An embuggerance

Someone had to get the tar-baby:

Conservative MP Sajid Javid has been named as the new culture secretary.

The MP for Bromsgrove has been promoted from his current role as Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

 I find that interesting for a number of reasons:

• The gossip had been Andrea Leadsom was in line (in stead, she got the Economic Secretary to the Treasury post):

• Which would have meant not only a one-for-one woman Cabinet replacement, but also a mother-for-mother. Mrs Leadsom has not only a clean record on expenses:

If I am elected as the Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire, I will:

i) publish my expenses on the internet each month.

ii) minimise my use of taxpayer funded allowances.

iii) never claim for groceries or other expenses that are not justifiably incurred in doing my job.

 These pledges are not the result of the scandal that has engulfed politics in the last few weeks – they are just common sense, and are no different to how I viewed my expenses during my 25 years working in business and in the charity sector.

 Any FTSE company could provide guidance to the House of Commons on expenses policy – it’s really not difficult, and there is no excuse for dithering over getting it sorted.

She also is mother to three children.

• As I understand, there is now no mother in the Cabinet.
• The courtesy woman attending Cabinet, but not of Cabinet rank is:

Nicky Morgan, who voted against equal marriage, as Minister for Women.

Mr Javid replaces Maria Miller at DCMS, with Ms Morgan stepping up a rank in the Treasury and attending Cabinet as Minister for Women. 

Gloria De Piero MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, said: “David Cameron’s decision to replace Maria Miller with Sajid Javid means that there is now no full member of the Cabinet speaking for women. There are now just three women running Government departments out of a possible twenty two, demonstrating that when it comes to women, it’s out of sight, out of mind for this out of touch Government.”

• Mrs Morgan, who does come encumbered with a son, might even be considered ‘deserving’.
• Her constituency, Loughborough, is one of the ‘bellwether” seats that tend to go with changes of government. Her majority (3,744 or 7.1%) was bolstered by a higher-than-national voting shift from Labour to LibDem over the years of the Labour government: there are over 16,000 students at Loughborough University.

Javid is interesting himself, for any number of reasons:

• He declares himself a non-practising Moslem.
• He has media supporters, notably Tim Montgomerie.
• The wikipedia entry says it all about his pre-parliamentary career:

Javid joined Chase Manhattan Bank in New York immediately out of university, working mostly in South America. Aged 25, he became the youngest Vice-President in the history of the bank. He relocated to London in 1997, and later joined Deutsche Bank as a Director in 2000. In 2004 he became a managing director at Deutsche Bank and, one year later, Global Head of Emerging Markets Structuring. In 2007 he relocated to Singapore as head of Deutsche Bank’s credit trading, equity convertibles, commodities and private equity businesses in Asia, and was appointed a board member of Deutsche Bank International Limited. He left Deutsche Bank in 2009 to pursue a career in politics. His earnings at Deutsche Bank would have been roughly £3m a year at the time he left.

• His ministerial experience, so far, is Treasury-based. We can assume, then, he is a “friend of George“. What he can contribute to his new brief in “Culture” remains to be seen.