Sajid javid

When Maria Miller was Culture Secretary, her aides kindly invited me to a consultation to give my thoughts about government's involvement in press regulation. I declined, saying that there should be no involvement at all so there was not much to discuss. It seems that her successor agrees. In an interview with The Times, his first since being appointed to the Cabinet, Sajid Javid has drawn a line under this sorry and deeply illiberal chapter in our country's history.  This is his first serious move since taking the job as Culture, Media & Sport Secretary, and it's very welcome. He tells The Times: 'The press is hugely important and freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy. I’m proud of the press . . .

Does it make you feel better about yourself, girls, ladies, to know that if Labour’s elected, Ed Miliband will have a Secretary of State for Women, and Equalities, with Cabinet rank? Or do you find yourself asking what a Minister for Women has ever done for anyone, beyond guaranteeing that at least one member of the Cabinet will be a paid up woman? It was a bit like that when Sajid Javid was appointed Culture Secretary and everyone started asking what he’d ever done to qualify in the way of going to the opera, reading books etc. When Kitty Morgan was appointed Minister for Women, it was a different matter.

I am taken to task by the Guardian's Media Monkey for celebrating Sajid Javid's elevation (as per the poster above) a little too much - and not caring very much that the new Culture Secretary is no expert in the arts.

Although I joined the Conservative Party during my time at Exeter University, it was my upbringing and early life that shaped my political consciousness. Abdul-Ghani Javid (or, as he was known to me, Dad) arrived in the UK in 1961 at 23 years of age. His family lost everything during the partition of India and their move to Pakistan, so my father’s motivation was quite simple – he wanted to work in Britain and provide the means for his brothers back in Pakistan to be educated. Disembarking at Heathrow with a £1 note in his pocket (which his father, touchingly but mistakenly, had said would see him through his first month in the UK), my father made his way up north and found a job in a Rochdale cotton mill. Happy to be employed, he nevertheless strived for more.

Sajid Javid's promotion to Culture Secretary will not surprise his many fans. And it underlines an advantage that the Conservative party has over Labour right now - the talent in its back benchers. The Tories, quite simply, have far more MPs who could be Prime Minister - thanks to the hugely successful recruitment process that David Cameron ran after becoming leader . One of them is Sajid Javid, who is interviewed by the Mail on Sunday today – this was done (as ever) months earlier by James Forsyth in the Spectator (his interview here). They're both worth reading, as I suspect Javid is one of these guys we'll be hearing a lot more from in coming years.

Sajid Javid isn't the only observer of Russia's behaviour over the situation in Ukraine to link Vladimir Putin's aggression to the situation in Syria. Perhaps the West's decision not to intervene in that conflict has given Putin the sense that he can do what he wants without any response from other countries. But Javid's suggestion in a tweet this afternoon that there is a 'direct link between Miliband's cynical vote against Syria motion and Russia's actions on Ukraine. Completely unfit to lead Britain' goes rather further than that. It also doesn't fit particularly comfortably with the fact that 30 of Javid's own Conservative colleagues rebelled on that motion and many more abstained. His colleague Nick Boles has made a similar point: https://twitter.

This lunchtime, Treasury minister Sajid Javid said there is a 'strong case to look at' raising the minimum wage, joining Matt Hancock as a Conservative minister prepared to say in public that there is a case for doing so.

Would Labour destabilise Britain’s fragile economic recovery? The Tories are keen to convince the nation that Labour would, ahead of Miliband's expected offensive on the state of the economy and the cost of living. Positive growth forecasts, increasing construction and export figures  all add to the perception that the economy is on the up; but, as I discussed earlier this week, the mood in the country is still cautious and many people are struggling to make ends meet. Treasury minister Sajid Javid tackles this problem in the Telegraph today.

BBC Radio Five is broadcast on 909 kHz, but whatever wavelength the Conservative Party is using was not being received by the 200 average voters assembled by Victoria Derbyshire’s meet-the-public programme now held in every party conference. It’s normally the closest that ordinary voters get to the party conferences, inviting frontbenchers to take questions from locals. The results are quite often explosive. Grant Shapps, the new Tory chairman, was the first guest and was inevitably asked about why he ran his business operating under a made-up name. He gave various explanations but the man in the audience wasn’t buying it. 'My name’s Barry Tomes. That’s my real name, by the way,' he started, to much laughter.