Meyer, wife of the former British ambassador to the United States, says May is a “serious woman” but adds: “She enjoys going out with friends, to restaurants, people’s houses.
“She talks about holidays, clothes.
“She’s quite girly in that sense.”
May has Type 1 diabetes and has to inject herself with insulin twice a day but doesn’t let the condition affect her demanding role.
Keeping on top of it has even led to her secretly breaking the House of Commons’ strict rules on not eating in the Chamber.
She said: “There was one occasion when I had been expecting to go into the Chamber later, but the way the debates were drawn up meant I had to go in at 11am and I knew I wasn’t coming out till about five,” she recalls.
“I had a bag of nuts in my handbag and one of my colleagues would lean forward every now and then, so that I could eat some nuts without being seen by the Speaker.”
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