ਸਾਜਿਦ ਜਾਵਿਦਸਾਜਿਦ ਜਾਵਿਦ

Sajid Javid (born 5 December 1969) is a British politician from Rochdale whose Punjabi family comes from Rajana village near Toba Tek Singh. A Deutsche Bank managing director before politics, he became home secretary in 2018, the first British Asian and first Muslim to hold one of the great offices of state, then chancellor of the exchequer, and later health secretary.

From Rajana to Rochdale and Bristol

Javid was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, on 5 December 1969, one of five sons of Pakistani parents who had immigrated to Britain in the 1960s. His family were Punjabi Muslim farmers of the Arain community from Rajana, a village in Toba Tek Singh district in the Sandal Bar region of central Punjab. His father arrived with almost nothing, worked first in a cotton mill and then as a bus driver before running his own businesses, while his mother spoke no English for her first decade in Britain. The family moved to Stapleton Road in Bristol, living in a flat above the family shop, and Javid grew up between two worlds, able to hold a conversation in broken Punjabi at home while excelling at school in England. He was educated at Downend School and Filton Technical College, then read economics and politics at the University of Exeter.

Banker to the boardroom of Deutsche Bank

Few cabinet ministers have had a first career like Javid's. After graduating in 1991 he joined Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, becoming, at 25, its youngest vice president, and worked in Latin America during the Mexican peso crisis. In 2000 he moved to Deutsche Bank in London, rising to managing director by 2004 and joining the board of Deutsche Bank International, with a posting to Singapore in 2007. By the time he left banking in 2009 to enter politics, British newspapers reported his earnings at around three million pounds a year. He has often said the work ethic came from watching his father build a life from a pound in his pocket.

Into Parliament and the cabinet

Javid was elected MP for Bromsgrove in May 2010. He entered government within a year, working in the Treasury team under Chancellor George Osborne, first as his parliamentary private secretary and then as economic secretary to the Treasury, the minister responsible for the City and financial services. From there he climbed quickly: culture secretary in 2014, business secretary in 2015, and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government in 2016. On 30 April 2018 he became home secretary, the first British Asian and the first Muslim to hold one of the great offices of state. In July 2019, after contesting the Conservative leadership himself, he was appointed chancellor of the exchequer by Boris Johnson, the second most powerful job in British government, a Rochdale bus driver's son in charge of the national finances.

How did Sajid Javid's time at the top unfold?

His chancellorship ended after barely six months: in February 2020 he resigned rather than accept a demand from Johnson's advisers that he dismiss his own team, and was succeeded at the Treasury by ਰਿਸ਼ੀ ਸੁਨਕ. He returned to the cabinet in June 2021 as health secretary, leading the health service through the later stages of the Covid pandemic, the response to the Omicron variant and the booster vaccination programme, one of the most demanding briefs in government at the time. On 5 July 2022 he resigned again, the first of a wave of ministerial resignations that brought Johnson down within days. Javid stood down as an MP at the 2024 general election. He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2024 New Year Honours, and since July 2025 he has chaired the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

A Punjabi story at the heart of British politics

Javid's career is one of the most striking chapters of the Punjabi diaspora in Britain. The grandson of farmers from Rajana, raised above a shop in Bristol, he reached the threshold of the premiership itself, contesting the Conservative leadership in 2019 and again in 2022. Alongside figures such as ਰਿਸ਼ੀ ਸੁਨਕ, whose family came from Gujranwala, he showed how thoroughly the children and grandchildren of Punjabi immigrants have entered the highest levels of British public life, carrying their family villages with them in spirit if not in name.