Theresa May is the incumbent prime minister of the United Kingdom. She is a British politician and the Leader of the Conservative Party since July 2016. She has been active in politics since her younger years and has assumed office in May 1997 as Member of Parliament for Maidenhead. In 2010 she has been appointed as Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities. She remained in the position until 2012.
She ran and won in the July 2016 leadership election unopposed. This brought her to the Prime Minister position that she was appointed to two days later. The moment she began acting as a minister, she immediately started the process of withdrawing the United Kingdom from the European Union. This is popularly known as “Brexit.” She then announced an early general election that would occur in June 2017.
Early Life and Family
She was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, on October 1, 1956. She was an only child of her parents, Zaidee Mary Barnes and Hubert Braiser. Her father was a clergyman who became the chaplain of a hospital in Eastbourne. He later held the title Vicar and served in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Wheatley. He identifies as an Anglo-Catholic just like May. In fact, she has stated that being a daughter of an Anglican priest, her Christian faith has already become a “part of me. It is part of who I am and therefore how I approach things.”
She is a diagnosed diabetic person who receives a daily dose of insulin through injection since 2012. Despite that, she is still into her hobbies like hiking. She spent a holiday in the Swiss Alps with her husband, Philip May. They don’t have a child together, thus, she and he spend most of their trips with each other. They got married on September 6, 1980, in the same church where her father is a vicar.
Education and Political Career
She studied in Heythrop Primary School before going to St. Juliana’s Convent School for Girls. She then studied at the former Holton Park Girls’ Grammar School, which is now Wheatley Park Comprehensive School. After her basic education, she went to the University of Oxford and read Geography at St Hugh’s College. She graduated in 1977 with a second class Bachelor of Arts Degree. It is said that she and her now-husband were introduced to each other when she was still at the University of Oxford.
She has been in different positions in the UK government before she became a prime minister. The issues she looked into included police and crime, drugs, deportation issues and immigration in general, and more. She also expressed her support in same sex marriage, saying, “I believe if two people care for each other if they love each other if they want to commit to each other… then they should be able to get married and marriage should be for everyone.”
Net Worth
When she was appointed as prime minister, Theresa May has set up a blind trust on her net worth. It is run by independent trustees in order to avoid conflict of interest seeing as she is in a high position. Her annual salary as prime minister is around $180,000. Meanwhile, her husband, Philip May, is a senior executive in a $1.3 trillion-worth company.