In case you haven’t read them, don’t miss Parts 1 and 2 of my series on today’s modern Conservative Party.

Part 1 includes a glimpse on one of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ancestors, a Muslim from Turkey.

Today’s post focuses solely on another MP who was elected in 2010, when David Cameron became Prime Minister: Sajid Javid.

Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove)

Sajid Javid’s life story is a true lesson on the wrong type of education.

Not all school guidance advisers are good ones.

One can only hope that Sajid Javid’s are having difficulty swallowing their respective lunches. Even if they vote Labour, I hope they follow Conservative Party news.

How many of Javid’s teachers and advisers got far enough in life to work at JPMorgan and serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer? None of them!

The beginning

Although Sajid Javid was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, to a Pakistani family, he grew up in Bristol, in the south-West of England.

Today, Bristol is a very leftist city, sadly, as is the city’s university.

Perhaps it wasn’t when Sajid Javid was growing up.

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer (July 2019 – February 2019), succeeded by Rishi Sunak, is sure to make a comeback sooner rather than later.

However, his teachers and advisors clearly missed his potential in the late 1980s. He was born in 1969.

Perhaps they relied only on the background of his Pakistani parents. His father had been a bus driver in Rochdale and his mother did not speak English until she had lived in England for ten years.

Once the family moved to Bristol, his parents bought a shop. The family lived in a flat above it.

Yet, that was not good enough for Sajid’s teachers and advisors at school.

Adolescence

At the age of 14, while attending a state comprehensive school — an average high school, in American terms — near Bristol, Sajid Javid developed an interest in the stock market and The Financial Times.

Incredibly, at that age, he was able to borrow £500 from a bank in order to invest in stock market shares.

However, his teachers and guidance counsellors took little notice and advised him to become … a TV repairman!

Good grief.

Young adulthood

Javid duly went on to further his studies at Filton Technological College in Stroud (South Gloustershire). From there, he went on to complete his education at the University of Exeter from 1988 to 1991, where he read economics and politics.

During that time, he joined the Conservative Party.

At the age of 20, he campaigned against the Thatcher government’s decisions to join the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism), joining the UK to the EU.

Early career

Javid left the UK in the early 1990s for New York City.

In 1992, he not only rose to become the youngest vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, but also served as an aide to Rudy Giuliani’s successful mayoral campaign in 1993.

So much for his career as a TV repairman!

Banking career

Savid Javid, destined by his school to become a TV repairman, worked for Chase Manhattan Bank in South America.

Upon his return to London in 1997, he relocated to Singapore, where he became head of Deutsche Bank’s credit trading, equity convertibles, commodities and private equity businesses in Asia,^[24] and was appointed a board member of Deutsche Bank International Limited.

Political career

In 2009, Javid decided to pursue a career in politics.

He was selected to succeed Julie Kirkbride, a Conservative who was standing down from her seat in the Bromsgrove constituency, located in Worcestershire.

He won the May 2010 election by a comfortable margin. He won again in 2015 and 2017. In 2019, he further increased his lead over Labour.

During his early years in Parliament, he served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury (2012-2013) and Financial Secretary to the Treasury (2013-2014).

After that, he served as Secretary of State to three different departments: Culture, Media and Sport (2014-2015); Business, Innovation and Skills (2015-2016) and Housing, Communities and Local Government (2016-2018).

Britons know Javid best as Home Secretary under Theresa May (2018-2019) and as Boris Johnson’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer (2019-2020). He was replaced in February 2020 by Rishi Sunak. Today, Javid is on the Conservative backbenches, still working hard for the people of Bromsgrove.

During his time as Home Secretary, Javid spoke out against ‘sick’ paedophiles who had finally been brought to justice; he said such men would find no favour with him.

He was also committed to reducing harms to children online. The Online Harms white paper was issued in April 2019:

An Online Harms bill is expected to pass Parliament sometime in 2021.

In 2019, Javid’s popularity was such that he was one of those running for Conservative Party leader to replace Theresa May. Boris Johnson won the contest.

In August 2019, as Chancellor, he promoted a no-deal Brexit:

However, Boris’s top adviser at the time, Dominic Cummings, did not seem to like some of Javid’s advisers. In August 2019, Cummings appeared to have been behind the sacking of Javid’s media person, Sonia Khan. She was sacked without Javid’s knowledge, leaving him understandably furious.

In the House of Commons, Javid had to put up with the odious then-Speaker of the House, John Bercow, who interrupted his spending review statement:

This was the substance of Javid’s 2019 spending review, covering a variety of areas:

Things were going so well at the time:

However, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings didn’t like Javid’s spending plans. They did not think Javid was spending enough.

On September 20, 2019, not long after the spending review statement and just before the annual Party conference, the Daily Mail reported that No. 10 was looking at Rishi Sunak as a replacement (emphases mine):

The animosity between No 10 and No 11 Downing Street is over a serious of announcements Mr Johnson wants to make at the Conservative Party Conference at the end of the month.

No 10 is furious at attempts by former leadership challenger Mr Javid to water down some of Mr Johnson’s plans to open the cash taps with a series of announcements to the party faithful in Manchester, the Guardian reported.

Team Javid is said to be furious at the central role being played by divisive Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings, and efforts to bypass the Chancellor in favour of his more accommodating deputy, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak.

A Whitehall source told the website: ‘There is no sign of change, in fact it has got worse. 

‘Saj [Javid] remains furious because he is not part of the decision-making process on government expenditure. 

‘It all comes from Cummings and a small number of No 10 people. A lot of people are saying that Saj’s days are numbered. No 10 is much happier with Rishi.’ 

Mr Johnson is believed to want to make domestic spending announcements in areas like housing, the NHS and social care, with Mr Javid wanting to take a more cautious, longer-term approach.

It makes one wonder how Javid would have handled the coronavirus crisis spending were he still Chancellor. That’s an interesting question.

At the 2019 Party conference, Javid made another forceful case for the Brexit mandate:

He had planned on having special 50p commemorative coins minted for Brexit that year:

The minting had to wait until the end of January 2020:

I have never seen this coin in real life. Apparently, a limited number were minted, with more to follow later in the year. Coronavirus probably put paid to that plan. What a shame.

Returning to the end of 2019, things were really looking up for Britain:

Boris launched another Brexit campaign for the snap general election held on December 12 that year. He had pledged to negotiate a new Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels, which he did accomplish:

During the campaign, Javid pressed home Conservative values, particularly where the economy and taxes were concerned:

It was a wonderful moment when the election programmes announced early on that Conservatives won by a landslide, even in Northern constituencies that had always voted Labour.

While the first weeks of 2020 left Conservatives heady with excitement, Sajid Javid’s days were far less happy.

At the end of January 2020, a comedian, Shazia Mirza, insulted Javid, and, sadly, a BBC news presenter found it funny (more here):

More importantly, No. 10 continued to plot against the Chancellor.

Boris had a reshuffle planned. On February 13, he told Javid that he (Javid) would have to sack all his advisers and accept those that No. 10 would choose for him.

Not surprisingly, Javid refused to accept those conditions.

I had read that people at No. 10, probably Dominic Cummings, suspected that some of Javid’s advisers were leaking confidential information about government policy to the media. I don’t know how true that is.

Sajid Javid resigned that day and wrote an excellent letter to the Prime Minister:

The BBC pressed him on Dominic Cummings, but he said that the conditions came from the Prime Minister himself, adding:

I don’t believe any self-respecting minister would accept such conditions so therefore I felt the best thing to do was to go.

Of course, he was obliged to give a resignation speech before Parliament, which he did a fortnight later on February 26:

Guido Fawkes urged readers to view it (emphasis in the original):

Watch his properly Conservative, spending restraining, tax cutting resignation speech in full…

At that time, our domestic airline, FlyBe, was in deep trouble financially. Javid had never promised a bailout, nor had his successor Rishi Sunak:

As lockdown took hold, having begun on Monday, March 23, 2020, Sajid Javid’s thoughts turned towards abused children.

On May 30, the Telegraph reported that he would be leading an investigation into sexual abuse of children:

The economic impact of the lockdown will pale by comparison to the “perfect storm” leaving vulnerable children “isolating alongside their abusers”, Sajid Javid has warned.

Writing for The Telegraph, the former Home Secretary said the current restrictions appeared to be facilitating a “surge” in sexual abuse of children which he predicted would be reflected in figures later this year.

Mr Javid is to lead a new “no holds barred” investigation into child sexual abuse in Britain, along with the Centre for Social Justice think tank. Mr Javid said the inquiry would not be impeded by “cultural and political sensitivities” after the men convicted in recent high-profile cases were disproportionately of Pakistani, Kashmiri, Bangladeshi and Bengali heritage.

His intervention follows repeated warnings by children’s charities about the increased risks of child abuse while children are being kept at home during the lockdown.

Last month The Telegraph disclosed that the number of vulnerable children “out of contact” as a result of the lockdown was causing alarm among ministers studying the cost of measures designed to halt the spread of coronavirus.

As we are still in lockdown, with a brief reprieve for a few months last year, this investigation will probably take some time to complete.

On August 17, 2020, although Sajid Javid is still an MP, he began serving as a senior adviser to his former employer JPMorgan, on the bank’s European Advisory Council.

The Financial Times reported:

His role at the bank will be “strictly ringfenced” from his political position and has been signed off by the UK government’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, according to a person briefed on the details.

Among other members of the council are Esko Aho, the former Finnish prime minister, and Vittorio Grilli, the former Italian finance minister, who has taken over as chair.

The council is made up of senior business and political leaders from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and meets periodically throughout the year.

“We are delighted to welcome Sajid back to JPMorgan as a senior adviser, and we look forward to drawing upon his in-depth understanding of the business and economic environment to help shape our client strategy across Europe,” the bank said in a statement to the Financial Times.

JPMorgan declined to provide details on how much Mr Javid would be paid.

Conclusion

I am grateful we have Sajid Javid on the Conservative benches.

One wonders what his school teachers think of him now.

I hope that whoever told him that he should be a television repairman has been eating a lot of humble pie over the past few years.

More on Conservative MPs from minority backgrounds will follow tomorrow.