Amber Rudd

Appointed U.K. home secretary in the turbulent aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum, Amber Rudd knew she had big shoes to fill.

Her predecessor in one of Westminster’s toughest jobs was none other than Theresa May, the newly anointed prime minister who had spent the previous six years running the Home Office.

But with her boss keeping a watchful eye on her old department, Rudd had until recently skilfully avoided the sorts of calamity that forced out a succession of home secretaries prior to May. Rudd has won positive headlines with a populist charge against social media firms accused of failing to combat online extremism, and coped admirably during a series of bloody terror attacks on U.K. soil last year.

And having campaigned (in vain) to keep Britain inside the EU, Rudd is now seen as the great hope of the liberal, pro-European wing of the Conservative Party if May decides not to fight the next general election as leader.

Could she yet follow her boss all the way to the top?

Rudd is seven years May’s junior, and in contrast to the prime minister is known for her impeccable connections among London’s wealthy elite. Her brother Roland founded one of the capital’s most prominent PR firms; her late ex-husband A.A. Gill was one of the U.K.’s most celebrated restaurant reviewers. Rudd is so well connected she was employed as the “aristocracy coordinator” on the 1994 movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

And she has powerful supporters, including the influential former chancellor (the official title of the U.K. Treasury secretary) George Osborne, who now edits the London Evening Standard newspaper.

She also has powerful enemies.

Rudd has clashed repeatedly with the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who also hopes to succeed May as prime minister if and when the opportunity arises.

There is no love lost between the two. In a televised debate just days before the EU referendum, Rudd witheringly described the pro-Brexit Johnson as "the life and soul of the party — but not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening." Last year, she publicly admonished her Cabinet colleague for “back-seat driving” after he published a 4,000-word article advising May on Brexit policy.

Rudd’s pro-European outlook may yet prove her undoing. The grass-roots party members who will pick the next leader are notoriously euroskeptic, and any contest held before the Brexit process is complete would likely see a Brexiteer such as Johnson emerge successful. Rudd’s best chance is that May remains in power until the debate about Britain’s EU exit is firmly in the past.

In the meantime, she faces the challenge of running government’s trickiest department. A bitter row that erupted this month about the Home Office’s mistreatment of a generation of postwar immigrants from the Caribbean is illustrative of how a home secretary can be ambushed by events. Despite many of the problems predating her period in office, Rudd has faced calls to resign. She survives for now.

Closer to home, she faces a challenge even to remain in parliament. The opposition Labour party came within a whisker of unseating her in last year’s general election. In the end, she clung on in her south coast constituency of Hastings and Rye by just 346 votes.

Yet her ambitions are clear. Campaign specialists have been quietly drafted in, $2,850-a-head fundraising dinners held at London’s glitzy Carlton Club. She has even hired the personal stylist used by former PM David Cameron’s wife, Samantha.

Publicly, she insists she remains focused on the job. “My priority has to be, as Home secretary, keeping people safe,” she said earlier this year. “That’s where I’m focused. I haven’t got time for the rest of it.” — Jack Blanchard

Headshot by Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images. Story photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images.