Faiza Shaheen

Faiza Shaheen (born 1982) is a British academic and economist in the field of economic inequality. In 2018, she was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for Labour for Chingford and Woodford Green, coming second in the 2019 general election to the incumbent, Iain Duncan Smith. In 2023, her first book, Know Your Place, was published.

Shaheen was again selected by her local party in 2022 to stand for Chingford and Woodford Green, but was suddenly deselected on 29 May 2024 after a panel of the Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) questioned her about her likes of over a dozen social media posts over a ten year period, including one referencing the Israel lobby and forwarding a video of a sketch by American comedian Jon Stewart. The decision has been hugely controversial, criticised by Stewart himself and others alleging a cull of left-wingers within the Labour Party under Keir Starmer. Shaheen announced she would challenge the decision.

Shaheen was born in Whipps Cross University Hospital, Leytonstone, in East London and grew up in Chingford, also in East London. Her father was a car mechanic from Fiji and her mother was a laboratory technician from Karachi, Pakistan, where they met. She has a brother and a sister.

She attended Chingford Church of England Primary School, Chingford Foundation School and Sir George Monoux College in Walthamstow. Her first job was at Greggs the bakers in Chingford Mount. After reading philosophy, politics and economics at St John's College, Oxford University, Shaheen studied at the University of Manchester, being awarded an MSc in Research Methods & Statistics and a PhD. Her doctoral thesis (2008) was Identifying 'at-risk' neighbourhoods : Exploring the scope for an Index of Area Vulnerability.

Shaheen first worked at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies, University of Manchester. In 2007, she joined the urban policy research charity, Centre for Cities. In 2009, she became senior researcher on economic inequality at the New Economics Foundation.

In 2014, she was appointed Head of Inequality and Sustainable Development at the charity Save the Children UK. From 2016, she was director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS), a policy think tank originating from the trade union movement.

Between 2021 and 2023, Shaheen was the Inequality and Exclusion Program Director at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. She is a visiting professor in practice at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics where she teaches the Masters course on inequality.

Shaheen is a regular contributor to debates on television news programmes, including Newsnight and Channel 4 News, and has worked with Channel 4 and the BBC to develop documentaries on inequality. She also contributes to festival debates and discussions, such as the Glastonbury Festival and The World Transformed.

In 2023, Shaheen's first book, Know Your Place, on social inequality in the UK, was published by Simon and Schuster. Shaheen wrote the book during evenings and weekends while working full-time at the LSE.

Shaheen is a longtime Labour voter and says she has been politicised from an early age. She joined the Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015. In 2017, The Guardian identified her as a "rising star" and she was nominated for Woman of the Year at the Asian Achievers Awards and named one of the Top 100 Influencers on the Left by LBC broadcaster, Iain Dale. According to one newspaper, she has been compared to the American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Shaheen was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party for Chingford and Woodford Green in July 2018. She has stated that her motivation for standing was the stress her own and other families had suffered as a result of welfare reforms instituted by the constituency’s longstanding Conservative incumbent, Iain Duncan Smith, during his time as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. In the 2019 general election, Shaheen was endorsed by Alastair Campbell, Hugh Grant, Ayesha Hazarika, Ewan Pearson and David Schneider. She increased Labour’s vote share, contrary to the national trend, and garnered the party’s largest ever vote share in the constituency, coming second by just over one thousand votes. In July 2022, Shaheen was selected to contest the seat again for the Labour Party at the 2024 United Kingdom general election.

On 29 May 2024, she announced on BBC Two's Newsnight that she would not be Labour's candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green after a decision by a panel of Labour's National Executive Committee. The decision came after she was questioned about posts that she had liked on X (formerly known as Twitter) since 2014 which were deemed potentially damaging to Labour's campaign, including some on the Green Party before she became a Labour Party member, one relating to Islamophobia in the Labour Party and some relating to Israel which it was alleged could be considered antisemitic.

Political positions

Shaheen supports universal childcare, free school meals for primary school children, increased funding for the state education sector including investment in special needs provision and child mental health support, the abolition of university tuition fees, improved local transport links, and the restoration of neighbourhood policing with additional police officers and PCSOs. Shaheen has been vocal on the urgency of the need to rebuild the local Whipps Cross Hospital and to expand the NHS workforce to reduce waiting lists and improve provision. 

Shaheen advocates action on the climate crisis, supporting efforts to increase investment in greening the UK’s economy and boosting renewable energy.

Shaheen’s first book, Know Your Place, is part memoir, part polemic. Shaheen describes the work as “a personal and statistical look at how society and the economy are structured, what really defines your life chances and how our current system keeps us locked into an ugly hierarchy.” Supported by copious statistics, Shaheen delves into factors ranging from inherited wealth to class, race, and education to argue that social mobility is “a fairytale” propagated by those with wealth and power as a means to protect their status and privilege.

The book was described as ‘A stunning and devastating indictment of a society scarred and defined by inequality, by one of the most charismatic and compelling voices in politics today’ by Owen Jones, while Ash Sarkar commented that ‘Faiza’s work is living proof that you don’t have to choose between focusing on class and battling racism, or to triangulate on hate in order to advance a political cause. She’s a testament to the power of rising with your community, and not out of it.’

Shaheen is married to the actor Akin Gazi. They have one son (born 2024) and live in Woodford Green, Woodford, East London.

• Shaheen, Faiza; Fieldhouse, Ed; Deas, Iain (2008). Identifying 'at risk' neighbourhoods: exploring the scope for and Index of Area Vulnerability. University of Manchester. OCLC 643496958.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2008). The challenge of increasing employment in London (Report). Centre for Cities.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2010). Why the cap won't fit (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2010). Filling the jobs gap (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2011). Why the rich are getting richer (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2011). Ten reasons to care about economic inequality (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2011). Degrees of value (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza; Kersley, Helen (2011). Improving services for young people (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza; Kersley, Helen (2012). The economic impact of local and regional pay in the public sector (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Seaford, Charles; Shaheen, Faiza (2012). Good jobs for non-graduates (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza; Penny, Joe; Lyall, Sarah (2013). Distant neighbours (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2014). Reducing economic inequality as a sustainable development goal (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• Shaheen, Faiza; Kersley, Helen (2014). Addressing economic inequality at root (Report). New Economics Foundation.
• McDonnell, John, ed. (2018). Economics for the Many. Verso Books.
• Shaheen, Faiza (2023). Know Your Place. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781398505377. OCLC 1264212038.