17 January 2019•Update: 17 January 2019
Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
ANKARA
Born on October 1, 1956, in Eastbourne, Sussex, England, Theresa May is the second female prime minister of the U.K.
Theresa, the only child of Reverend Huber Brasier, studied at various schools before she studied geography at the University of Oxford.
She took the name May when she married with husband Philip May after being introduced to him by Benazir Bhutto, the future prime minister of Pakistan. They married in 1980.
May started her political career when she was elected as a councilor in London borough of Merton. She remained in this post until 1994.
She was elected as a Conservative member of parliament in Maidenhead in 1997 after previously failing in elections twice.
Theresa May served as shadow secretary of state for education and employment (1999–2001), shadow secretary of state for transport, local government, and the regions (2001–02), shadow secretary of state for the family (2004–05), shadow secretary of state for culture, media, and sport (2005), and shadow leader of the House of Commons (2005–09).
On May 12, 2010, May was appointed the home secretary and minister for women and equality by former Prime Minister David Cameron.
She became the second female premier after Margaret Thatcher after being elected as the new leader of the Conservative Party following Cameron’s resignation after the EU referendum held on 23 June 2016.
As prime minister, May’s most significant task has been “delivering on Brexit”; she is often referred to as the "Brexit Queen".
After triggering the article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty -- a process to leave the EU by any member state -- she called a snap election.
However, the Conservative Party lost the parliamentary majority on 8 June 2017 election after winning 317 seats at the House of Commons, and the party formed a minority government after securing support from Northern Ireland’s biggest party the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in a "confidence and supply" deal.
May has negotiated with the EU on a deal and in December 2018 agreed on one she described as the "best deal for the U.K."
However, her deal was rejected by 432 MPs in a vote held on January 15, 2019, in the worst defeat in British political history with a margin of 230.
May has survived a leadership challenge from within the party late last year and a no-confidence motion by the Labour Party on January 16, 2019.
