Miatta Fahnbulleh, appointed as Andy Burnham’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, has a family history intertwined with radical politics and government upheavals in her native Liberia.
Former asylum seeker Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero by newly installed British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, drawing attention to her family’s controversial past in Liberia.
Fahnbulleh’s family, known as “Vai aristocrats,” were involved in multiple government overthrow attempts in Liberia, fleeing to Britain in the 1980s. Her father, Henry Boimah Fahnbulleh Jr., served as foreign minister under Liberia’s former dictator Samuel Doe, who took power in a violent military coup in 1986 and suspended the constitution. By 1989, the country had fallen into civil war. Soldiers loyal to Doe massacred 600 civilians in a church in 1990, with the dictator being captured and put to death by insurgents later that year. Fahnbulleh’s grandfather, Henry Boimah Fahnbulleh Sr., was convicted of treason over connections with Chinese communists in the late 1960s.
This background draws parallels to figures like Rep. Ilhan Omar in the U.S., whose family also fled a regime they once served in Somalia.
The appointment could influence the direction of the British government’s net zero agenda under Burnham, potentially aligning them with more radical leftist ideologies. Fahnbulleh, previously Director of Policy and Chief Executive of the left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the New Economics Foundation, has advocated for harsh windfall taxes on energy firms, a wealth tax, and imposing tax hikes on capital gains and higher earners, as well as pensioners.
“Much like Rep. Ilhan Omar in America, Miatta’s family actually worked for the government they later fled… Her grandfather was even charged with treason for cavorting with Chinese communists in the late 1960s. Miatta is just another in a long line of anti-Western, far leftists,” said Raheem Kassam.
Fahnbulleh’s predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, had a similar commitment to net zero that faced friction with the Trump administration in the U.S., which urged him to reopen the North Sea to oil and gas exploration to address high energy prices.
