Son of immigrant bus driver to banking chief
MILLIONAIRE Star Trek fan Sajid Javid, 48, is the first Home Secretary from an ethnic minority. The former City banker was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, in 1969 – one of five sons whose parents immigrated from Pakistan. His dad was a bus driver. Javid went to a comprehensive school in Bristol, before studying economics and politics at Exeter University. He became a managing director at Deutsche Bank in 2004, and has four children with wife Laura. Elected MP for Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 2010, he was identified as a rising star. He sat on the Pensions Select Committee and the powerful Public Accounts Committee. Javid – who comes from a Muslim background but does not practise any religion – was particularly close to former chancellor George Osborne, and was appointed a Treasury minister in 2012. He reached the Cabinet as culture secretary in 2014, when he outed himself as a Trekkie – and a fan of soft rock. “I had a pretty mainstream cultural education – the kind millions of Britons will recognise. I like Star Trek. I like U2,” he said. After the Tories’ shock election victory in 2015, he became business secretary. Javid infamously had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall. In this role, his handling of the steel crisis was heavily criticised. The sector was battered by job losses in 2015-16 but Javid was on holiday in Australia when Britain’s biggest steelworks, Port Talbot, was being touted for sale. In 2016, Theresa May made him communities and local government secretary, after David Cameron resigned following the Brexit vote. Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer. He has been criticised for failing to deal with the housing crisis but praised for tackling Labour over anti-Semitism and US President Donald Trump over his contentious tweets. Last year, he was branded complacent over the Grenfell Tower fire but many said his apparent empathy with survivors contrasted with the PM’s response to the tragedy.