Theresa May

Theresa Mary May (born 1 October 1956) is a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from July 2016 to July 2019. She was Member of Parliament for Maidenhead from 1997 to 2024.

Before becoming Prime Minister, May served as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016 under David Cameron, one of the longest tenures in that office in modern times. As Home Secretary she oversaw immigration policy, including the introduction of the "hostile environment" approach, and presided over the deportation of Abu Qatada and the UK's withdrawal from several EU justice and home affairs measures before opting back into others.

May became Prime Minister after Cameron resigned following the June 2016 referendum on EU membership, in which the UK voted to leave. Although she had supported Remain, she pledged to deliver Brexit. She triggered Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union on 29 March 2017, formally beginning the UK's withdrawal process. She called a snap general election in June 2017, expecting to expand her majority, but instead lost it, forming a confidence-and-supply arrangement with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Her negotiated Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, finalised in November 2018, was defeated three times in the House of Commons in early 2019, including a historic 230-vote defeat on 15 January 2019 — the largest government defeat in modern parliamentary history. Unable to secure passage, she announced her resignation as Conservative leader on 24 May 2019 and was succeeded as Prime Minister by Boris Johnson on 24 July 2019.

Other policy initiatives during her premiership included the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (passed while she was Home Secretary), the launch of a race disparity audit, and the UK response to the 2018 Salisbury poisoning, after which she expelled 23 Russian diplomats. She was created Baroness May of Maidenhead in 2024.