MEET THE WOMAN WHO LOST £44 MILLION, THEN GOT PROMOTED FOR IT
Labour says Jackdaw is about energy security. Her last job is now a crime scene.
Yesterday the Energy Secretary approved gas production at Jackdaw. Her words: "following careful consideration of all relevant factors". Labour's words: "homegrown gas has a role to play in our energy security". Her own admission: it will not bring your bills down.
Now the file.
Born Monrovia, Liberia, 1979. Her father, Henry Boimah Fahnbulleh Jr, was Foreign Minister to Samuel Doe, the master sergeant who seized power in a 1980 coup and had the sitting president executed. The family fled in 1986. Britain took them in.
Beechwood Sacred Heart, fee paying. Then Oxford. Then a PhD at the LSE. Then six years running the New Economics Foundation. July 2024, elected for Peckham. Five days later, a minister. Her brief: ECO4, the insulation scheme.
23 January 2025, she tells the House of "widespread non-compliance" with installation standards. July 2025, an audit of 60,000 homes finds more than 30,000 fitted to no standard at all. Her own word to Parliament: "systemic failure". Ninety three year old Margaret Chappell in County Durham, watching brown mould eat her wall.
22 April 2026. The Serious Fraud Office. Four arrested. Six addresses searched. Three firms named. At least £44 million in claims. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee: a "charlatan's charter".
Three weeks later she resigns. Not over the insulation. Over Starmer. First minister out of the door, demanding a "timetable for an orderly transition".
Ten weeks after that, Burnham hands her Energy Security and Net Zero. A Privy Counsellor by the next morning.
Verdict: the scheme she ran is under criminal investigation, the homes are still rotting, and she now decides what comes out of the ground. She fails upward with the calm of a woman who has never once been asked a follow up question. This government does not do consequences.
NEW: Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has confirmed homegrown gas production at Jackdaw will go ahead.
In the middle of an energy crisis, homegrown gas has a role to play in our energy security as we transition to net zero.