Home
+
Published : 01 Sep 2025, 03:32 PM
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, as his chief economic adviser, his office said on Monday.
Shafik served as the BoE's deputy governor for markets and banking between August 2014 and February 2017, before leaving midway through her term to take up a role as vice chancellor of the London School of Economics.
In 2023 she became president of New York's Columbia University, but lasted little more than a year before quitting after the university's handling of months-long students protests over Israel's war in Gaza drew criticism from both sides.
Her new appointment is part of an effort by Starmer to bolster his team after a difficult first year in government. Darren Jones, the second most senior minister in the finance department, will move to work for the prime minister, tasked with overseeing work across government to deliver its policy priorities.
Earlier in her career, Shafik was the top civil servant in Britain's foreign aid ministry and subsequently deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, where she oversaw the IMF's work in Europe and the Middle East during the euro zone debt crisis and the Arab Spring.
"This role and the additional expertise will support the Government to go further and faster in driving economic growth and raising living standards for all," Starmer's Downing Street office said in a statement.
Shafik, who is also a non-partisan member of parliament's upper House of Lords, was born in Egypt and grew up in the southern United States, before completing a doctorate in economics at the University of Oxford.
In a 2021 book, she called for policies including welfare policies that combined income floors with incentives to work, pensions linked to life expectancy and interventions in early childhood to equalise opportunity.
