Theresa May is set to become Britain’s next Prime Minister after her fellow Conservative party candidate Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the race for Tory leader.
In another day of high drama in Westminster, David Cameron confirmed that Ms May, 59, will be the new Prime Minister by Wednesday evening. He said he was “delighted” that the Home Secretary and MP for Maidenhead would succeed him.
From Wednesday onwards, Philip May will become Britain’s so-called 'first husband'. But who is the man behind the fiercely private, steely politician who is about to become the second ever female Prime Minister in British history?
They met at a Tory disco
Mr May was introduced to Ms May by Benazir Bhutto, a contemporary who later went on to become Pakistani Prime Minister and was assassinated in 2007. The pair met at a Conservative Party disco while both studying at Oxford University.
They quickly bonded over a shared fondness of cricket. He was two years her junior and was toast of the debating chamber and studied Modern History. They went on to get married on 6 September 1980.
He is a highly successful Banker
Mr May left university to embark on a successful career in the City. He was a fund manager at de Zoete & Bevan and Prudential Portfolio Managers UK and later Deutsche Asset Management UK. Since 2005, he has worked as a Relationship Manager at Capital Group.
His neighbours are George Clooney and Jimmy Page
The pair live in Sonning-On-Thames, a village and civil parish in Berkshire where Ms May is the local MP. Notable residents in the area include George and Amal Clooney, Uri Geller, and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
He is Ms May’s “rock”
Mr May was a constant, supportive presence after Ms May's parents died and left her as an orphan in her mid-twenties. Her father Reverend Hubert Brasier died in a car crash and her mother died from multiple sclerosis just a year later.
Ms May has rarely talked about what happened to her but she did open up about her husband’s “huge support” during an episode of Desert Island Discs. “That was very important for me. He was a real rock for me,” she said.
Alicia Collinson, a close friend at Oxford, who learned of crash a good few years later, said: “It was dreadful... Theresa had Philip and Philip saw her through that. He was and remains her rock.”
He is a “just a regular, nice guy”
A friend described Mr May as a normal, intelligent man who knows Ms May better than anyone.
“Philip is really lovely,” a friend told The Guardian. “He's just a regular, nice guy who's bright like she is. They still totally love each other and have a great friendship. He is good for her because he's aware she's home secretary but she's still just Theresa to him. They are not one of those couples where one of them is a big name and the other one quite likes it [the reflected glory]. That would never even come into his mind… When they're together, they seem younger.”
They have no children
In the past, Ms May has said that she regrets that, for health reasons, she has not been able to have children: “It just didn’t happen. You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have”.
