Sajid Javid could be the radical Home Secretary we need

The appointment of Sajid Javid is something quite rare: a bold move, rather than a defensive one, by Theresa May. He was furious about the Windrush debacle and it was his pressure that made 10 Downing Street realise how politically toxic it could be. Not just because – as he put it in the Sunday Telegraph – this could have been him, or his parents. It’s because the whole episode embodies what he most hates about politics, and he had a shrewder eye for its wider implications than many others. When I first interviewed him for The Spectator he said that, when he first went into politics, his family friends all assumed that he was joining the Labour Party because what Asian would back the Tories? He asked his dad why this might be and was told “Two words: Enoch Powell”. To which another word – Windrush – might now be added.