So who is Shafik and what does her background suggest she will do in her new position?<\/p>\n
Critics have already labelled her as another leftie economist desperate to tax the wealthy into submission. But Shafik\u2019s political thinking is not as easy to stereotype as some of Starmer\u2019s other recent appointments to No 10. <\/p>\n
For a start, when she joined the House of Lords in 2020 at the request of Boris Johnson she took a position as a crossbencher, indicating no political affiliation. <\/p>\n
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Baroness Shafik was made a member of the House of Lords in 2020<\/p>\n
AVALON<\/p>\n
Her background is more varied than most top economists. She was born in Alexandria in 1962, and was only four years old when her family left Egypt after President Nasser\u2019s nationalisations wiped out most of their assets. They settled in America<\/a> and Shafik has often spoken about how that rupture shaped her views on opportunity and security.<\/p>\n Her education mixed American and British influences. After time at the American University in Cairo and the University of Massachusetts Amherst she completed a masters at the London School of Economics (LSE) and a doctorate at Oxford, with her thesis on Egyptian investment policy foreshadowing a career-long focus on how states and markets interact.<\/p>\n After leaving education, Shafik\u2019s ascent through the international economic system was rapid. At just 36, she became the youngest vice-president at the World Bank. Colleagues from that period remember a methodical coalition-builder. Sir Andrew Steer, now a professor at the LSE, recalled her knack for \u201cgetting inside [people\u2019s] heads\u201d to land agreement while Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has praised her \u201cattentive and inclusive\u201d leadership style.<\/p>\n Shafik returned to the UK at the tail end of the last Labour government, serving as permanent secretary at the Department for International Development from 2008 to 2011. Shortly after David Cameron\u2019s coalition was elected, she left to become a deputy managing director at the IMF, one of the most senior roles in global economic governance. She returned to the UK in 2014 to become deputy governor<\/a> at the Bank of England<\/a>. During her two and a half years on the bank\u2019s rate-setting monetary policy committee she never once voted for a rate rise, with the financial press labelling her a \u201cdove\u201d as opposed to one of the \u201chawks\u201d who wanted higher borrowing costs. Publicly Shafik rejected this label, instead calling herself an \u201cowl\u201d<\/a> and saying the bank should \u201ctread carefully\u201d, indicating her natural caution.<\/p>\n In 2017, Shafik pivoted to academia, joining the LSE as a director before rising to vice-chancellor. Five years later she left to become Columbia University\u2019s first female president. This move to the US brought arguably the most testing period<\/a> of her career as she was immediately confronted with the bitter campus divisions caused by Israel\u2019s invasion of Gaza following the October 7 atrocity. <\/p>\n Shafik took a harder line than many other US universities on student protests and occupations, at points requesting police assistance to clear Columbia\u2019s grounds. Yet when she was hauled before the House of Representatives education committee to answer on antisemitism and campus safety, she was criticised by all sides with Republicans arguing that she had not gone far enough while civil liberties groups said she had gone too far.<\/p>\n
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