Dame Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom is a British Conservative politician who represented South Northamptonshire in Parliament from 2010 to 2024. Born in Aylesbury in 1963, she studied political science at the University of Warwick before building a career in finance, holding senior positions at Barclays as Institutional Banking Director and later at Invesco Perpetual as Senior Investment Officer and Head of Corporate Governance. Her ministerial career spanned a decade across four premierships, beginning as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister from 2014 to 2015, followed by Minister of State for Energy from 2015 to 2016.

Leadsom gained national prominence as a leading voice in the Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum and subsequently contested the Conservative leadership that year, finishing second to Theresa May in the parliamentary ballot. She served in Cabinet as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2016 to 2017 and as Leader of the House of Commons from 2017 to 2019, resigning in protest over Brexit strategy. She later held the role of Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2019 to 2020 and stood again for the party leadership in 2019. Dame Andrea Leadsom writes commentary for Comment Central.