The morning after Sajid Javid appeared on Question Time for the first time, the ambitious Conservative MP called up the show’s producer. “What did you think?” the politician asked eagerly. It was the first time the journalist had ever had such a call from a guest. Flattered to be asked, he offered Javid some advice.
“Find your own language,” the producer said. “All these metaphors – global race, fixing the roof when the sun is shining, handing the keys to the party that crashed the car – it’s easy to get confused.” The minister, then on his first rung of the ministerial ladder as Treasury economic secretary, listened intently and thanked him.
Just one year later, Javid was catapulted into the cabinet as culture secretary, replacing Maria Miller, who had resigned in disgrace over her expenses. Now he’s been named as one of a handful of key Conservative cabinet ministers the party has decided will appear most on our TV screens between now and the general election. The son of an immigrant bus driver, he’s a close ally of George Osborne and has been tipped as a future Tory leader.
But he doesn’t always find it easy. For a start, friends say he remains highly aware that although his working-class upbringing could resonate with many people, he struggles to be himself under the studio lights.
One senior Tory MP told BuzzFeed News: “Sometimes if he does an interview I tell him, 'Oh, that was shit, you’re such a government man.’ He’s a cabinet minister and they’re all in the straitjacket of 'long-term economic plan' and that’s what makes them rigid. But when you see him naturally, he is unbelievable.”
A Conservative minister added: “I think that when you go from getting elected as an MP to getting on the frontline, that’s quite a big step, it’s a learning process. I think that certainly the opinion on the backbenches is that he’s shown a massive improvement.”
It was a speech that Javid made in December to the Union of Jewish Students conference that really caught the attention of colleagues. It was personal and thought-provoking – in stark contrast to the government soundbites usually wheeled out in TV studios. He revealed how he once hit a classmate who called him a “Paki”, and how, in his first interview for a major City bank, the panel made it clear his face “wasn’t going to fit in there”. Javid said: “But for everything I experienced, I’ve never tried to hide who I am or where I come from. I know that my background, my culture, my heritage made me what I am today.” A Tory MP and friend said simply: “That was an awesome speech.”
The multi-millionaire Javid represents the ultimate Thatcherite rags-to-riches dream. His father, Abdul, arrived at Heathrow Airport from Pakistan in 1961 with just £1 in his pocket. He moved to Rochdale, where Sajid and his four brothers were born, to find work in a cotton mill, before becoming a bus conductor and driver. Later, Abdul moved the family down to inner-city Bristol, where he ran a ladieswear shop and they all lived in a two-bedroom flat upstairs. Sajid went to the local comprehensive before studying economics and politics at Exeter University.
But unlike his university friend Robert Halfon, now a Tory MP and parliamentary aide to chancellor George Osborne, Javid didn’t immediately display any burning ambition to be a politician. Instead, he focused on a career in banking. After being shunned by a stuck-up panel at Rothschild bank in London, he jetted to New York to join Chase Manhattan, and by the age of 25 had become the youngest vice president in its history. He went on to make his fortune at Deutsche Bank, although he’s refused to comment on claims he earned £3 million a year there.
Soon after the global financial crisis hit in 2008, he decided he was ready for a change. There was just one thing putting him off a move into politics – the impact on his wife, Laura, whom he met as a teenager, and their four children. He turned to David Burrowes, another university friend who became a Tory MP in 2005, for advice. Burrowes, a dad of six, said: “One of his first questions to me was about the impact on his family, knowing that I’ve got young children. That was a real priority for him.”
Javid was duly elected as MP for Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 2010. And despite his subsequent rise to power, he remains insistent on spending quality time with his three daughters, aged 5, 11, and 15, and his 13-year-old son. Sundays at the family home in Fulham, southwest London, are sacrosanct, and he often comes into work on Monday bursting with tales of the kids’ latest exploits. Aides heard recently how his 11-year-old had been distraught when her hamster went missing. Javid carefully laid pieces of foil around the house and stayed up all night listening out for the rustle of tiny claws. His ingenuity and lack of sleep paid off – the hamster was found.
Sundays are particularly important now Javid is in the cabinet because he regularly works until 10pm on weekdays. Although his culture portfolio does involve evening visits to galleries and theatres – some of which he takes his kids along to – he’s often in his office working late. Since his appointment last April, he has been acutely conscious of his lack of experience in fine art, opera, and theatre. His experience of culture beforehand revolved around Star Trek movies and listening to U2. Halfon hit out at the “snobs” who judged his friend: “Just because he may not fit some metropolitan view of the world in terms of what you’re supposed to know about art," he said, "he’s probably more in tune with my voters in Harlow about culture and art than many of those so-called commentators."
He also shrugged off suggestions from Cambridge professor Mary Beard that he should have better knowledge of ancient Greek culture, emphasising he is about #GeeksNotGreeks.
whoops. I'm all with this sentiment, but..err .. Socrates didn't write anything (that's the point of Plato).
Thanks to @WMaryBeard for setting me right. Maybe I should stick to Star Trek quotes in future? #GeeksNotGreeks
Javid had been in the Treasury for 18 months when the culture vacancy suddenly became available last April. Friends say he had felt at home in his old job but jumped at the chance to make “key policy decisions”. They point to Osborne as the man responsible for his rise to stardom. One minister close to the chancellor said: “George is basically a talent-spotter. He looks out for people who would make good ministers or, even more than that, could go all the way.”
Former Tory MP Louise Mensch said Osborne and Javid share both strong banking knowledge and party political skills. She said: “I think the interesting thing about him is that he is definitely the next chancellor when George Osborne has had enough – the universal pick of the centre and right for chancellor after George retires from the job or wants to change. I hope he won’t mind when I say he is wasted at culture – he should get back into the Treasury, or, failing that, business.”
Current MPs are more cautious about going on the record about Javid’s ambitions, but many privately agree he is a chancellor in the making. One senior backbencher said: “I think he would be a great chancellor because he’s got it, he understands it. He’s also very principled – there’s a philosophy underneath it all.”
But he’s not seen as a natural Westminster schmoozer and doesn’t much care for gossiping in parliament’s tearooms, where alliances are made or broken. One colleague said that while he “likes a laugh and people warm to him”, he much prefers being at home with his family.
Labour MPs aren’t always fans – one frontbencher described Javid as “aggressive and robotic”. But despite his clear ambition and meteoric rise through the ranks, it’s difficult to find any Tory MPs who actively dislike him.
Burrowes said: “He’s not the kind of politician who goes out there and schemes and plans and plots. He’s ambitious in everything he does but I think he’s defined by wanting to do the right thing. He’s not wrapped up in his own career.” But Javid’s eagerness to improve his public image suggests he is more keen to rise the ladder than he would let on.
One Tory MP also elected in 2010 said Javid should be pushed to the front to show there’s more to the party than Old Etonians and wealthy white men.
“He’s a great example of getting on in life, aspiring to do well and getting there,” the MP said. “We don’t perhaps make enough of that.”