Bus Driver's Son becomes UK's new Home Secretary

of the fallout from the Windrush revelations, and it will be his job to sort it out now.

One advantage he should have is that, as he told the Sunday Telegraph: "It immediately impacted me. I'm a second-generation migrant, my parents came to this country from Pakistan, just like the Windrush generation, obviously a different part of the world, from South Asia not the Caribbean, but other than that, similar in almost every way."

For those who haven't been following the story, the row has been about people who moved to the UK legally from the Commonwealth before 1973 being treated as illegal immigrants now if they had not elected to get a British passport in the past or were unable to provide a wide variety of documentary evidence that they had lived in the UK ever since.

Mr Javid told the newspaper: "When I heard about the Windrush issue, I thought that could be my mum, it could be my dad, it could be my uncle, it could be me."

The MP for Bromsgrove since 2010 was born in Rochdale, one of five sons of parents who had moved to the UK from Pakistan.

Mr Javid told the Evening Standard in 2012: "My dad was from a tiny village in Pakistan and came here when he was 17 to look for work,

"He settled in Rochdale and became a cotton-mill worker for Courtaulds. But he was quite ambitious, and saw that bus drivers were better paid. His nickname was Mr Night and Day because he used to work every hour God sent his way."

Mr Javid spent most of his childhood in Bristol, attending comprehensive school while his father worked on the buses.

He did well in his exams and headed off to Exeter University to study economics and politics - giving a clear hint of his future career direction. He also met his future wife, Laura, while there.
A Conservative Party supporter in the 1980s, towards the end of the Thatcher years he attended his first party conference at the age of 20, handing out leaflets against the then prime minister's decision to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

After university, he set his sights on a job in the City. As he told the Standard: "Some people, in a friendly way, tried to lower my expectations.

"They often tell you that unless you wear an old school tie or have the family contacts, you just won't get a chance to work in the City. But they were wrong."

His career move worked out well. And by the age of 25, he had become a vice-president at Chase Manhattan Bank, later moving to Deutsche Bank, where he rose to become a managing director before leaving in the summer of 2009 to concentrate on a political career.

Elected for the first time in 2010, he has had a rapid rise.

He began his ministerial career with roles in the Treasury, before becoming the first cabinet minister of Asian descent when he was appointed culture, media and sport secretary in 2014.

He did that for a year before moving to business secretary for a year and then moving on to be communities and local government secretary.

Mr Javid talking to Tata Steel workers in 2016

Long thought of a Eurosceptic, it was a surprise to many when Mr Javid came out for Remain during the UK's 2016 referendum on whether or not to stay in the European Union.

That meant, of course, that like then Home Secretary now Prime Minister Theresa May and his one-time mentor, then Chancellor George Osborne, he was on the losing side.

There was an ill-fated and very short-lived bid to succeed David Cameron as Conservative leader after the referendum, on a "joint ticket" with Stephen Crabb. (He would have been chancellor to Mr Crabb's prime minister.)

In his cabinet roles so far he has, as BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg put it, avoided major calamity, although he faced questions as business secretary over Tata steel, and as communities secretary over the response to the Grenfell disaster.

He has also not been afraid to ruffle feathers, with uncompromising messages to some in the business community and local government. And, according to James Forsyth, political editor of the Spectator magazine, Mr Javid has not been afraid to clash with Mrs May.

But he arrives at the Home Office having already expressed public anger about the Windrush fiasco, and the first item in his bulging in-tray will be sorting it out.

- BBC