‘Labour will surpass your expectations’: the leftwing thinktank boss standing on Starmer’s agenda

‘We will deliver more.’ Prospective Labour candidate Miatta Fahnbulleh, in Peckham, south London. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer

Miatta Fahnbulleh has been talking about economic transformation for as long as she can remember. After she and her family fled civil war in Liberia as a child, the main topics of conversation around the breakfast table in London were politics and economics.

“When other people were talking about EastEnders, we were on about changing the economic settlement,” says the 44-year-old former chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF), who is standing as Labour’s candidate in Peckham, south London, at the next election.