Chris Grayling’s mild manner belies the fact that he has spent the past few years operating as the Conservatives’ unofficial attack dog on a range of issues. “Someone has to get stuck in to holding the government to account,” he said in an interview with the Times last year. His versatility is reflected in the fact that, since joining the Tory front bench four years ago, he has done four different jobs – shadowing the leader of the Commons, transport, work and pensions and now, the home affairs briefs.

With David Cameron’s shadow cabinet regularly criticised for being dominated by the privileged, Grayling’s solidly Middle England credentials make him a useful exception. “I wouldn’t go to Notting Hill dinner parties,” he has said. “There is an image that all people in the shadow cabinet come from the same background, which isn’t true.” What’s more, he won’t be found in the Carlton or Athenaeum – his only club, he says, is Manchester United FC.

A grammar school boy from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, he made it to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to study history, then joined the BBC as a news trainee. After ten years as a producer and editor, he left the corporation to become a marketing man, including a spell at corporate communications giant Burson-Marsteller. He inherited the ultra-safe Surrey seat of Epsom and Ewell from former Asda boss Archie Hamilton in 2001, and since then his parliamentary career has progressed steadily.

Though he has become a trusted member of Cameron’s team, he initially supported the more right-wing candidacy of Liam Fox in the 2005 leadership election. Perhaps unusually for an ex-BBC man – and significantly, given his current brief – he is on the socially conservative wing of the party, and has fully endorsed the “broken society” theme expounded by Cameron in recent years. Law and order has not been particularly high on the agenda during a political year dominated by the recession, but in a speech in July Grayling said a Tory home secretary would focus on anti-social behaviour– with a dual emphasis on tougher penalties and action to curb family breakdown. He wants local police to be given greater discretionary powers, and floated the idea that they could confiscate the mobile phones of young people engaged in anti-social behaviour. “If we’re to deter potential troublemakers, the consequences they face have to be relevant to the lives they lead, and to be immediate,” he said.

But Grayling’s policy pronouncements have not been limited to traditional Tory areas of law and order; he has maintained the party’s strong opposition to the national ID card scheme – an opposition originally spearheaded by David Davis, his predecessor but one. Not only has Grayling pledged to drop the plans once in office, but he even intervened in the Home Office’s procurement of ID cards – which the government has already said will not now be compulsory – by issuing a warning to potential technology suppliers that any contracts signed would be terminated in a Tory administration.

One of Grayling’s greatest challenges may well be a corporate one. While the Home Office has, according to capability reviewers, improved dramatically since former home secretary John Reid declared it “not fit for purpose” in 2006, the complex and controversial nature of its various responsibilities means that scandal is never far away. The most recent major controversy saw the arrest of an official, Chris Galley, who had been leaking sensitive information to one of Grayling’s spokesmen, Damian Green. It is unclear how smooth the relationship between the opposition and the department has been since the incident, but it is clear that, if appointed, Grayling will need all his media savvy and calm temperament in what is perennially one of government’s toughest jobs.