Miatta Fahnbulleh has been talking about economic transformation for as long as she can remember. After she and her family fled civil war in Liberia as a child, the main topics of conversation around the breakfast table in London were politics and economics.
“When other people were talking about EastEnders, we were on about changing the economic settlement,” says the 44-year-old former chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), who is standing as Labour’s candidate in Peckham, south London, at the next election.
“They are the two things that shape my views about economics: the poverty levels I saw in Liberia, and talking about how we change the economic settlement at breakfast or dinner. Then you see first-generation immigrants trying to make it in this country, and it just doesn’t work. That’s what drives me.”
A rising intellectual star in Labour’s ranks, Fahnbulleh is working overtime in the run-up to the election as a senior economic adviser to Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband, as well as juggling campaigning in her own patch, charity work, and school pick-ups for her 10-year-old and her five-year-old twins. “It’s a handful. But it’s also a privilege and keeps me grounded. If you have a bad day, you go home, and you’re just Mum, whatever you were doing.”
Despite her prominent role running a leading left-of-centre thinktank – including regular appearances on the BBC’s Question Time – she has spent most of her career since joining the civil service under the last Labour government behind the scenes. Now she hopes to jump from talking about economic change to enacting it, in a switch that could put her on a path to the frontbench.
Still, the self-identified “policy wonk” worries the task is easier said than done, warning that Labour is facing a “dire economic inheritance” from the Conservatives should Keir Starmer’s party win power, as the polls predict.
“We’ve got a massive job on our hands. It’s going to take 10 or 15 years,” she says, taking time out of campaigning to chat in a cafe in her prospective constituency, where Labour has a majority of 34,000 – meaning that, even with boundary changes for the election, she will almost certainly succeed the retiring MP, Harriet Harman.
“You only need to walk around Peckham to feel it. Not just to see it but to feel it. People are really ground down.
“And for me, it’s not just the fact that the economy has pretty much flatlined for 15 years. It’s the fact that it’s just not working. It’s staggering that living standards have not budged in that time.”
Fahnbulleh was born in September 1979 in Liberia, half a year before a violent coup. Her father, Boimah, was a politics professor before serving in the government of military leader Samuel Doe, first as minister for education, then of foreign affairs. However, he became a vocal critic as Doe transformed Africa’s first republic into a violently repressive dictatorship, and the family was forced to flee first to neighbouring Sierra Leone – the country of her mother’s birth, and where her grandfather was Liberia’s ambassador – before arriving in the UK to claim asylum.
“He was at the top of the hitlist,” Fahnbulleh says of her father. “Because he was vocal, and he had a big leadership with the student movement, they saw him as a threat.”
Sharing her name with her aunt, a prominent musician and activist (“who can sing, unlike me!”), Fahnbulleh says the opportunity to represent Peckham and its diverse population, including many from the west African diaspora, is a huge privilege. But while joining a growing number of black British female politicians, she remains one of very few such figures in economics.
“I can count my other female black economists on one hand. It’s a bigger problem than in politics,” she says. “It’s not diverse enough. And why does that matter? If we like it or not, so much of the rules of the game, so much of our politics, is dominated by economics.
“It is a very closed shop, with a very particular view of the world. And unless you diversify that … [it] only brings us one perspective.”
Although she grew up in north-west London, and attended a fee-paying school in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Peckham played a big role in Fahnbulleh’s youth, with visits most weekends with her mother to its Sierra Leonean shops and restaurants. “It’s the hub for the community. It’s my home from home.
“I think when I leave politics, I want Peckham to feel very different for the community. Because if we’ve done that in Peckham, we will have changed the country. That’s my test.”
Fixing the cost of living crisis will, however, be no mean feat as millions of households suffer the worst hit to living standards on record, according to figures that date back to 1956 – particularly as Labour faces criticism that its toned-down tax and spending plans differ little from the Conservatives’.
“You get a lot of ‘Labour has no ideas,’” says Fahnbulleh, who in her work for Rayner and Miliband is tasked with both developing bold new ideas and making sure they can be implemented in government.
“But part of the challenge is that every time Labour has pushed out an idea, it’s been nicked. So you can forgive the team for saying: ‘We’re trying to give a sense of what we’re about, and a flavour of some of our policies, but we’re not going to give you the full thing now.’”
Labour, in her view, will be more progressive than its critics anticipate, through plans for a transformation of workers’ rights and the creation of a state-owned energy company. Still, she admits unease over the decision to slash the party’s high-profile £28bn green investment plan.
“I think every single person in the Labour party is disappointed, because it was part of our programme,” she says. “But in the end, it’s not the world we want; it’s the world we’ve been given. If it was a different inheritance, we would still have that policy.”
Compromise in the face of tough economic questions, while promising a transformation of the economy, is a recurring theme in Labour circles. Not least for Fahnbulleh, who as the boss of the NEF for six years until December 2023 ran an organisation that heavily influenced Jeremy Corbyn’s economic agenda. “I think we were completely right in our analysis of the problem,” she says, reflecting on the period. “We were putting up solutions – by the way, some of which the government itself nicked – that were right for the times.”
However, Labour’s 2019 manifesto was too ambitious, she says. “People aren’t stupid. Yes, they can see all the problems. But they also know governments don’t turn things around like this overnight. It was a 15-year programme for government in a five-year prospectus that no one believed.”
She says the big lesson she has learned is not to ditch your principles, but to pace yourself. “Of course we have to be ambitious, but we also have to give people a prospectus they can believe. You’re better off saying ‘10-year projects’, so you know what we’re about.
“I think we will surpass people’s expectations. There will be an offer there, and we will deliver more. But better that than to offer the sky and then disappoint.”
CV
Age 44
Family Married to Graham, who works in finance; three children.
Education Philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford; PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics.
Last holiday Scotland, where her husband is from, to see the grandparents. “We had all seasons in a week.”
Biggest regret Not knowing what she now understands about the economy when working in the civil service during Gordon Brown’s government. “I would have used that opportunity differently.”
Phrase she overuses “Crack on”, or referring to splitting ideas into “buckets” .
How she relaxes Hanging out with the kids and watching “rubbish” TV - “Gladiators is on in our household.”
Best advice she’s been given From her mother: “You have a right to be in the room, so make your voice count.”
