The starting point of all achievement is desire or ambition. But not every ambitious person gets what he wants. There is something more to it. Perhaps being in the right place at the right time is also vital to catapult you to the desired place.
Theresa May was not only ambitious butwas also determined and committed in the pursuit of her goal. She had set her sights on Downing Street very early in her life and had done her homework well. She was just looking for the right opportunity to strike. The iron was hot post-EU referendum and she did not waste any time to strike it. A calculative and shrewd operator, Mrs May's decision to campaign for the UK to remain in the EU but to do so in an understated way and to frame her argument in relatively narrow security terms reaped dividends after the divisive campaign. As other candidates fell by the wayside after David Cameron's resignation as PM, Mrs May emerged as the “unity” candidate to succeed him. She became the second female prime minister, taking charge of the UK at one of the most turbulent times in recent political history.
Friends recall a tall, fashion-conscious young woman who from an early age spoke of her ambition to be the first woman prime minister.
Mrs May's university friend Pat Frankland, speaking in 2011 on a BBC Radio 4 profile of the then home secretary, said: “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.”
In the early days at Westminster she became known for her exuberant choice of footwear. Her kitten heels became famous in political circles in the noughties.
But it is her toughness and no-nonsense approach which has become her political hallmark. She has coped with being one of only a small number of women in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party for 17 years. She famously laid bare some home truths by informing party activists at the 2002 conference that “you know what some people call us – the nasty party”.
Generally thought to be in the mainstream of Conservative thinking on most economic and law and order issues, she has also challenged convention by attacking police stop and search powers and calling for a probe into the application of Sharia Law in British communities.
She backed same sex marriage. She expressed a personal view in 2012 that the legal limit on abortion should be lowered from 24 to 20 weeks. Along with most Conservative MPs she voted against an outright ban on foxhunting.
Even before occupying 10 Downing Street, she made history by becoming the second longest serving home secretary in the past 100 years.
The daughter of a Church of England vicar, Hubert Brasier, who died in a car crash when she was only 25, Mrs May's middle class background has more in keeping with the last female occupant of No. 10 Margaret Thatcher, than her immediate predecessor. Hubert Brasier hailed from south London, the son of a regimental sergeant-major and a former parlour maid.
“My father encouraged me to, whatever job I did, just go get on with it and do my best,” says Mrs May. “I think you have to believe in what you are doing.”
Professor Linda Woodhead, an expert on the Church of England at Lancaster University, says: “She has a very strong sense of vocation and destiny and a very clear sense of right and wrong. Like her father, she has huge grit and determination to see through the moral vision she believes in.”
Born in Sussex but raised largely in Oxfordshire, Mrs May attended a state primary, an independent convent school and then a grammar school in the village of Wheatley. She remains a practising member of the Church of England attending communion most Sundays.
Like Margaret Thatcher, she too went to Oxford University. In 1976, in her third year, she met her future husband Philip, who was president of the Oxford Union. It is said they were introduced at a Conservative Association disco by former Pakistani prime minister late Benazir Bhutto. They married in 1980.
After graduating with a degree in Geography, Mrs May initially worked at the Bank of England and later rose to become head of the European Affairs Unit of the Association for Payment Clearing Services.
She was elected as a local councillor in Merton, south London, and served her ward for a decade, rising to become deputy leader. However, she was not content and aimed for the stars.
The Tory party's electoral fortunes hit rock bottom in 1997, when Tony Blair came to power in a Labour landslide, but there was a silver lining for the party and for the aspiring politician when Mrs May won the seat of Maidenhead in Berkshire. It's a seat she has held ever since.
While the Home Office turned out to be the political graveyard of many a secretary of state in previous decades, Mrs May refused to let this happen to her when she was the home secretary in the Cameron government. Her homework and microscopic attention to detail stood her in good stead. Crime levels fell, the UK avoided a mass terrorist attack and in 2013, she successfully deported radical cleric Abu Qatada – something she lists as one of her proudest achievements, along with preventing the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon to the US.
Former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke who had run-ins with her reportedly said that Mrs May was good at her job but a “bloody difficult woman” – before adding as an aside, a bit like Mrs Thatcher.
Mrs May has never been one of the most clubbable of politicians and is someone who prefers not having to tour the tea rooms of the House of Commons where gossip is freely exchanged.
She has rarely opened up about her private life, although she revealed in 2013 that she had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and would require insulin injections twice a day for the rest of her life.
Mrs May at 59 is the oldest leader to enter No. 10 since James Callaghan in 1976 and will be the first premier since Ted Heath who does not have children.
While her wider political appeal is, as yet, untested, Mrs May will not have to face a general election until May 2020 unless she decides to seek a fresh mandate.
