Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we're breaking with the usual format, and instead me and my producer are off to meet with someone

who was Secretary of State in six different departments, including two of the great offices of State,

during a decade-long ministerial career serving three Conservative Prime Ministers for stepping down as an MP in 2024. Those listeners of a more

anarch nature will have already worked out that person is Sanchez Javid, who has a new book out called

The Collar of Home about his life growing up in 1970s Britain, the racism he and his family faced,

and how he left a childhood of poverty behind to end up at the

heart of British politics, and how his story maps onto the big social changes this country has gone through

in the past few decades. In his office in St James's in Central London, we spoke about what he'd

learned writing his memoir, the state of race relations and social cohesion in 2006, and the travails

of the Tory party now it's out of office.

It's a fascinating chat about a very interesting and often, unespecially moving book,

and we start here about why he chose to write it and why now?

So, Sajat, why did you decide to write the book now, I suppose?

You know, you're sort of a year

out from leaving the Commons. And you said, well, before we started this, that people have come up to you said, why didn't you write a book earlier? What kind of made you write it now, I suppose? Well, I actually first thought about it when I was still in the Commons, but in my last year or so, still an MP. I announced I was leaving. I did get a couple of approaches from publishers, but that was for what I described as a sort of typical sort of political

kiss and taste. an MP, I announced I was leaving. I did get a couple of approaches from publishers, but that was

for what I described as a sort of typical sort of political kiss and tell type book.

You know what? I thought about it. It didn't really appeal to me. I'd have plenty of interesting

things to say, but I just thought, you know, I just can't motivate myself to do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I could do, I had already read a book by Alan Johnson, you know, he wrote about his life, you know, this boy. I read years earlier, and you made a little bit in Parliament. We only overlapped a little bit. I had always admired him. We were on different sides of the political spectrum, of course, but as an individual always admired him.

And I thought his story was fascinating. And I thought, you know what, I've got a pretty interesting story to tell. So why don't I do something like that? And that's how I first thought of it. Because essentially, you've given hints at what your early life was like while your time in the comments talking about, you know, your father coming to the UK and that kind of stuff. But you hadn't really really delved into it.

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