UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced his new Cabinet after removing several senior ministers from former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government. He has promoted some of his close allies to important positions and has also brought more diversity to his new Cabinet.Two Indian-origin politicians, Kanishka Narayan and Lisa Nandy, are among the prominent names in the new Cabinet.Kanishka Narayan has been appointed as the UK’s first Cabinet-level Minister for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Earlier, under Keir Starmer, he served as a junior minister responsible for AI and Online Safety.Narayan was born in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, and moved to Cardiff, Wales, when he was a child. He studied at the University of Oxford and later earned an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He became an MP for the Vale of Glamorgan in 2024 and made history as the first ethnic minority MP to represent the constituency.
Lisa Nandy, another politician of Indian origin, has been reappointed as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She is the longest-serving Culture Secretary since Jeremy Hunt held the position in 2010.Nandy was born in Manchester. Her father, Professor Dipak Nandy, was originally from Kolkata, while her mother, Luise Byers, was British. She was first elected as the Labour MP for Wigan in 2010, becoming the constituency’s first female and Asian MP.In 2020, Nandy contested the Labour Party leadership election against Keir Starmer. Her campaign was described as “refreshingly untribal.” She later became the Shadow Foreign Secretary.Another South Asian politician, Shabana Mahmood, has also retained her position in the new government. She became the first woman of Pakistani origin to serve as the UK’s Home Secretary in Keir Starmer’s Cabinet in 2025.
