In 2019, when Sajid Javid was home secretary, he spoke about growing up on “the most dangerous street in Britain” and how easy it would have been to fall into a life of crime. Fortunately, he said, he managed to avoid trouble. But it turns out Javid was being a little economical with the truth. He did get into trouble—serious trouble.
Now 56, he has just published his childhood memoir, The Colour of Home. It’s packed with incidents—arranged marriages, savage beatings, and boys behaving badly. I tell him I think there’s one key moment in his story. “What, just one?” he laughs. Javid is not lacking in confidence.
Thirteen-year-old Sajid was sitting in a police station with his younger brother Bas—who later became one of Britain’s most senior police officers—after they were caught red-handed swindling an amusement park. It’s an astonishing “Sliding Doors” moment, where you can see the future banker and politician nearly becoming trapped in a life of petty crime.
They had discovered how to cheat fruit machines with a J-shaped piece of wire. Before long, Javid had opened a savings account with his ill-gotten gains. Eventually, they were caught by the manager of an arcade in Weston-super-Mare. Javid describes the incident in the book: “Right, you little Paki bastards, I know you’ve been ripping me off,” he crouched to get as close to our faces as possible. “You’ve been stealing from the machines. If you weren’t kids I’d kick the shit out of you, but I’ve called the police instead. They’re on their way and you’re going to jail, you little fuckers.”
The boys were arrested and held in a cell. They confessed, their winnings were confiscated, and the police gave them enough money for the bus back to Bristol. When they got home, their father beat them.
Two months later, the boys were ordered to attend a police station in Bristol with their father. Sajid could easily have been charged; Bas definitely should have been, as he had already received a caution for theft. Their father, in tears, begged the officer for leniency. The officer eventually cautioned both boys and said he was giving them a second chance.
I never imagined Javid’s memoir would make me emotional.
What was the pleasure in stealing from the slot machines? Javid’s face lights up. “Oh, I loved it. I loved it. The pleasure was that you could make money from these machines.” He pauses. “Well, actually not make money, take money from these machines.” He says they justified their actions by telling themselves the owners were also acting unlawfully. “Bas and I thought that the people who operated these amusement parks shouldn’t be letting kids in anyway. You had to be 18. Bas was 11, I was 13. We were obviously nowhere near the legal age.”
Javid sips his black coffee. “You’re right to pick out that moment because it did change me a lot,” he concedes. What does he think would have happened if they hadn’t been caught? “I think we would have just continued until we got caught.” Would he like to see the police officer who didn’t charge them again? “I’d love to.” What would he say to him? “I’d say thank you. You changed my life.”
I meet Javid at his house in an affluent part of London. His wife, Laura, answers the door, and he is nowhere to be seen. She makes me coffee, asks where I’ve come from, chats about her keep-fit routine, and tells me about the art on the walls. One of the pictures, a gorgeous still life of a jug and pear, was painted by their daughter Maya when she was nine or ten. Laura has a lovely, easy warmth. So does their eldest daughter Sophia, who has just been for a jog, and Bailey their dog, a cavapoo.Ochon, who nuzzles up to me in a chair. When Javid walks into the room some minutes later, he is genial but more business-like. There’s little space for small talk. Bald and round-faced, he looked old for his years when first elected. Sixteen years on, unshaven and informal, he seems more youthful.
“Read it all?” he asks about the book. Yes, word for word, I say. “Good, thank you. Did you like it? Did it surprise you?” It feels more like an interrogation than a conversation. The Colour of Home provides great insight into his evolution into a can-do Conservative. Javid admired his father, a bus driver turned shop owner, and his mother, who managed despite not speaking English, but he wanted much more for himself.
One of five brothers, when the family moved, 12-year-old Javid was so determined to stay at his old school that he got on his bike—Tebbit style—and cycled the 6.3 miles there. He was told he was no longer on the school roll, so he pleaded with the deputy head to let him stay. When told he couldn’t take maths O-level (now GCSE maths), he pleaded again—this time with his father to pay for a tutor. And when told he could only do two A-levels at school, he left for a further education college where he could do three and go on to university. “If I had to pick out a theme, from a very young age I would say I was positively stubborn.”
He also showed a precocious, if dodgy, entrepreneurial initiative. And we’re not just talking about slot machines. When the government sold shares in nationalised industries, 16-year-old Sajid phoned his father’s bank asking for an appointment while impersonating him. The manager was shocked when he arrived in his school shirt and tie, admitted what he had done, and asked for a £500 loan. The manager said he couldn’t give him the money but offered to loan it to Javid’s father, who could then pass it on. Javid ended up making over £2,000 from the sell-offs. Margaret Thatcher became his hero.
In the book, racism is omnipresent. There’s his first fight at the start of secondary school because a boy in his class tells him, “You’re a Paki bastard. We don’t like Pakis”; the woman who steals clothes from his father’s shop and runs off racially abusing the family; and the university “friend” who finds out Javid got a job at Chase Manhattan bank and he didn’t, asking, “What the fuck is wrong with this country?” But the racism is multicoloured. There’s the man who tells his father he can’t let Javid’s brother Khalid go on a school trip to Israel because “he’ll be surrounded by Jews.” On another occasion, his father invites two Black friends for dinner, and his mother worries what she’ll do with the plates after they’ve eaten off them.
Most shocking of all is his family’s reaction to Laura when she became his first serious girlfriend. Javid’s father tells him he can’t marry Laura, a white Christian. When he asks why, his father says it’s because he is already engaged. His parents hadn’t bothered telling him they had arranged a marriage to his first cousin Amna, whom he loved as a sister. His parents finally agree to meet Laura’s parents, and he discovers that over a curry they told them that marrying their son would ruin Laura. “Imagine that! My parents meeting with the parents of the woman I want to marry, and their message is ‘Don’t let your daughter marry our son; it will destroy her life.’” Javid’s horror remains undiminished today.
The accounts of his relationship with his father, who died in 2012, are fascinating. They love each other, but his beatings are brutal. The worst incident is when the oldest of the five boys, Tariq, steals money Javid won on a slot machine but tells their father thJavid stole money from his father, who then took off his leather shoe and hit Javid on his arms, legs, stomach, and face before attacking him with a vacuum cleaner. “There were moments of rage. It could be a shoe or a stick. As a kid, I thought, ‘I’m never going to do this to my kids because look how it makes me feel. I hate it. I just hate it.’” He speaks in the present tense, as if he can still feel the crack of that stick. “As a kid, I used to think, ‘How can you love somebody and hit them?’ But then a couple of days later, my dad would act as if nothing had happened and he’d show you so much love and affection. And you’d think, ‘How do you go from that to this?’”
Does he regard what his father did as abuse? “Yes. I forgave him, but, yes, I regard hitting a child as abuse. When I was in government, I did a lot of work around child abuse and sexual exploitation, especially as home secretary. I introduced the online harms white paper, as it was then. Some of the things I went through as a child made me think I could now do something to help children in terms of abuse.”
Three of Javid’s brothers went on to successful careers. Tariq struggled, and in 2018 he took his own life. By then, Javid was a high-profile politician, and it was splashed all over the papers. Tariq’s suicide remains a source of huge pain for him. As health secretary, he hoped to draw up a 10-year mental health plan and a suicide prevention plan, but he never had the time. Javid says that any profit the book makes will go to the Samaritans.
After studying economics and politics at the University of Exeter, he built a highly lucrative career in banking. When asked if it was true he earned £3 million a year, he smiles and says, “I’m not getting into what I earned… I was paid well.” He left banking in 2009 to pursue a career in politics. A year later, he was elected Conservative MP for Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. While campaigning, he said, “I entered politics to do my best for this country—the country that has done so much for me.” The first department he ran was culture, followed by business, housing, the Home Office, the Treasury, and health—an impressive portfolio. Yet he never seemed to stay long enough in one role to make a lasting impact.
He enjoyed working for David Cameron, less so for Theresa May, and then there was Boris Johnson. Javid resigned twice from Johnson’s governments—first as chancellor, when Dominic Cummings told him to dismiss his special advisers (he told Johnson he was Cummings’ puppet), and later as health secretary when it emerged Johnson had been lying about Partygate. By then, he’d had enough, and he finally stepped down as an MP in 2024.
Was he disillusioned? “Yes, because there were so many things going wrong.” What was it like to work for a liar? “Well, look, Boris…” He pauses. “I don’t know if you’re referring to Boris, but the fact that I resigned on him twice speaks for itself. I thought, if I didn’t have confidence in the prime minister, I couldn’t work honestly with integrity for the government.”
Did he feel tainted by association? “No, I didn’t feel tainted because, rightly or wrongly, I felt I had carved out enough of a personal image. After I resigned as health secretary, I had a pensioners’ fair in my constituency, and they were all high-fiving me, saying, ‘Well done, we’re so proud of you.’” Why? “For resigning!”
Would he go back into politics? “No.” Why not? “I’m 56. I don’t think it’s for me anymore. I still support my party, of course, but I’m just not involved in any activity anymore.”When asked if he still has a relationship with Boris Johnson, he replies cryptically, “We have a relationship.” Pressed further, he insists it’s a good one. How did Johnson react when Javid called him a puppet of Dominic Cummings? “Well, at the time, he said, ‘Absolutely not.’” Was he angry? “No, he didn’t look it, because he was more focused on trying to convince me to stay. What I will say is that he’s since told me that about Cummings, I was absolutely right, and that he should have listened to me and others.”
Javid has had an unusual political career—an impressive resume, yet seemingly little to show for it. Does he feel satisfied with what he achieved? “Given the opportunities I was given, it would be churlish to say I wasn’t satisfied. That said, did I achieve what I wanted to achieve? I wanted to be prime minister. And I tried.” He stood for the leadership in 2019 and finished fourth, with Johnson winning. “Obviously, I didn’t make it. But I’m pleased I tried. Had I not, I would always look back and think I should have given it a shot. Among the people who were putting their hands up for it, I thought I could have done a better job.”
Why? “Two things. So much of the challenge the country was facing was economic, and I just think I had a better handle on the economy, businesses, and wealth creation. Second was the thing we’ve been talking about—the social challenges around class or race. Because of my lived experience, I could understand that in a way most politicians just can’t.”
Javid now holds several finance-related private sector roles, but his most interesting work is in the charitable sector as chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and co-chair of the Independent Commission on Community and Cohesion. Are Labour or the Conservatives doing enough today to counter the divisive politics preached by Reform UK? “No, they aren’t.” What should they be doing to improve social cohesion? “I would like all major political parties to be much more aware of the language they use and the issues they focus on, and how divisive they can be—or can be seen to be.” As home secretary, Javid disowned Theresa May’s term “hostile environment,” preferring “compliant environment,” though this was largely semantic—it didn’t lead to a more welcoming attitude toward migrants. Reading his book, one can’t help but think how much he would have hated the word “compliant” as a child, and how his parents might never have been allowed to migrate to Britain if today’s policies had been in place.
He recognizes that today’s rise in right-wing populism disturbingly echoes his childhood, growing up during the heyday of the National Front. “I don’t want us to go backwards, but there is a danger we will,” he says. Last year, he argued that the mismanagement of immigration, cost-of-living pressures, and social media-driven extremism risk creating “a tinderbox of disconnection and division” in Britain. “Unless we find ways to defuse it, the basis of our democracy is at risk,” he said.
Javid stands by this. But he believes his personal story is an example of how communities can heal divisions. He says his family is a microcosm of modern society—or how he’d like it to be. Forty years on, he and Laura are still together and have four children. In the end, his family not only accepted her but grew to love her. When Javid was an adult, his father told him he was ashamed of the beatings he had given him and begged for forgiveness. As for his mother, she finally learned to speak English and now lives happily and independently.Last year, I attended a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in London with Yvette Cooper, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Then there are Sajid and Bas, two troublemakers once destined for a life of crime. Jump forward forty years from their day in custody to 2019, and Javid—then home secretary—is presenting Bas with his graduation certificate at the College of Policing after completing the Strategic Command Course. “My mum was there,” Javid recalls. “She said to us afterwards, ‘If only your dad could see this now. Look at what you two were doing back then.’”
He insists The Colour of Home is not a political book, and in a sense he’s right. It’s an intimate childhood memoir. Yet it also stands as a parable of the Thatcherite dream—distinctly unromantic, with money at its core, as he nearly reaches the top during a grubby political era, yet profoundly romantic in how much he overcame against the odds. “It’s a story I hope will motivate others,” he says, “especially those born on the wrong side of the tracks.”
The Colour of Home: Growing up in 1970s Britain, by Sajid Javid, is published by Abacus on February 5, priced £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. This article was amended on 27 January 2026. Sajid Javid attended the University of Exeter, not the University of Essex.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs Sajid Javids Reflections on His Past
Background The Story
Q What is Sajid Javid referring to with It could have been a shoe or a stick
A Hes describing the physical beatings he received from his father as a child highlighting how any household object could be used as an instrument of punishment
Q Who is Sajid Javid
A Sajid Javid is a British Conservative Party politician who has held several senior UK government positions including Chancellor of the Exchequer and Health Secretary
Q What kind of petty crime was he involved in
A As a teenager he was involved in shoplifting and other minor thefts
Understanding His Experiences
Q Why is he talking about this now
A He has shared these personal stories to be open about his background to show how people can overcome difficult starts in life and to contribute to discussions on child welfare and social mobility
Q How did his fathers beatings affect him
A He has stated that while he loved his father the physical discipline was excessive and wrong It contributed to a difficult home environment that partly led to his rebellious phase
Q What made him turn away from crime
A A key moment was realizing the impact and potential consequences of his actions He has credited education personal determination and the support of some positive influences for helping him change his path
Broader Themes Impact
Q What does his story say about social mobility
A Its often cited as a ragstoriches example showing how someone from a workingclass immigrant background with a troubled youth can rise to the highest offices in the UK through hard work and seizing opportunities
Q Has he spoken about the cycle of abuse
A Yes By speaking openly he implicitly addresses breaking that cycle He has emphasized that the beatings were unacceptable and that he has chosen a different path as a parent himself
Q What was his fathers perspective according to Javid
A Javid has suggested his father a Pakistani immigrant bus driver acted out of a tough love mentality and a desire for his children to succeed but that his methods were misguided and harmful
Reactions Implications
