The Javid manifesto

There’s an old joke that the most dangerous position in the Tory party is the favourite for the leadership. The frontrunner always ends up with a target on his back, which is why Sajid Javid should be feeling a little nervous right now. Theresa May survived a confidence vote but only after saying that she would resign before too long – so the hunt for a successor is on. He is Home Secretary, his fourth cabinet post. A poll of 700 Conservative councillors found they’d rather have him as leader than anyone else. He is also a former financier who made his name handling economic crises and is someone to whom MPs might conceivably turn if talks with Brussels fail and Britain looks set to crash out of the European Union.

Most of Javid’s cabinet colleagues look exhausted right now, worn down by the Brexit process. But he has the energy of a man sensing opportunity — for the country, for his party, perhaps even for himself. We meet in his office where he sits with a portrait of Margaret Thatcher behind him. Every now and then, he references her. There are no prizes for guessing what type of Tory he is. But within minutes he’s spelling it out, just in case.

The Brexit drama, he says, has drowned out the purpose of what the Conservative party stands for. ‘In a word: opportunity.’ A word overused to the point of being meaningless. ‘The much bigger picture is social mobility. That’s what I want the party to be seen as: promoting how politicians — or the right politicians — can make a real difference to you as an individual in your life.’

He offers himself as an example. ‘Had she not come along and opened up the City with the big bang,’ he says, pointing at Thatcher’s picture, ‘things would be very different.