Former Cabinet Office, Treasury and DWP civil servants among today's election candidates

Former civil servants in the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury, Department for Work and Pensions and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are among the candidates seeking to become MPs in today’s general election.

With Labour the pollsters’ favourite to win the election, Britain looks likely to have a former senior civil servant in ex-director of public prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer as its next prime minister, although he will need to win his seat first. 

Other former officials looking to make the same step that Starmer made in 2015 include Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office who is standing for Labour in Peckham, and Hamish Falconer, who served in the FCDO for more than a decade.

Fahnbulleh worked in the PM’s Strategy Unit under Gordon Brown and headed the coalition government’s Cities Policy Unit, which worked with local authorities to drive economic growth by devolving business, housing, skills and transport powers. She has been chief executive of the think tank New Economics Foundation since 2017, and was director of policy and research at IPPR before that. She was also a policy adviser to Ed Miliband when he was leader of the opposition.

Falconer, who is the son of Labour peer and former justice secretary Lord Charlie Falconer, led the Foreign Office’s Terrorism Response Team, UK efforts to start a peace process in Afghanistan and served in Pakistan and South Sudan. He has also worked for the former Department for International Development and the National Crime Agency on humanitarian response, state building and investigating human trafficking. He is Labour’s candidate for Lincoln.

Other Labour candidates include think tank wonks and former Treasury officials Zoë Billingham, Torsten Bell and Jeevun Sandher.

Billingham is a former senior policy adviser in the Treasury, who is currently on leave as director of the IPPR North think tank while she stands in South Cotswolds. In government, she advised on EU economic policy. During the coalition government she was economic policy adviser to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.

Bell is Labour's candidate for Swansea West. The former Treasury civil servant has most recently served as chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Sandher, contending in Loughborough, was previously an economist in DWP and the Treasury, and is head of economics at the New Economics Foundation.

Dan Tomlinson, another former Treasury economist, is standing in Chipping Norton. He is currently on leave from his role as principal policy adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Labour's candidates also include Rachel Blake, who worked in the Treasury when Gordon Brown was chancellor, advising on planning policy and economic development . She is standing in Cities of London and Westminister.

Meanwhile, Kanishka Narayan, a former senior adviser at the Cabinet Office and expert adviser to the environment secretary, is competing for Labour in the Vale of Glamorgan. And Katie White, a former civil servant in the Department of Energy and Climate Change is a candidate in Leeds North West. 

It isn't just Labour, however, that has civil servants-turned-politicians in its ranks of candidates.

Eric Sukumaran, a candidate for the Conservative Party in Southgate and Wood Green, is a former civil servant who worked as a senior adviser on international climate treaties, Brexit negotiations, the development of HS2, the integration of health and social care, and digital transformation at HM Revenue and Customs. He is looking to become the first MP of Malayali origin.

Dylan Thomas, a Conservative contender in Hayes and Harlington, served for three years as a senior civil servant at the Department for International Trade, leading a directorate of civil servants helping to increase British exports and attracting foreign direct investment for the UK technology sector. He provided policy advice to the trade secretary and led on cross-Whitehall sector engagement for DIT with the Cabinet Office and No.10.

For the Liberal Democrats, Matthew Winnington, a former executive officer at the Department for Work and Pensions, is standing in Sleaford & North Hykeham. And Jonathan Skipworth, a former recognition and accreditation adviser at Ofqual, is the Lib Dem candidate in Makerfield.

There are also some incumbent MPs, like Starmer, who are ex-civil servants and are standing again,

These include Victoria Prentis, the current attorney general, who was a government lawyer for 17 years. Her last role as a government lawyer was head of justice and security at the then-Treasury Solicitors Department. She left the role in 2014 to stand in Banbury, where she is standing once again.

Another civil servant-turned-Tory MP is Alicia Kearns, who was an official in the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice and FCO.  has been MP for Rutland and Melton since 2019. Kearns has also been chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee since 2022.

There is also Sarah Jones, a former senior civil servant who has been a Labour MP for Croydon Central since 2017 and is standing once again in Croydon West, following boundary changes ahead of this election. Jones was part of the team that delivered the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. In the role she worked for Labour minister Tessa Jowell and then for Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor, who was secretary of state for culture, olympics, media and sport from 2010-2012.

CSW's search for former civil servants standing in the election did not find any Reform or Green candidates though they may have slipped through our net. Let us know if we missed anyone from any other parties or any independent candidates.