Theresa May
Theresa May was a Conservative politician, member of the Parliament, and prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Contents
History
May began in London city politics in the 1980s, with the Merton Borough Council.
She ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1992 and 1994, contesting safe Labour seats for the Conservatives.
In 1995 however she was selected to run for a new seat created from safe Conservative districts; she won comfortably in the May 1997 elections despite Labour winning overall. She quickly entered the senior ranks of the new Conservative opposition, and was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 1999.
Following the May 2010 general election and the eatablishment of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, Cameron appointed May to Home Secretary. In this role she set out a complicated policy towards police powers and mass surveillance. She led the effort to unwind the Blair administration's National Identity Card system and the accompanying National Identity Register. The Identity Documents Act of 2010 formally repealed the Identity Cards Act of 2006, and the database was destroyed. She also authorized the detention of David Miranda, associate of Edward Snowden. She also unsuccessfully but repeatedly pushed for the Snooper's Charter.
May also innovated the mass criminalization of immigrants..She led the roll out of the "Go Home" campaign that pushed immigrants to voluntarily deport. Her policies eventually led to the Windrush Scandal, wherein legal British citizens who had emigrated from Afro-Caribbean colonies (esp. Jamaica) during the era of decolonization were arrested, detained, and in some case deported illegally.
When Cameron announced his resignation in June 2016, May rapidly emerged as the dominant candidate to succeed him. She became PM in mid-July.
May's government would be pre-occupied by Brexit throughout its existence.
May called snap elections in April 2017, to be held in June. This led to the Conservatives losing the majority, but remaining the plurality; the government was sustained through DUP supply and confidence.
Brexit negotiations were the cause of the slow dismantlement of May's government. In December 2017, the government was held in contempt of Parliament for declining to publish the legal advice of the attorney general regarding the Withdrawal Agreement. (This was unprecedented.) In December 2018, she faced a vote of confidence within the Conservatives when the 1922 Committee received enough complaints. After promising to step down after Brexit negotiations completed and before the next election, she survived the vote 200-117. Corbyn attempted to table a vote of confidence in the wider Parliament that same month, was then rebuffed, but did succeed in tabling a vote the next month. The government again survived, 325-306. The Chequers Plan for the Withdrawal Agreement was published in July, leading to resignations in protest by several senior ministers, most importantly Johnson. The Withdrawal Agreement was brought before Parliament in three 'meaningful votes': the first in January 2019, the last in March. The government lost each of these votes by a large margin. In May, May announced her resignation.
May remained a member of Parliament until the 2024 elections, which she declined to run in. She was however raised to baroness of Maidenhead (the name of her constituency) and entered the Lords in September.