As Theresa May stepped through the black door of 10 Downing Street on Wednesday evening as Britain’s prime minister, she did exactly what she had promised when launching her leadership bid two weeks earlier: “I just get on with the job in front of me.”
The quiet woman of British politics has played the long game and triumphed. The UK has its second female prime minister, and the first with the task of taking the country out of a major supranational organisation.
On entering office Mrs May, who is 59, immediately set about a radical overhaul of Whitehall’s structure, ruthlessly disposing of several former colleagues and startling observers around the world by making her erstwhile leadership rival Boris Johnson foreign secretary.
She faces immense challenges: she must extricate the UK from the EU while reuniting a bitterly divided party. If her predecessor David Cameron’s primary legacy was the referendum outcome, hers will be the implementation of the British public’s shock decision.
Mrs May’s record in government hints at her aptitude for the task. The longest-serving home secretary for 50 years, her low-key approach to the job saw her outlast flashier and higher-profile rivals.