It would be an understatement to say Sajid Javid – Saj to his colleagues – starts as health secretary with a jam-packed in-tray. Taking on the role as the global Covid-19 pandemic marches on, Javid will need to ensure the vaccination programme maintains its celebrated momentum, tackle a huge backlog of non-Covid care and deal with members of an exhausted workforce calling for improved pay after the most challenging 18 months of their careers. Javid is no stranger to senior cabinet roles. He has been culture secretary, business secretary, communities secretary, home secretary and most recently had a fleeting role as chancellor of the exchequer to prime minister Boris Johnson. The Number 11 role was reportedly the job he had always wanted – he once ran an unsuccessful joint ticket for the Tory leadership with Stephen Crabb on the understanding that he would be chancellor – but time actually spent in his dream role was short-lived after he clashed with the PM’s then chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. Appointed as chancellor in July 2019, tensions started to rise between No 10 and No 11 after Javid’s adviser, Sonia Khan, was escorted out of Downing Street by police after being sacked by Cummings in August 2019. Javid was told he would have to sack his own special advisers (spads) as part of Cummings’s wider vision to combine the No 10 and No 11 spads, but he rejected the order saying it was something “no self-respecting minister” could accept and in February 2020 resigned. Born in Rochdale in 1969, he is a Muslim son of a former bus driver. His parents were born in India, but fled to Pakistan while small children. His father arrived in Britain in the 1960s – Javid has said he came with £1 in his pocket. He spent his school years in Bristol on Stapleton Road and as home secretary he would make much of the Sunday People’s description of the address as “Britain’s worst street”, a label rejected by its present-day residents. After studying economics and politics at the University of Exeter, around which time he met his wife, Laura, with whom he now has four children, he set his sights on a job in the City working in the financial markets. By the time he was 25, he was a vice-president at Chase Manhattan Bank. He would later move to Singapore for a period with Deutsche Bank, where he rose to become a managing director before leaving in the summer of 2009 to focus on politics. Positioned on the right of the Conservative party – Javid reportedly had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on the wall of his ministerial office – he was elected in 2010 as the MP for Bromsgrove. He rose quickly, coached as parliamentary private secretary to George Osborne before continuing as a protege of the former chancellor in junior roles at the Treasury.
In his cabinet roles, he avoided significant controversy and scandal, although on housing he clashed with the then chancellor, Philip Hammond, who rejected his demand for a £50bn cash injection to fund a housebuilding drive. His biggest challenge as communities secretary was undoubtedly the Grenfell Tower disaster, where the government faced mounting criticism for stalling on promises to the victims’ families. As the first person from an Asian background to hold one of the great offices of state in the UK, he took on the role of home secretary in 2018 as the Windrush scandal was erupting, succeeding Amber Rudd, who resigned after misleading parliament over deportation targets. He started the tenure by attempting to distance himself from the phrase “hostile environment”, preferring “compliant environment” instead, but did little to unwind some of the core legislative principles behind the notorious policy approach. He was a tough-talking home secretary, whose hard stance on the jihadi bride Shamima Begum’s pleas to be allowed back into the UK boosted his popularity among some Tories, but horrified others – particularly after Begum’s newborn son later died in a Syrian refugee camp. During this time, he drew repeatedly on his personal life, frequently name-dropping his cop brother Bas, now a deputy assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan police, recalling his father’s humble beginnings and his own experiences of racism. Since stepping down as chancellor, he has kept himself busy as a backbench MP – subsidising his £81,000 annual salary with an extra £150,000 a year as a global adviser to the US bank JP Morgan. Javid’s allies made it clear upon his departure as chancellor that he was open to return to government and was not bitter. Now, with Cummings no longer advising the PM, it is time for Saj to return to the centre stage of UK politics once again.