-As Prime Minister Burnham Makes First Cabinet Reshuffle
By Jerromie S. Walters
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham carried out his first significant Cabinet reshuffle on Monday, July 20, 2026, appointing Miatta Fahnbulleh as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. The move follows the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer and sees Ed Miliband, the previous energy secretary, take on the role of Foreign Secretary.
Fahnbulleh, the Labour Co-op MP for Peckham since July 2024, assumes the Cabinet-level brief at a critical juncture, with a mandate to reduce consumer energy bills and sustain the UK’s offshore wind and renewable energy expansion. She is a British-Liberian economist and a recognised voice on the soft-left of the parliamentary party.
Her appointment marks a notable political comeback. Fahnbulleh served as a junior housing and devolution minister but became the first minister to resign from the government in May 2026, stepping down to publicly call for a leadership transition after the party suffered heavy local election losses under Sir Keir Starmer.
Prior to her promotion, Fahnbulleh was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Consumers between 2024 and 2025, and before entering Parliament, she was Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) from 2017 to 2023, where she championed a rapid net-zero transition and local economic devolution. Her earlier Whitehall experience includes serving as Head of Cities in the Cabinet Office policy unit (2011–2013) and Director of Policy and Research at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
She is a longstanding proponent of a “global Green New Deal,” advocating for green infrastructure investment as a means to bring down consumer costs.
Fahnbulleh holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics. Born in Liberia on September 29, 1979, she and her family fled the country’s civil war and arrived in the UK as refugees in 1986. She is the niece and namesake of the celebrated Liberian singer and activist Miatta Fahnbulleh.
She was first elected to the Commons in the 2024 general election with a majority of 15,228, succeeding the long-serving Harriet Harman in the safe Labour seat of Peckham.
Fahnbulleh’s policy platform includes a global Green New Deal focused on green infrastructure and consumer energy affordability.
