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Andrea Leadsom, who until Monday was May's rival for the leadership of the Conservative party, was given her first cabinet role by her former opponent on Thursday.

Leadsom's relatively low profile before the contest meant her record faced a career's worth of media vetting in the space of a week – resulting in a slew of media scandal stories that were seen as a large factor in her decision to drop out of the contest.

The most prominent of these was her interview with The Times in which she said being a mother gave her a greater stake in the UK's future than Theresa May. She then angrily claimed she was misquoted, only for the newspaper to release the full transcript.

The row was seen by many as fatal to her leadership chances.

Today the newspaper published further comments from Leadsom suggesting male nannies were likely to be paedophiles.

Her exact words, according to The Times, were: "Let’s face it – most of us don’t employ men as nannies, most of us don’t. Now you can call that sexist, I call that cautious and very sensible when you look at the stats.

"Your odds are stacked against you if you employ a man. We know paedophiles are attracted to working with children. I’m sorry but they’re the facts.”

Leadsom's financial affairs were also the subject of multiple stories. Leadsom's close ties with her offshore investment banker brother-in-law – a major Tory donor – attracted scrutiny, as did her family's use of a company holding buy-to-let properties, part-owned by a inheritance tax-efficient trust structure in her children's names.

Leadsom also faced multiple charges of exaggerating her CV.

BuzzFeed News also revealed that a schools exchange project set up by Leadsom worked closely with a centre co-run by a US-based "gay cure" group.