‘The Colour of Home’ by Sajid Javid

This is a rather unusual political autobiography. Most that are written by those who have held the most senior offices deal rather briefly with childhood, family and education before focusing on a lengthy defence of their careers. This is different in that it is very much a memoir of childhood and family which says absolutely nothing about the stellar career that followed after Sajid Javid's election to the House of Commons.

He became MP for the safe Conservative seat of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire at the 2010 general election. Before the year was out he was a member of the government, after a few months securing the plumb job of Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He then became a junior treasury minister before joining the cabinet in 2014 as Culture Secretary.

He then got a series of promotions that took him to the Business Department, the Communities and Local Government Department, then the Home Office, before becoming Boris Johnson’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer. He subsequently resigned, but was soon reappointed to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Health during the covid pandemic. He was highly competent in every job; the ultimate a safe pair of hands.

What makes Sajid Javid unusual among senior Tory MPs is that he came from a family of Pakistani immigrants with absolutely no financial advantages whatsoever. He went to comprehensive schools before studying where I work at the University of Exeter Business School. He read politics and economics, going on to work in banking and finance.

This book focuses mainly on his childhood, growing up first in Rochdale and later in Bristol. He was one of five brothers. His father was a big character who dominates the narrative. A Punjabi immigrant from post-partition Pakistan he started his life in the UK working as a bus conductor, later becoming a bus driver (in spite of racist union opposition) before starting his own clothing retail business. He wore a toupee, beat his sons on occasion and tried hard to push each of them into arranged marriages. Ultimately though his influence on Sajid was more positive than negative because, despite his many flaws, he was possessed of a fierce work ethic. Self-reliant and ambitious, he never built the big business he dreamt of, but managed despite numerous setbacks to stand on his own two feet and provide for the family he loved.

There was overt racism for the young Sajid Javid to deal with as a kid, but later in the 1989s and 1990s the blockages to his ambitions were subtler forms of low expectation. He had to fight for the right to sit enough A levels to get him into university.

The first generation British immigrant experience has been brilliantly explored in works of contemporary fiction, but I am not aware of many examples in which it is described in the kind of detail it is here via a seemingly honest memoir.

Like many political autobiographies this author tends to play down his immense natural ability. Modesty tends to pervade, with anecdotes told against himself and little said about what he was actually learning at school. It is though a very enjoyable read, particularly in the later stages when he focuses on his relationship with Laura King who, after overcoming a great deal of family opposition, he finally married in 1997.

Sajid Javid was recently awarded an honorary degree by the University of Exeter, and I was sitting right behind him at the ceremony. His speech was just superb, and I just wonder whether he may one day soon serve a term as our Chancellor. He is a splendid role model.