Sajid Javid’s journey from bus driver’s son to Home Secretary
Sajid Javid becomes the first Home Secretary from an Asian background as he takes up the post following Amber Rudd’s resignation.
The Bromsgrove MP, a former managing director at Deutsche Bank, has risen swiftly through the ministerial ranks and is tipped by some as a potential future leader.
As the fallout from the Windrush scandal continued over the weekend, he spoke movingly of how it “could have been me, my mum or my dad”, but insisted the government was making efforts to “put things right”.
Mr Javid, who backed remaining in the European Union during the referendum campaign, is a father of four and reportedly made more than £20 million during his high-flying banking career, which took him round the globe.
The 48-year-old has told how he turned to politics to “give something back”.
His father, Abdul, a bus driver, arrived in Britain in 1961 from Pakistan with just £1 in his pocket and earned the nickname “Mr Night and Day” because he worked all hours.
Mr Javid senior inspired a devotion to Margaret Thatcher in his son at the age of just 11.
“My dad lived through the winter of discontent and used to vote Labour, but switched to Thatcher, saying, ‘look how she’s sorting out the country’. I agreed,” he told the Mail on Sunday.
The family lived in Rochdale before moving to Bristol, where Mr Javid attended Downend School, a comprehensive, before going on to study politics and economics at Exeter University.
A career in investment banking followed, taking him to New York and Singapore as well as London. At the age of 25 he became the youngest vice-president at Chase Manhattan Bank and was later headhunted by Deutsche Bank.
Part of the 2010 parliamentary intake, he was quickly made a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee and his background in finance made him an obvious choice for a job under Chancellor George Osborne.
In 2012 he was appointed economic secretary to the Treasury within two years he became Culture Secretary.
In 2015, he was made Business Secretary and Theresa May gave him the job of Communities Secretary when she became Prime Minister the following year.
Although his family heritage is Muslim, Mr Javid does not practise any religion but his wife, Laura, his childhood sweetheart, is a Christian.
Outside politics, he has a long track record of fundraising, including drumming up £710,000 in one go for the Disasters Emergency Committee and heading up a trek to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro for Help the Aged.
Despite experiencing bouts of racism in the past, Mr Javid describes Britain as the “world’s most tolerant country”, adding “if you have talent, colour and gender is less important”.