The Muslim bus driver’s son set to become a Commons superstar
PRidE of place in the new Culture Secretary Saji d Javid’s ministerial office is a £1,000 limited edition print of Margaret Thatcher, which was released on her death.
Like his political heroine, Javid’s father was in a trade – although in his case it was on a notorious i nner- city council estate.
The son of an immigrant Pakistani who came to Britain in 1961 with just £1 in his pocket, Javid could not be f urther removed from the privileged lifestyles of david Cameron’s inner circle.
Javid, now 44, was born in Rochdale, the middle child of five sons. At the time, his father
‘He devoured news of Mrs Thatcher’
Abdul was working as a bus driver. indeed, his f ather’s willingness to work all hours earned him the nickname ‘Mr Night And day’.
When Javid was four, his father took over a ladieswear shop in inner-city Bristol, and the family moved into a two-bedroom flat above it. ‘Three brothers were in one bedroom and myself and a younger brother were with my parents in the other.’
They lived in Stapleton Road, recently described as ‘Britain’s worst street, a lawless hellhole where murder, rape, shootings, drug- pushing, prostitution, knifings and violent robbery are commonplace’.
it was as a young child that he had his first precocious awakening to politics. ‘My dad would always, after a long day’s work, watch what was then the Nine O’Clock News, and just before Thatcher came to office in 1979 was the first time he voted Conservative.’
While other boys threw paper missiles at each other on the school bus, he would grab discarded copies of newspapers to devour news of Mrs Thatcher’s latest political triumph, whether it was in the Falklands or vanquishing Arthur Scargill in the miners’ strike.
While he was more industrious than many of his contemporaries at downend comprehensive, there was a depressingly limited expectation of any academic success from the teachers. So much so that the school flatly refused to let him sit his maths O-level, and tried to make him take the inferior CSE. it was only after his father insisted on paying the £32 fee that Javid was allowed to take the exam, which he passed with flying colours.
At Exeter University, where he studied economics and politics, he joined the Tory Party.
during a summer job at an insurance company, he met his future wife Laura King, a careers adviser. He told her he wanted to work in the City for 20 years. ‘i remember telling her when i’m 40 i think i might want to be a MP,’ he recalled. ‘She thought i was completely nuts. i don’t think she believed i was serious.’
But his intelligence and drive ensured that he forged a stellar career in banking. At 24, he was the youngest vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, and he later went to work as a director at deutsche Bank.
When, i n his l ate 30s, he decided to pursue his passion for Tory politics, he was earning £3million a year.
Needless to say, he took a huge pay cut when he entered the Commons aged 40 as the MP for Bromsgrove – and one of the party’s first two Muslim MPs.
Chancellor George Osborne marked him out early on, not just as ministerial material, but also as an important future ally. He was a Treasury minister two years l ater. Now, Javid is a bruiser in the Commons and relishes a scrap with Labour. For all that, some colleagues remark that he can be cold and aloof.
He is still married to Laura, who looks after their three girls and a boy, aged between five and 13. Unlike the Prime Minister, who has made a virtue of the fact his children are going to state school, he is sending his brood to be privately educated. ‘We do what is best for them,’ is his view of the matter.
He drives a £35,000 Range Rover Evoque and lives in a £ 4million home i n Fulham, South-West London. ‘i worked hard for 20 years and was paid well and achieved things for me and my family,’ he says with no little understatement.
Javid is realistic enough to know that his appointment as the Tories’ first male Muslim Cabinet minister is a direct result of the Maria Miller crisis – but as an ambitious man he will know that this is the first step to political stardom.
The new Cabinet minister, who
‘More than equal to the job’
likes to smoke a Havana cigar, was once asked which Whitehall ministry he would most like to run. He replied that he favoured the department for Work and Pensions because the benefit culture is ‘failing the poor by tying them down’. But he will be more than happy to start his top-flight career at the Culture department.
His knowledge of sport may be scant – he claims he supports Manchester United – and few of his friends have heard him talking about culture and the arts.
But he is tough and intellectually more than equal to the job.
Already some Tories are speculating that Javid’s portrait will one day hang on the same wall as Margaret Thatcher’s on the downing Street Prime Ministers’ staircase.