Theresa May, the thinking woman’s woman

Who is Theresa May? Ken Clarke famously described her in an unguarded moment as a ‘bloody difficult woman’. Her favourite fashion designer, Vivienne Westwood, thinks she’s ‘awful’. And it has variously been said that she is ‘fundamentally unknowable’, ‘aloof’, ’reticent’, ‘self-contained’ and ‘sphinx like’.

When she was officially appointed Prime Minister, reporters scrambled to write pen-portraits of this woman suddenly sprung to highest office, an extraordinary elevation which seemed to fluster her no more than the weekly Waitrose shop.

Fleet Street’s finest were able to reveal surprisingly little. The Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman dutifully trooped off to the PM’s village, Sonning, in Berkshire. There, he reported, she is a regular church-goer, and likes to pop into the local butcher for a few sausages. She and her husband Philip are leading lights in the village hall appeal.

The Telegraph revealed the scintillating fact that she was the longest-serving Home Secretary in 50 years, and reminded us that, as the first female chairman of the Conservatives, she said it was seen as ‘the nasty party’ – while wearing a pair of now famous leopard print kitten heels.