Tough cookie digs in those kitten heels... and her ‘flats’

SOME Cabinet Ministers live in fear of losing their red ministerial boxes full of state secrets. Theresa May has a bigger fear: losing her handbag could cost her life.

It contains the needle and insulin she must inject herself with four times a day since she was diagnosed two years ago with type 1 diabetes, which carries a risk of heart attack and strokes.

‘It’s amazing some of the places you can inject – insulin, I should say!’ she jokes, arriving for our interview at Westminster’s Intercontinental Hotel during a break in her Election campaign. ‘I inject before breakfast, lunch, before I eat this evening, and late at night.’

Has she ever panicked after rummaging in her handbag only to find her needle is not there? ‘When you are a type 1 diabetic you don’t forget,’ she says, with feeling.

As we meet, there is talk of panic at Tory HQ. But it’s hard to imagine the Home Secretary panicking even if a brick came in through the window next to us. She’d brush the shattered glass off her immaculate navy blue trouser suit and say, ‘Now, where was I?’

She is also wearing her trademark leopard-print shoes, but no kitten heels. ‘I’m in flats for campaigning!’

Away from the Election trail, she has watched with growing concern the mounting controversy over the decision not to prosecute Labour peer Lord Janner over 22 child sex abuse allegations dating from the 1960s to the 1980s.

She fears the decision by Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders could undermine the Goddard public inquiry into historic child sex abuse – as victims could be dissuaded from giving evidence.

‘I am concerned about the impact the decision will have,’ said Mrs May. ‘I worry it might put people off coming forward. One of the key issues is the sense that nobody would listen to them, justice didn’t work for them, there were cover-ups. This decision might make people say, “What is happening here? It’s not worth coming forward.”’

Mrs May’s comments came after defiant Ms Saunders stood by her decision to let Janner, 86, off the hook because of his dementia, telling her critics to ‘challenge me in court’.

In our interview, Mrs May added to the pressure on Ms Saunders by pointedly declining to say she still had confidence in her as Britain’s top prosecutor. She would only say: ‘It’s not for politicians to make decisions about who is charged.’

Mrs May urged victims not to be cowed into silence – including Janner’s alleged victims. ‘It is so important that their story is heard.’

Before I interviewed Mrs May, a Tory who has known her for nearly 30 years told me: ‘I don’t envy you. She gives nothing away and has a skin like a rhino – she just blanks out anything she doesn’t like.’ So I deliberately set out to get under her skin over her failure to deliver the Tories’ pledge to cut immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ a year. After all, Britain will have to build the equivalent of a city the size of Birmingham every 30 months to keep up. What a dire state of affairs for a little country like ours? Blank. She should be ashamed. ‘I am disappointed.’ Disappointed? Her record is absolutely dismal. ‘We need to keep working at it.’ She owes voters an apology – now, and in public. ‘I regret we haven’t delivered.’ Regret! Aha, a chink in the chainmail? I press on. No one should believe a word she says on immigration. But she bats it away, Boycott-like, with a rambling answer She gives nothing away and has skin like a rhino... that translates, roughly, as ‘Labour would be worse’. I was wasting my time. It brought to mind a news item I had heard about a new paint used to stop vandals urinating on walls – it bounces the offending fluid back on to the offender.

Vicar’s daughter May is more confrontational than she looks.

‘What do you mean by looking confrontational?’ The look she is drilling into me now. You’d think she wouldn’t say boo to a goose, yet she’s fallen out with half the Coalition from David Cameron to Nick Clegg. ‘You have to know when to stand your ground,’ she says without blinking.

Mrs May, who is defending a 16,800 majority in Maidenhead, is proud of her reputation for digging her heels in. ‘You never let the first barrier stand in your way,’ she declares.

Her unflashy, dogged style was vindicated when, after being repeatedly beaten back by the courts, she finally deported radical cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan.

When Mrs May smiles, her facial muscles occasionally draw down the corners of her mouth, accentuating her defensive, even awkward demeanour. It is reminiscent of the tense grin of another buttoned-up heavyweight, Gordon Brown – but woe betide anyone who mistakes it for a sign of vulnerability.

It was Mrs May who, famously, called the Tories the ‘Nasty Party’, and she claims credit for changing its image: ‘I like to think we’re the nice party now.’

Mrs May and husband Philip have no children and, at 58, she has not given up her aim of succeeding Cameron as Tory leader. Her ambitions suffered a severe jolt when she was diagnosed with diabetes, but Cameron recently named her, along with chief rival Boris Johnson, as a possible successor.

Predictably, she blanks any leadership questions.

Her supporters say that for all Boris’s charisma, in a head-to-head contest her steely virtues would win the day. Her detractors say she is too timid and desperately needs a bit of Boris’s spontaneity.

As a piece of fun during the Election, the hotel where we met was inviting visiting politicians to draw cartoons of themselves on a large blank canvas on an easel. ‘Come on Theresa, have a go,’ I said, not for a moment expecting her to have the gumption. ‘OK, hand me a blue crayon and I will.’ And she did. Emboldened, I ask if she bought her suit from her favourite designer, La Petite Salope.

She casts a quizzical frown.

I confessed it was a ruse to see if saying ‘slut’, the English word for ‘salope’, would ruffle her feathers.

Miss Maidenhead threw back her elegant bob and laughed like a drain. Not such a blank canvas after all.