62. Sajid Javid: Austerity, the Tory leadership contest, and the problem with 'islamophobia' (Part 1)

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1:27Liberty, Liberty. Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Hi there, it's Alistair here. Rory's had to run to a lunch. And we've just spent quite a long time in the studio here in London with the former cabinet minister, Sajid Javid. And it was really, really, really interesting. And the reason Rory's had to run and Sajid Javid has had to run is because we went way over our allotted time. you're going to hear the first part which is very very interesting but we've actually decided to split it into two parts simply because we covered so much ground we don't want to cut anything out so we're going to put it out in two parts first part you'll hear now the second part will be in the main feed at the end of the week but if you enjoy part one so much that you can't wait until friday you can become a member of trip plus and you do that by going to the rest is politics.com You'll get all sorts of other benefits if you do that, but the immediate benefit is you'll be able to listen to the second part of our interview with Sajid Javid.

2:31If you want to hear the first part, here you go.

2:40Welcome to The Restless Polities Leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And today we have with us Sajid Javid, who is one of the most, I suppose, senior and experienced members of parliament in the Conservative Party at the moment. I mean, he's been a cabinet minister in an enormous range of different departments. He was chancellor of the Exchequer. He oversaw the business department. He did culture. He was the home secretary, et cetera, et cetera. So a really, really good way at getting under the bonnet of real government, real administration. He became a minister very early on.

3:20We joined Parliament together in 2010, but he was a minister by 2012. So he's been really up there on the front bench for over a decade. He ran for the leadership, actually against me and against Boris Johnson. And then he ran the previous time too and was a major contender in the leadership. I remember when we were in parliament, he was regularly one of the great stars of the Conservative Party and people talking about him as Britain's Obama. And that's partly because Sajid came in at a time, we'll talk about this a bit, where actually the Conservative Party had been very, very white. He was the first Muslim to hold one of the great officers of state in Britain.

4:03Conservative Party's changed a lot since then, so that's something maybe to talk about. But he's also got an extraordinary personal story and he's about to leave politics. So this is a chance to get Sajid unbound, no longer worrying about exactly what position he's going to get next or where he's going, but to give us a small and honest view on what it felt like to be a politician. Over to Alistair. So can we start right at the beginning with your childhood? You were born in Rochdale. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yes, I was born in Rochdale, 1969. But grew up mainly in Bristol. Yeah, I was by the age of sort of three or four, left with my parents and moved to Bristol.

4:39And just give us a taste of your childhood in terms of, as Rory said, father from a pretty poor background when he'd left Pakistan, got an okay job here, but you weren't exactly rolling in it in the way that eventually you were. So just tell us about childhood. And one thing I particularly want to ask you about is whether as a child of Pakistani heritage growing up, particularly in Bristol when you've presumably got memories of that, whether you did suffer much racism and how that felt. Yeah, so as Rory just said, actually my parents were both from very poor backgrounds from villages in Pakistan.

5:22My dad came over first before my mum, and his first job actually was on the cotton mills in Watchdale, and then he wanted to get a job that was more regular, paid more relatively and applied to, you joined what I think was a greater Manchester bus company, became a conductor. But you asked about racism, I just give you an example that he then passed on to me and my brothers was that when he, so he was a conductor, he wanted to become a driver. At that point, there were hardly any other drivers in Manchester that were not white. And there was no legal reason, but the union blocked it. The union had rules, had a colour bar policy.

5:59and he told me this story informal and but they had he told me that there were posters and so it's informal but they had posted no you know no uh colored people will bring you to drive buses and he went along to what was the recruitment office already as a conductor and he queued up queued up he got to the end and there's a lady there says i like an application form for uh to be a driver and she said you can't he said why not and he said because can't you read the sign and he said i know the law i know i can do this and she grabbed the paper chucked it on the floor you had to pick it up from the floor and he took him two years to become a a bus driver and eventually became one of the first non-white bus drivers in manchester and so my parents faced racism as a child i can remember so many instances recently i remember the rochdale even though i left so yeah i remember you know walking in the streets as a child with my mom being shouted at normally packy and sometimes other even worse stuff uh and in bristol uh yeah there were many many instances by then my parents uh they wanted to have a business my father first he did market stalls my mom used to sew the clothes for the stalls and then he eventually sort of graduated to a shop he wanted a shop we lived above the family shop but i can't tell you the number of times that uh we woke up one morning and there's graffiti on the windows of the shop you know pack packy bastards, packies out.

7:18And I'd feel so sorry for my parents. My mum would spend hours cleaning this graffiti while my dad would be trying to sell things in the shop. I absolutely get why you'd have a kind of visceral reaction to that kind of thing. But I just wondered on the union thing, because you've got quite a reputation as being a Thatcherite, certainly historically. Does that explain maybe why you have a take on the trade unions that is, you know, coming from where I am, sometimes has felt a little bit extreme? No, I don't think so. I think there's a great question that would that have had an impact on my thinking about unions.

7:52I'm not anti-union. I never have been. I think unions play an important role, obviously, for organized labor. But I would say that they have also, in the history of Britain, done many wrong things. And, you know, being unaccepting of people that don't happen to be white was clearly wrong. There are many union members, unions that organize to support people like Enoch Powell and others when he said what he said. And so you had the sort of right and the left coming together. One of the things I remember when we came into parliament together is early conversations where you very, very politely and courteously got me up to your tiny little office in parliament to talk about foreign policy and Afghanistan.

8:32But one of the things that made me wonder is how much of your Pakistani or Punjabi heritage you kept. Because on the one hand, I think you talk about the fact your mother didn't speak very good English, so you were having to translate for her when she went to doctor's appointments. But did you ever go back to Pakistan? Did you ever see the villages they came from? How did that identity sit with you? Yes, I'm very proud of that heritage, that identity. In fact, Punjabi was my mother tongue. I remember arriving at school at a very young age, not being able to speak English. And at the time, I wouldn't have realized it.

9:11But today, I'm very proud of that, that I can speak the language. And it meant when I did go to Pakistan, first as a child, but obviously that was my parents' choice. But more importantly, when I chose to go as an adult, I have taken my children to Pakistan. I've taken them to villages with my parents. In fact, just over a year ago, my father is sadly no longer with us, but one of his dying wishes to me and my brothers was that, please, if you ever can, take your children to my hometown, my village where he was born, which was on the Indian side of Punjab, south of Amritsar, a town near Jalandhar, which is now Indian Punjab.

9:50And he was part of that partition. And that obviously affected him a lot. And he almost died as a youngster moving from just outside Amritsar to Lahore. And I did that just over a year ago. I took all my children, my family, my wife to his birthplace, the house that he was born in, the school that he went to in India. And if you ask my children today, if they were here, and they've been very lucky, they've travelled a lot, they've had lots of nice holidays, been to very interesting places. If you ask all four of them today, what's the best sort of trip outside the UK you've ever had that's impacted you the most, they would all say the visit to their daddu's birthplace.

10:27Before we move on from this, Sadiq Khan, Homsa Yusuf, Anasawa, I mean, there is a group across different parties, SNP, Conservative Labour, of people who come from the Punjab, right? The Pakistani Punjab, most of them. Do you feel anything in common? Or is that sort of when you meet them? Is there anything that connects people? I do. And all three of the people that you mentioned, obviously, all in different political parties, different political traditions. I know them all. I would consider them all friends. I think they would say that I've got to know them through politics, actually. And there is an affinity.

11:05There is a link. I mean, we can obviously have our different politics and the way we might vote, the things that we might say in parliament and elsewhere. but there there is a link and i've worked with actually with with uh sadiq khan when i've been in ministerial positions and we worked incredibly well became friends uh with hamza yousef when i was the health secretary of the uk he was the health minister in the scottish government we worked very closely together uh anas i also know his father knew his father who actually went on to be governor of punjab and uh so and i and i and i feel proud of that in the uk today that you have first of all many more uh people in politics that are not white that are from various backgrounds be it black or asian but i guess in particular uh to see more people of pakistani heritage coming through um i was going to come to this later but given that sadiq's name has come up it seems maybe i've assigned now you were one of the first people to come out and criticize lee anderson for what he said about sadiq khan where he essentially said he was run by islamists as opposed to you know run by londoners and i think a lot of people listening to this or hear you say as a politician that they know well through having been cabinet minister and so forth but you're sitting there saying that you're friends with people of other parties is that something that you think the politicians don't say enough when they are actually on the front line in the big jobs where they're attacking each other the whole time because i think that's i don't know what you thought they were right i just thought i think people will find out oh god he just first thing he said virtually he's about his opponents that they become friends well there are there are a lot of friendships uh let's say across the aisle yeah in in politics and sometimes i find that some of the those are probably more trustworthy you know real friendships than with people on your own side and certainly during my time in in parliament i can say that i i generally feel i have friends on the other side as it were and uh and and respect in the sense that you know i might be standing there's a minister at the dispatch box and someone on the Labour side, let's say, gets up and says, that's all nonsense, don't agree with it.

13:09But they're doing their job. First of all, if that's what they really believe, then fine, fair enough. That's why they're in Parliament, express their opinions. They might not even really believe it. Their whips might have told them to do it. But they've got a job to do, right? I've got a job to do. But I can think of so many times where I've worked with, especially as a minister, with MPs, particularly, well, I was going to say particularly Labour, but I think of DUP MPs, Liberal Democrat MPs on issues that really matter. Do you think Lee Anderson believes what he said? Do you think he believes that?

13:39Does he believe that Sadiq Khan is run by Islamists and he's lost control of the streets of London? Hard to say whether he really believes. I like to think not. Could he really believe it? Sadly, he may. He didn't apologise. He hasn't apologised. I mean, let's be clear. what he said was racist it was anti-muslim hatred in a in a very sort of blatant and one of the vilest forms it was completely unacceptable wasn't i know lots of ministers out there saying now it's wrong of course it was wrong but it was much more than just like why are none of the current ministers saying what you've just said and would you have said that when you were the home secretary yes yes why are none of them saying that they've all been told say it's wrong say it's i said i said similar when i was home secretary about others i said similar about President Trump when he made some comments as Home Secretary.

14:28Just sort of to bring the listeners in who are not professional politicians. Alice is trying to get into professional politics. It is a kind of bizarre, right? It's all over social media at the moment. Nick Ferrari will say to a minister, so you said it's wrong. Why is it wrong? And then the minister will say, it's wrong. Wrong because it's wrong. He'll be like, why is it wrong? And he'll be like, it's wrong. And they'll repeat like seven times the same phrase. Can you just, now that you're leaving politics, take the veil back and explain to the public, why does ministers say the same mind seven times well obviously this isn't a policy area as such but there will be i mean both of you will be familiar with this maybe particularly alistair there will be lines to take right and the expectation would be you would take those right they might be better crafted right give you more a bit more wiggle room let's say but i'm sure alistair can think of many examples where he had to you know have a few words with someone when And they didn't take the line, even though the line was pretty dumb.

15:26So to explain, somebody in the centre has decided that ministers should be saying it's wrong and not say anything else. And it's been written down on a sheet of paper. The guy's gone into the radio studio. And I guess. And also what happens is before they just before they go into the studio, maybe that morning, if they're doing what's called the morning round, they'll have a chat with someone at number 10 or CCHQ, the headquarters. And they'll say, by the way, you will get asked this. And all you can say is wrong. do not cross the line do not cross the line and then they'll feel they won't get promoted if they cross the line they'll be in trouble some of them yeah some of them will be worried about promotions yeah some of them are just not good ministers and just weak right that's the reality is that i i mean were there things that i said as a minister that i didn't really want to put it like that they wouldn't be my words i was taking that of course there were right of course there were but there were also plenty of times where i just thought you know what this is just too important you've got to say you just got to say what it is and whatever the consequence is damn the consequences right and sometimes the consequence might not quite be what you think you know for example you remind me of something you know when i was the uh the local government community secretary the the windrush scandal had started it was it was awful i mean i think the i was reading about it hearing about it learning a bit more in government obviously i wasn't in the home office but everything i was hearing about it internally reading externally thanks to the excellent work of Amelia Gentleman and others and stuff, I thought, this is just terrific.

16:51This is like, these people are British, and I just cannot understand how this could have happened. And I remember being interviewed about it. Obviously, as a cabinet minister, it was the hottest topic. It had very clear lines. You must not admit it's a crisis. You must not say it's a scandal. You must defend the Home Office. I remember doing an interview, and I said, look, this is awful. This is a massive injustice. And I said, this could have been my parents. This could be my parents. I just cannot understand it. I got a call that afternoon from number 10. I think I'd say it was, but someone very senior saying, why did you say that?

17:28You've caused so much trouble. Was the name Nicola or Fiona? No, actually, they had gone by then. Thankfully, they had gone. And I tell you, it was like on something like the Saturday, I get this call saying you must. the Prime Minister's sub said she wants to see you first thing. This is unacceptable. I'm going to interrupt just to explain to the audience why that would be. It's because the government's really worried. They're trying to hold the line together and they're worried that if you say this, it's going to create newspaper headlines that the journalists will try to use against the home section.

18:01And then, I'm pretty sure the following day, I think the Sunday, Amber Rudd resigns. And you go to the job. Amber Rudd resigns, right? and Monday morning, I get a phone call. I do get that phone call from the Prime Minister about Windrush, really, but it wasn't to bollock me. It was to say, do you want to, I would really love you to become the Home Secretary, right? You see, what you've just said there reminds me, we used to have John Reid, Jack Cunningham, Margaret Beckett, Donald Dewar. We had several cabinet ministers who you could phone up and say, this is the line, okay? This is the line to take, but then they would go out and they would speak like human beings.

18:39They wouldn't say something contrary to government line. So what you did there was actually you didn't go across. In saying this could have been your parents, you weren't saying this is the government's fault necessarily. So that's the difference. And that's when you talked earlier about some ministers that aren't very good. That's what drives me mad about most of today's ministers. They sound like robots reading a script. Too many of them sound like robots. Sometimes everyone knows, everyone's listening. I think, come on, you just know. You should be better than this, right? And it's good, obviously, that they're saying it's wrong, which is better than not saying it's wrong, I guess.

19:14But it's not going far enough because, you know, what Lee Anderson said is just totally unacceptable in politics. He shouldn't be in as a result, you know, especially if he just wasn't willing to issue any kind of sincere apology. And since then, obviously, he's doubled down, which makes me think back to Rory's question. Maybe he just didn't mean this. He really actually meant this, which is even worse in some ways. You know, people do misspeak sometimes. It gets taken out of context. isn't he doing it and aren't the government not sort of going overboard and saying the sort of things that you've just said because they think there is a part of the electorate that can't have their own prejudices challenged and that's dangerous so actually you've got situation where senior politicians are saying we're not going to call out racism because there will be people there who will feel we're talking about them because that's what they think I think clearly there's a reason why the lines to people don't go, say this much, but don't go any further.

20:11But it is clear, I think, that any sensible, reasonable person that if you take this instance, your anti-Muslim hatred is as unacceptable as anti-Semitism. right there's no they're both completely unacceptable this is you know disliking someone or at worst you know hurting them discriminating them you know calling for bad things to be done to them just because of the faith they've chosen to follow and and i saw both as community secretary as home secretary and now it's even worse for for both of those communities both those are suffering unacceptable levels of racism because of uh your activities that are happening thousands of miles away where the the people who want to protest against that or make an issue but they can't just find a sensible civil way to do that and they attack people from different communities okay uh let's just take a quick break

21:03at new balance we believe if you run you're a runner

21:10however you choose to do it because when you're not worried about doing things the right way you're free to discover your way and that's what running is all about run your way at newbalance.com slash running well i was down on my last dollar then i started saving because the bank said fiscal restraint is what you're craving so i put my earnings in a high yield account let the savings compound and the interest amount i'm optimizing cash flow putting debt in check now time is my praying and not a pain in the neck and we've got a little cash to rebuild the old deck boring money moves make kind of lame songs but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet pnc bank brilliantly boring since 1865 one of the things i was always interested in with you is that in many ways you lived a very cosmopolitan life.

22:13As you said, you traveled as a child, you worked in Singapore, you worked for these big international organizations. But I noticed when you came to parliament, you didn't spend a great deal of time talking about foreign policy. So even though you'd lived internationally, you spoke Punjabi, you had all that background, why was it you were not leaning in more to you know the war in afghanistan or what was happening in iraq or kashmir or israel palestine am i right that that to some extent you you focus more on domestic policy um not completely because i've had a a huge long-running interest in in foreign policy foreign issues long before i was a in politics you know you talked about my banking career my banking career was most of it was in a field called emerging markets which were you're basically developing economies around the world.

23:06And one of the things I liked about that particular work for the 20 years I did it was that it took me to some very interesting parts of the world. And I was as interested in the politics of those countries, the economics. The answer to your question, though, but it is right, the final point you make about not talking too much about these issues in Parliament. I think the short answer is really that I became a minister very early. And from that, from 2012, I was elected in 2010, you know, minister, actually a people within nine months, a minister in the Treasury by 2012, and therefore almost a decade in various positions.

23:41So I tend to stick to my brief because there's always a – if I start talking about, you know, obviously when it's foreign policy interests, you have the foreign office, the international development office. So privately, I would have discussions with ministers, including, I think, Rory, with you when you were in those portfolios. In fact, you remind me of something that there's no reason anyone knows, but when I was George Osborne's PPS and just before I became a Treasury Minister, Economic Secretary. A week before the reshuffle, George said to me, look, we're going to have a reshuffle next week.

24:12Don't tell anyone. And I think the Prime Minister is really minded to give you a ministerial job. What would be your dream job? And I said, Foreign Office. And then a week later, I'm to the Treasury as the Economic Secretary. I love that job. I guess it suited my sort of immediate skill set more. But actually, the job I wanted was Foreign Office. Also, on foreign policy, because one thing that you were quite well known for, you're very strongly pro-Israel. You chaired Conservative Friends of Israel for quite a long time. I haven't chaired it, no, but Israel is a country that I have been very supportive of.

24:45And I think it's a country that is, for all the right reasons, an ally of the UK. Yeah. And so with what's going on now, this sort of links up with the Lee Anderson stuff. And as you said, you've got anti-Semitism, you've got Islamophobia. I noticed that you were using that phrase anti-Muslim hatred. What is this row in the Conservative Party about not wanting to use the word? That surprises me a bit because one of my great memories, when we were at that BBC leadership debate together, we were all on the stage against Boris Johnson. One of the things you did at the end of the debate is you challenged us all to sign up to an investigation into what you then called Islamophobia.

25:21If I hadn't done that, it wouldn't have happened. I mean, it might have happened if you become private, or I become private, but I was a bit worried it might not happen with Boris Johnson, so that's why I did it. But in those days you used the phrase Islamophobia and now you tend to use anti-Muslim hatred. Well, actually, I think that particular debate, I use the phrase only because I think the question was phrased in that way. And we didn't have much time. I didn't want to sort of get into a sort of argument about definitions. But I do actually, I do think I've looked at this a lot. I looked at it a lot as both community secretary and home secretary.

25:54And I think the correct term is anti-Muslim hatred. And the reason is, is that the definition of Islamophobia, particularly the definition that was, I think, put together by the APPG, a parliamentary group. I met the leaders of that group at the time. It was, you know, I remember meeting Saida Varsi, Anna Subri, there were others. We had some very good meetings, but I told them at the time, and it was a decision of mine in the Home Office at the time, not to use that term because it was too broad. because it included saying to people, you can't criticize a faith. It was like a blasphemy type law, right?

26:32And in this country, for all the right reasons, we have freedom of expression, freedom of expression of religion. And just as we should have a blasphemy law on Christianity and Judaism, any other religion, all religions should be treated the same. But what was very clear and has always been clear to me is that because someone chooses to follow a particular religion, that there's no reason that anyone can have to discriminate against them, to abuse them in any way. And that's why I think anti-Muslim hatred is the right term. So would you say that your strength of feeling about the issue, in particular what Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman said last weekend, that you feel just as strongly as Saeed Avarsi does about what he did, why it's so bad, it's just that there's an argument about what word to call it?

27:18I think on the issue of Lee Anderson, I think that's probably correct. I mean, Saida Varsy feels strongly on many issues. I couldn't speak for her. On this issue. On the Lee Anderson point, she's been really clear. And I think I've been very clear. So I think we would be in agreement on that. But there's one other point I just want to make on the Islamophobia versus anti-Muslim hatred in terms of definitions. is that as Home Secretary, I also received advice from the police, you know, fighting counterterrorism, fighting terrorism day in, day out, and other services. And the police, and this is public, because it was published eventually, the National Police Chiefs Council, which represents all the sort of chief constables, they had given me very strong advice in 2019 that the definition of Islamophobia, that the government is being asked to accept, is far too broad and actually works against the interests of Muslims, it will feed extremism.

28:15And that is something as Home Secretary, of course, you're going to take seriously. On language, have there ever been times, I mean, here you are today being very calm and moderate and mature discussion with the three of us. Have there ever been times in your career where you feel you have gone over the top with some of the things you've said? I'm thinking about, you call momentum, I'm no fan of momentum, but you call them neo-fascist. There was a time where you were kind of suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn was a bit of a Holocaust denier. Is that back to the point about when you're in the heat of the debate as a frontline politician that sometimes you can go over the top?

28:49Do you think that was going over the top? Well, I mean, sometimes, look, first of all, can you go over the top? Sometimes, yes, you can, right? You're human, you're at the heat of the moment. Can you say something that you think on reflection is the wrong way to put it? On those occasions, would you have thought that? On those, I mean, you mentioned Jeremy Corbyn. I think Jeremy Corbyn had an issue with Jewish people, right? He had an issue, and I wasn't as well documented, and the number of people in his own party that believed he had a problem with Jewish people. And when I made some comments about him, he actually threatened to sue me.