PETER UNDERWOOD on a less-heralded Croydon connection to the new Prime Minister’s Cabinet
Labour Together: Miatta Fahnbulleh chaired the Croydon Climate Crisis Commission before becoming an MP
There is a lot of talk in the press about “Manchesterism”, new Prime Minister Andy Burnham bringing the ideas he developed while Mayor of Manchester to his new role.
But there is also a question about whether ideas developed here in Croydon – Croydonism – are going to be pursued by one of Burnham’s new Cabinet.
Burnham’s arrival in No10 was followed by his Cabinet reshuffle. Croydon’s Labour MPs had mixed fortunes. Steve Reed was unceremoniously thrown out, while Sarah Jones remained in her junior minister’s role at the Home Office.
This week, Croydon East MP Natasha Irons took a small step in her political career, being made a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Cabinet Office, one of more than 60 PPS appointments across government.
But they aren’t the only MPs in the Burnham government with a Croydon connection.
Back in 2019, when Croydon Council declared that there was a climate emergency, they brought in the New Economic Foundation to support residents in developing ideas to tackle the issue. The chief executive of the NEF at the time, Miatta Fahnbulleh, has since gone on to become the MP for Peckham, and last week she was appointed to Burnham’s Cabinet as the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Fahnbulleh’s appointment as a Cabinet minister, after just two years as an MP, saw her described as “radical-thinking”.
Burning issue: the new minister for energy security and Net Zero has to make a decision on North Sea drilling
The Croydon Climate Crisis Commission brought together residents and experts, to develop ideas that were both rooted in the community and deliverable by politicians. Launching the commission, Fahnbulleh said, “The urgent need to reduce our environmental impact is now well understood across society.
“But politics has lagged behind and we have not seen the transformative solutions required.”
I was a member of Croydon’s climate commission and in my dealings with Miatta it was clear that she is a very intelligent and capable person. She went to Oxford and got a PhD from LSE.
Her training as an economist and her experience working in the policy unit at the Cabinet Office and as director of policy and research at the Institute for Public Policy Research showed in her grasp of the issues and the mechanisms available to achieve change.
I was also very impressed by her repetition of the need to make sure that tackling the climate crisis was a way “to improve the well-being of workers, minorities and the poorest in our society”.
Back in 2021, when the Climate Crisis Commission’s final report was released, the ideas developed in Croydon were practical and affordable. They would both improve people’s lives and help tackle the climate crisis.
But as the Croydon report shows, good ideas don’t necessarily turn into good actions.
The Labour council that commissioned the report did little with it in its final year in office. Since 2022, Tory Mayor Jason Perry has refused to act with the urgency needed.
Now, the nation is waiting to see if Burnham and his Cabinet will bring real and significant change, or whether we are just in for more of the same.
Therefore, it may be a cause to concern some to find that Fahnbulleh also served as a “policy fellow” at Labour Together, the shadowy, law-breaking group established by Steve Reed and his former Brixton Town Hall colleague, Morgan McSweeney. There is no suggestion that Fahnbulleh was involved in Labour Together’s nasty politics or that she knew anything about their murkier side, but even just being a member of the Reed and McSweeney group casts doubt on a politician’s credibility.
There are also some positive signs. When Tony Blair made his ridiculous and unwelcome comments about wanting Britain to deprioritise Net Zero commitments, Fahnbulleh said he was wrong and that her own children (she’s a mother of three) “won’t forgive me if I duck our responsibility to respond to climate change”.
The real test will be what Fahnbulleh does now that she is the person in charge of matters, including Net Zero. Waiting for her on her ministerial desk is the matter of allowing oil and gas companies to open up new drilling in the North Sea.
As an economist, Fahnbulleh will know that allowing more drilling won’t reduce people’s bills and will do nothing to improve energy security, as the oil will all be sold on international markets.
Commissioned in Croydon: Peter Underwood with Miatta Fahnbulleh at the launch of the borough’s Climate Crisis Commission in 2019
Fahnbulleh also knows that breaking the link with fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy instead would not only significantly reduce our bills, it would also ensure secure and clean energy for decades to come.
The decision whether to allow new drilling will be a good, early indication of the future direction and ultimate verdict on both Fahnbulleh and the Burnham government.
I doubt that the term Croydonism will catch on, but I do sincerely hope that the ideas developed here in Croydon help shape national policy to benefit everyone. The responsibility for making that happen now rests on the shoulders of Miatta Fahnbulleh.
For all our sakes, I wish her the best and hope she can deliver a real change for the better.
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“I doubt that the term Croydonism will catch on,….” Similarly, I doubt that Croydonism will drop easily into the English language, but it looks a bit like Cronyism, which is of course an endemic term in politics !?!