‘Can’t mess this up’
“I think my first thought was just like — ‘Okay, well, that’s a big job. Better get on with it. Can’t mess this up,’” Fahnbulleh said, recalling the moment Chief Whip Alan Campbell called with a job offer from the prime minister after Labour’s landslide election win last summer.
By then she had already shown she could fulfill one key task for any Labour hopeful — uniting the party’s often-warring factions.
She was picked as Labour’s candidate in Peckham, south-east London, in 2022 with over 60 percent of the vote in the first round, said one local party member who supported her campaign. She won that contest because she was able to “unite the left” of the constituency party with the center ground, including through her stance on green issues, they said.
Inside work “she’s pretty relentless,” said one former colleague, granted anonymity to speak candidly about their time working with Fahnbulleh. “She always comes at things from a position of — ‘If I get everyone in the room and we just talk this through, I think we can find a way through it,’” they said.
And outside work? You’ll find her “tearing up the dancefloor” on a night out, said another friend and former colleague.
Outsider turned insider
Fahnbulleh, once an aide to now Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, spent six years heading up one of the country’s leading left-leaning think tanks, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), before becoming an MP.
