New health secretary: is Sajid Javid the right choice?

Matt Hancock’s resignation as health secretary following an affair scandal has caused major headaches at Downing Street, but at least one high-profile Tory has cause for celebration.

In a “Lazarus-like political revival”, Sajid Javid has been appointed to take over the role after “angling for a return to the top table almost from the moment he resigned” as chancellor 16 months ago, writes The Sunday Times’ political editor Tim Shipman.

Javid quit after being ordered to fire his closest political advisers at the behest of Boris Johnson’s right-hand man Dominic Cummings. But following Cummings’ departure from No. 10 last year, Javid’s new role represents “a final, symbolic, turning of the page from the Vote Leave regime”, Shipman says.

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“Everyone is in agreement that the balance of power in No. 10 has fundamentally changed,” writes Alibhe Rea in the New Statesman. “The Vote Leave gang is out and Sajid Javid is having the last laugh.”

Cabinet rejig

The prime minister initially appeared keen to hang on to Hancock, who was appointed by Theresa May in 2018. After the married minister’s affair with his aide Gina Coladangelo was revealed by The Sun, Johnson announced that he had accepted Hancock’s apology for breaching social distancing rules and considered the matter to be “closed".

In response, Labour accused the PM of being “spineless”, with a spokesperson insisting that “this matter is definitely not closed, despite the government’s attempts to cover it up”.

Even his closest allies admit Johnson tends to “skirt confrontation” and “struggles to deliver difficult messages”, says The Guardian’s political editor Heather Stewart, who points to his failure to act decisively despite Hancock’s position being “clearly untenable”.

The health secretary was already hanging onto his role by a thread following criticism of his performance during the Covid pandemic.

Johnson was reportedly among those lining up to blast Hancock but is also known to be “reluctant to recast his senior team”, says the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. In choosing Javid, however, Downing Street has “tried to follow a dramatic exit with a less controversial arrival” while also having “avoided a major shake-up of ministers”.

In fact, bringing Javid back from the back benches was “the perfect solution” for a PM “who, aides say, hates reshuffles and the enemies they create”, adds The Sunday Times’ Shipman.

‘Welcome to Hell’

Although Javid has held several senior cabinet positions in the past - chancellor, home secretary and business secretary - “nothing will have prepared him for what he is about to experience”, writes ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman.

Indeed, the new health secretary “should be greeted by a three-word warning sign: ‘Welcome to Hell’”, continues Goodman. Javid has previously faced a series of political challenges, but his latest brief “brings with it persistent pressure: like being squeezed tight by the coils of a giant python”.

That warning has been echoed by British Medical Association (BMA) council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who told ITV that Javid faces a “baptism of fire” amid the ongoing crises of the pandemic, a major NHS backlog and staff burnout, and demands for a social care shake-up.

While the stakes are high, Javid is undoubtedly “one of the most experienced ministers on Boris’s team”, writes Richard Kay in the Daily Mail. But “the man known to friends and foes alike as ‘the Saj’ may well reflect that the figure he really owes his resurrection” to is not Johnson but rather the PM’s new wife, Carrie Symonds.

The pair are close allies after Symonds worked for Javid as a special advisor during his tenure as communities secretary, notes Kay, who asks: “Had he not enjoyed kinship with Carrie would his progress have been quite so assured?”

Cummings has also insinuated that Symonds’ influence was key to Javid securing his new role. “So Carrie appoints Saj,” Cummings tweeted, adding: “Saj = bog standard = chasing headlines + failing = awful for NHS”.

‘Bullish’ about Covid restrictions

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told Sky News this morning that Javid was a “political veteran” who would bring a “fresh perspective to these frightfully important issues” facing the UK.

Othe colleagues and friends are also predicting that being forced out of his role as chancellor has emboldened a “much braver” Javid to “make his mark” in the health department, according to Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph.

Sources have suggested that his tenure will be “radically” different to Hancock’s because he is “much less nanny-state-ish” than his predecessor, the Daily Mail reports.

The “bullish” new health secretary has already vowed that there will be no return to coronavirus restrictions after so-called Freedom Day, the paper adds. Although Javid is expected to disappoint Tories calling for the government to lift the remaining rules from 5 July, he has signalled that the 19 July easing will go ahead as planned.

During a visit to St Thomas’ Hospital in London today, Javid told reporters that he wanted “to see the restrictions lifted and life going back to normal as quickly as possible”.

“It’s going to be irreversible, there’s no going back,” he added.