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Energy

The Left-Wing Think Tank Now Inside the Energy Department

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The Desk

Ask the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero who is writing its industrial strategy, and the answer comes back in a written parliamentary question: a man from the IPPR. Ask who is shaping its workforce policy, and the answer is a man from the TUC. Both are on secondment inside the department’s Energy Infrastructure Group — on the government’s payroll, in the machine, writing the policy.

The written answer is UIN 14615, tabled on 30 June 2026 by Conservative MP Charlie Dewhirst and answered on 8 July 2026 by Michael Shanks, the Labour minister for DESNZ:

“An individual from the IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) has been seconded to work in Energy Infrastructure Group on industrial strategy.

An individual from the TUC (Trades Union Congress) has been seconded to work in Energy Infrastructure Group on workforce policy.”

That is the state, in its own words, confirming that the organised Left’s policy factory does not merely advise the government from the outside — it has people inside the building.

The think tank that celebrated its own infiltration

The IPPR is not shy about the arrangement. On 12 August 2026, its official X account posted:

“A huge congratulations to the IPPR alumni who are taking up new roles in government! Wishing them all the very best in their new posts. Congratulations and good luck to:

👉 James Purnell, chief of staff 👉 Miatta Fahnbulleh MP, secretary of state for energy security and net…”

Read that list again. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff is an IPPR man. The Energy Secretary is an IPPR woman. And now, per the department’s own answer, an IPPR secondee sits inside the Energy Infrastructure Group writing industrial strategy, with a TUC man alongside him on workforce policy.

The Energy Secretary herself — Miatta Fahnbulleh, appointed on 20 July 2026 — is an IPPR alumna. Her official GOV.UK biography records that she “previously worked at the IPPR as the Director of Policy and Research” before running the New Economics Foundation from 2017 to 2023. The minister overseeing energy policy is a product of the same think tank that is now staffing her department.

It is worth pausing on who is in the room. This is not a department borrowing a couple of neutral specialists. The IPPR is a policy factory whose alumni now run the department — and the TUC, by definition, is the trade-union movement’s political voice, not an apolitical consultancy. A Labour government has brought the organised Left’s think tank and the union movement inside the Energy Infrastructure Group — the unit that drafts industrial strategy and workforce policy — and called it expertise. The secondment is the story; the funding below is why it matters.

Follow the money

The IPPR is not some neutral academic body. It is a registered charity (Charity Commission number 800065) — and its funders are the same foundations that bankroll the rest of the Left’s machine. Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the £918m endowment that funds the migration-advocacy network we documented earlier this week, has given the IPPR £762,554 across its lifetime grants, per PHF’s own published 360Giving data.

So the chain runs like this: a family foundation funds the think tank; the think tank’s alumni and secondees staff the department; the department sets energy and industrial policy; and the think tank posts congratulations when its people take over. The revolving door is not a metaphor — it is a written answer.

The defence

Secondments between Whitehall and outside bodies are standard practice, and DESNZ answered the question openly — a department burying an uncomfortable arrangement does not usually volunteer it in a written answer. The IPPR would describe the arrangement as expertise-sharing: a progressive think tank lending its brightest people to the national interest. The TUC would say the same about unions having a seat at the table on workforce policy. That is the argument. It is also, precisely, the point: the “expertise” being shared is the organised Left’s — and it is being shared from inside the department, not across a negotiating table.

When the next energy policy lands, remember who was in the room when it was drafted. The record shows it: a think tank on the payroll of the state, celebrating its people inside government. Follow the money — it explains the policy.

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