Ed Miliband has left behind a squad of his proteges and allies running DESNZ. He’s got two departments for the price of one…
Miatta Fahnbulleh is a personal protege of Miliband’s. She worked as a personal policy adviser to him from 2013 to 2015 and they remained close while she headed up the NEF and worked at other think tanks. She is widely seen in Labour as Miliband’s underling and perhaps more zealous on net zero than him. She was made an MP in 2024 and put straight into DESNZ, before being shuffled out to housing. She is now the Energy Secretary…
Polly Billington was a SpAd to Miliband from 2007 when he was working on party policy and election strategy. She went on to be the media director for Miliband’s leadership campaign. She was made an MP in 2024. Billington is now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DESNZ…
Katie White is a former eco-campaigner and civil servant in Miliband’s old department. She worked for Friends of the Earth co-designing Miliband’s Climate Change Act and had a stint at DECC – the department he founded. Before entering parliament she was executive director of advocacy and campaigns at WWF. She said in 2024: “I’ve worked with Ed Miliband both on the Climate Change Act and at the Department for Energy and Climate Change.” She was made an MP in 2024 and appointed Miliband’s PPS – his eyes and ears. White has been promoted from Climate Change minister to Minister of State at DESNZ…
Martin McCluskey is another former adviser to Ed Miliband and ex-political director of Scottish Labour. He was also chairman of the Scottish Fabians. He was made an MP in 2024 and appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in DESNZ as minister for energy consumers in September 2025. He has retained his post…
Baroness Margaret Curran is back as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State after leaving for health reasons last year. Ed Miliband appointed her Shadow Scotland Secretary in 2011 after brining her into his front bench a year before. She is a senior Scottish Labour ally of Miliband’s…
Michael Shanks is another Fabian and was only made an MP in 2023. He was Minister for Energy and as the MP for Rutherglen was a dutiful errand boy for Miliband in Scotland. He’s done his job of trying to sell the net zero destruction of the Scottish oil and gas industry and is thus being kept on as Minister of State in DESNZ…
The one exception might be Blair McDougall, who is another 2024 intake MP. He’s been been appointed a part-time minister shared between DBIST and DESNZ. Previously he was minister in DBT only. Formerly an anti-Scottish independence campaigner, McDougall was an associate at Labour-linked lobbying firm Arden Strategies and also served as SpAd to James Purnell when he was culture minister. Is Purnell keeping an eye on Fahnbulleh’s activities with a part-time spy in the department…
It is striking that the large majority of DESNZ ministers have close ties to Miliband and are so junior. No elected minister in the department has been an MP prior to 2023/24. Suspicious levels of juniority…
The Spectator’s Tim Shipman reports that scorned Miliband’s price for accepting Foreign Secretary and not Chancellor was to install Fahnbulleh in DESNZ. It looks like his penetration of the department goes much further than the head…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”