POLITICAL fortunes can dip and rise, ebb and flow as much any drama penned by the great Bard of Britain – William Shakespeare – but it would take a bolder scribe to predict just where and how Sajid Javid’s legacy might come to be viewed…it could still change radically over 2021.
It is perhaps far too early in this cycle of parliament and who knows how the winds will blow through Westminster once we are out of the pandemic and back to politics as usual – to know precisely whether we have seen the last of this popular (but not so populist) politician on the centre stage.
There were mutterings in the corridors of power in the Spring that Javid might return to an office of state and have a place in the Cabinet again. He has stayed loyal, has not been a troubling voice and hasn’t said anything to upset prime minister Boris Johnson.
His most recent nemesis Dominic Cummings is no longer at Number 10 calling the shots and has left the government completely. It was a showdown between Cummings and Javid as chancellor that saw him leave Johnson’s government in February last year. Cummings had demanded that all Treasury advisors be fired and replaced by ones handpicked by Number 10. There was tension but Johnson retained Khan’s services, saying he would keep him in the chancellors’ job – until Cummings re-asserted his own authority after the election in February last year.
Cummings’ magnetic spell on Johnson was only broken at the end of 2020 and that – and an imminent reshuffle (still speculation at the time of going to press) could see a door opening for a big hitter like Javid.
Last year’s GG2 Power List No 1, remains an MP for the well-heeled, genteel Birmingham suburb that is Bromsgrove, but Javid has taken up academic and commercial positions since the summer.
He is a senior fellow at Harvard University and its Harvard Kennedy School and in August became a senior advisor to JP Morgan Chase – the retail and consumer facing arm of powerhouse American investment bank, JP Morgan.
He sits on JP Morgan Chase’s Europe, Middle East and Africa advisory council and the position marks a return in some ways to his old stomping ground of the City.
From modest circumstances, state education and four similar high-achieving brothers – and a dad who initially drove a bus for a living, when he first came to Britain – Javid graduated from the University of Exeter where he read economics and politics and worked in the City for 18 years. His first career job was with Chase Manhattan Bank and then Deutsche Bank. He spent time in New York with the former and rose to global head of Emerging Markets Structuring with latter. He left to first become an MP in 2010.
The former chancellor (pre-Rishi Sunak) and a one-time home secretary has returned to the back benches, and is either biding his time before his political chips move in his favour again, or quietly winding down to a comfortable retirement (from politics).
If Johnson prefers to look elsewhere during his next reshuffle it seems unlikely Javid will return to frontline politics – but never say never, just look at Johnson’s own trajectory, especially after he left Theresa May’s government in July 2018. In a February interview with the Daily Telegraph, Javid argued that countries needed to look at their wealth in terms of resources and the impact business had on a country’s environment.
The green agenda within the Conservative Party is still evolving and the government under prime minister Johnson and Michael Gove are keen to seize the initiative – some internal critics see the hand of Johnsons’ partner Carrie Symonds in this – but former prime minister David Cameron was a keen environmentalist until austerity dominated the agenda – and Javid was perhaps appealing to that wing with which he still has strong ties.
He told the paper he had been on a journey himself and now thought more about the environment and economic activity that might adversely affect the environment. He was pleased President Trump, as an arch climate-change denier, had left the White House, welcomed Joe Biden and said he was cycling more and eating less meat and more vegetables, as he personally responded to environmental concerns.
He argued the measurement of GDP (Gross Domestic Product is the cumulative value of a country’s output in terms of goods and services alone) was inadequate in today’s day and age.
He said preserving the environment and natural resources is closer to Conservative thinking than perhaps immediately meets the eye and that environmental considerations could be used to adjust a country’s wealth status.
A good part of this thinking has been prompted by a report he commissioned at the Treasury. The Dasgupta Review is an independent global review on the economics of biodiversity and compiled by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsay Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge.
The government says of the study, first published in February 2021, that it will recalibrate the way we see economics and the environment. “Grounded in a deep understanding of ecosystem processes and how they are affected by economic activity, the new framework presented by the review sets out how we should account for nature in economics and decision-making.”
Javid says we need a new international financial organisation that recognises biodiversity and the challenges its presents to traditional economics and standard number crunching methods – which pays little attention to the state of our environment. He said companies needed to be made aware of their impact on the environment and how much it can negatively or positively enhance the environment.
With the left-leaning and more ecologically conscious President Joe Biden in the White House, it is perhaps clear the green global agenda will once again take pride of place when international leaders convene. Britain also chairs the G7 summit this year.
What role Javid has in all this could be considerable or negligible – if he remains on the backbenches. He first joined the party inspired by Thatcherism and history will record that he was the first home secretary and chancellor from an ethnic minority background. He has also served as culture and communities secretary. He married Laura after they fell in love during a summer job and the couple has four children. His star remains bright.
