Iain Dale profiles: Sajid Javid

After last year’s autumn reshuffle, the name that topped the headlines was the relatively unknown Sajid Javid, newly appointed as financial secretary to the Treasury. At a stroke, he became the second most important Tory at the Treasury after George Osborne - not bad for someone elected to Parliament only three years earlier. Indeed, the Times has described Javid as “the brightest of a potentially stellar 2010 Tory intake”.

Javid was born to Pakistani Muslim immigrants who came to this country in search of a better life. He was one of five brothers and his dad worked every hour he could as a bus driver to support his family – earning the nickname “Mr Night and Day”. Despite growing up on what was once dubbed “Britain’s most dangerous street” because of its shootings and drug-related crime, Javid’s mother encouraged his passion for education. This spurred him to achieve top grades at his Bristol comprehensive and win a place at Exeter University.

Influenced by his father’s self-help attitude and Margaret Thatcher’s crusade for popular capitalism, Javid joined the student Conservative society. There he became part of a group of friends who now form an influential quartet from Exeter University. The others are MPs Robert Halfon and David Burrowes, and the founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie...

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