John Lewis pocket rocket who stormed Labour’s Brummie citadel
An oft-repeated adage is that John Lewis ‘knows what Middle england wants’. How apt then that its former boss, Andy Street, is in the vanguard of change in the Midlands heartlands – albeit a political rather than retail trend.
It is no exaggeration to say his election as Conservative mayor of the West Midlands is a landmark in recent political history.
He has fulfilled a long-held Tory ambition – to get beyond the shires and suburbs and make a breakthrough into an urban, industrial area that’s been a Labour stronghold for 30 years.
This part of the country has been a Labour base since the 1980s, returning major figures to Westminster such as roy Jenkins, roy Hattersley, Brian Walden and current deputy leader Tom Watson.
Mr Street’s victory is even more remarkable considering his scant political experience. In just six months, he went from rank outsider to favourite.
Initially, he was daunted by the challenge. Having given up his £800,000-plus a year job as managing director of John Lewis to stand, he said: ‘I looked around and saw the other candidates and thought: “no, no, no! This is too big a job”. But I had a visceral need to stand.’
He told himself: ‘Come on, Street, this is your job! You have to do it. You have to step forward.’
During the 1960s and 1970s, Birmingham was the richest place in Britain but its fortunes fell sharply in subsequent decades. Today it is having a bit of a renaissance – new shops and restaurants, a dazzling new railway station and shopping complex, HS2 on the way, the relocation of HSBC next year and 25,000 new jobs. But it still has serious social problems, a council branded a ‘ national disgrace’ in 2013, hardline Islamists and worrying ethnic divisions.
When Street announced his candidature last year, Labour had just secured almost half the vote in the election for police commissioner. And if voters had backed the same parties as they did in the 2015 general elections, Labour would have won with 42.5 per cent this week.
To get the four per cent swing needed to win the mayoralty for Tories, Street offered radical policies. One was that care homes and providers, public transport and other services should be turned into John Lewis- style co- operatives, partly owned by employees.
He said: ‘It’s about collective responsibility; sharing; fairness. John Lewis isn’t just a shop, it’s a way of business.’
Other ideas included reform of business rates to make them no longer purely based on property, a self-service cycle hire scheme and taking a salary of half the expected £100,000 if he is not considered a success as mayor. CERTAINLY, his John Lewis track record suggests he’s an achiever.
During his nine years as boss, he oversaw a 50 per cent increase in gross sales to more than £4.4billion, a doubling in the number of stores and a surge in online business.
A John Lewis ‘lifer’, he started on the shop floor and worked his way up. The 53-year-old is like a little pocket rocket. He talks passionately and urgently about everything – from his choice of shoes to his deep affection for his home town. (‘I’m a proud Brummie boy and I love this place’). He loves the fact that Birmingham has more building site cranes than any UK city apart from London.
It seems strange to hear he has time to relax. But he says he does. He co- owns a holiday house in Snowdonia with Michael Fabricant, Tory MP for Lichfield, with whom he was briefly in a romantic relationship. He has two Land rovers, flats in London and Birmingham, and a weakness for contemporary urban art and holidays in Japan (‘best department shops in the world’).
He insists he doesn’t miss John Lewis, even after 30 years with the company. ‘I haven’t had time to give it a moment’s thought,’ he says. Though he admits visiting the new Birmingham branch so often that the woman who now runs it jokily complains: ‘Is Andy never gone?’
At his leaving do, he was given two framed prints of Birmingham’s favourite mayor Joseph Chamberlain (1873-76).
even his impeccably-cut suit is tailor-made in Birmingham. ‘It’s new! every other suit I own is JL [John Lewis]!’
Brought up in Solihull, he became disenchanted at the age of 16 but was inspired by his A-level economics teacher to study PPe at Oxford University, where he was president of the Conservative Association. He spent a huge amount of time volunteering with underprivileged children and wanted to be a social worker.
But he then tried to join the retail industry. He was turned down for the M&S graduate scheme but was hired by John Lewis.
He is a born achiever and isn’t used to coming second. His only regret – and it’s a big one – is not having children. He never contemplated adopting alone. (‘I made my decisions, but it is a regret.’)
A shy man who’s had media training and executive coaching to help him perform in public, he ‘doesn’t covet the limelight’.
As for the mayoral election campaign, it was a brutal race.
Of the six areas electing metro-mayors for the first time, the West Midlands was the biggest and most fiercely fought.
For a man who’s just slaughtered Labour in its heartland, he’s got some giant footsteps to follow.
But clad in his favourite nottingham-made shoes and with his John Lewis ‘never knowingly undersold’ principles, Andy Street will undoubtedly give it all he’s got.