HOME SECRETARY Shabana Mahmood has topped this year’s GG2 Power List 2026, the annual ranking of the 101 most influential south Asians in the UK across politics, business, entertainment, sport and public life.
Mahmood, who was promoted to the home office in a cabinet reshuffle in September 2025, is followed in second place by London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, who topped last year’s list.
Lonon mayor Sadiq Khan is number two in the Power List. Getty Images
Vidhya Alakeson is ranked third, following her appointment as joint acting chief of staff to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer in February, after the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.
Court of Appeal judge Sir Rabinder Singh was fourth, and Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan fifth in the list. Culture secretary and the first Labour cabinet minister of Indian origin, Lisa Nandy, is ranked sixth.
Now in its 16th year, the list was launched at the 27th annual GG2 Leadership and Diversity Awards in central London on Wednesday (25), where deputy prime minister David Lammy was the chief guest.
More than 600 people attended the gala event, which celebrates top ethnic minority talent in the UK and is hosted by the Asian Media Group, publishers of Eastern Eye and Garavi Gujarat news weeklies, among other titles.
Former prime minister Rishi Sunak is seventh in the list.
Vidhya Alakeson is ranked third, following her appointment as joint acting chief of staff to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer. EE
Varun Chandra, the prime minister’s special envoy to the US on trade and investment, is in eighth position.
BBC chair Samir Shah (ninth) and singer-songwriter Charli XCX complete the top 10.
This year’s list includes 23 new entries and 30 women, and spans a broad range of fields, reflecting the depth of south Asian talent across British public life.
In politics, Seema Malhotra (16) serves as the de facto minister for India at the Foreign Office, also holding the equalities brief in government.
Dr Zubir Ahmed (18) and Kanishka Narayan (20), parliamentary under secretaries of state in health and in AI and online safety, respectively, have been included early in their careers as rising stars in the Labour party, while Nusrat Ghani (50) controls the budget debate in the Commons as deputy speaker and chairman of Ways and Means.
Court of Appeal judge Sir Rabinder Singh is fourth in the list. EE
Vim Maru (25) who heads Barclays retail arm; Ashwin Prasad (23), the chief executive of Tesco UK, and Parminder Kohli (53), Shell UK chair and executive vice president of the Shell Group, show the success of south Asians in the corporate sector.
Pam Kaur (54), chief financial officer at HSBC, and Nik Jhangiani (62), a Rutgers Business School graduate, who holds the same role at Diageo, Lord Jitesh Gadhia (14) and Dr Swati Dhingra (24) are recognised for their influence in the City.
Shailesh Solanki, executive editor, AMG, said, “Shabana leads one of the great offices of state and her rise to the top of government shows how well regarded she is by the prime minister to tackle immigration – one of the most important challenges of our times.”
He added, “The rise in the number of Asians serving in government, whether as secretaries of state, junior ministers, trade envoys or civil servants, reflects the community’s political clout and this is a result of a rise in political engagement in recent years.
Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan is fifth in the list. DANIEL LEAL
“We have moved beyond the stereotype of Asians in professional services. With the Free Trade Agreement signed between prime ministers Sir Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi at Chequers last summer, we are going to see more key players on both sides and those stories will inspire the next generation of Asians.”
Wednesday’s event also saw the presentation of the GG2 Leadership and Diversity Awards, which recognise top talent among Britain’s minority ethnic communities. Judges noted Mahmood’s rise to one of the great offices of state, prompting her rise to the top of the GG2 Power List this year.
Mahmood’s role covers immigration, law and order, policing, national security and counter-terrorism.
Earlier this month, she unveiled her tough stance on immigration, saying she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum system was “firm but fair”.
Mahmood said asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments, despite criticism from charities and unease Labour itself that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Now in its 16th year, the list was launched at the 27th annual GG2 Leadership and Diversity Awards in central London.EE
New arrivals would be expected to speak English to A-level standard as a foreign language, Mahmood added.
Michael Gove, former Tory justice secretary and now editor of The Spectator, called her “the most impressive government figure” in government and predicted that she would one day lead the Labour party.
Mahmood grew up in Small Heath, one of the city’s poorer areas, and attended King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls before reading law at Lincoln College, Oxford. She was first elected MP for Birmingham Ladywood in 2010 and was the first Muslim woman to serve as Lord chancellor, taking her oath of office on the Qu’ran, the first person in 1,400 years to do so.
When she addressed the Labour party conference last year, she said: “It is an honour to address you for the first time as a Labour home secretary. If I am honest, it is an honour I never expected. And it is one that would have been unthinkable to my parents when they first arrived here in the 1970s.”
Sir Sadiq, who was knighted at Buckingham Palace last summer, has found himself the target of repeated attacks by US president Donald Trump.
The London mayor said, “Why does Trump not like me? I am the mayor of a city that is diverse, progressive and incredibly successful. We are the antithesis of all he believes in. We have shown his thesis is wrong.”
On his decade in power, Sir Sadiq reflected on London’s economic weight: “If we were a state, we would have the seventh largest economy in Europe. We contribute more than a quarter of the country’s GDP and more than £43 billion net to the Treasury.”
He remains upbeat about the city’s prospects. “On tourism, FDI, culture, international students, sport, lifestyle, London is the number one city in the world. I think 2026 will be a very good year for our country and an excellent year for our city.”
One of prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s key aides, Alakeson was born to a British Sri Lankan family and educated at Oxford and the London School of Economics.
She previously served as director of external relations for Starmer’s team and was credited with rebuilding Labour’s relationships with business leaders ahead of the 2024 general election.
The Court of Appeal’s Sir Rabinder was the first person of colour to serve at the highest tier of the senior courts and the first Sikh appointed to the high court. His judgments on issues ranging from surveillance powers to private school VAT have consistently addressed the tension between state authority and individual rights.
Born in Mysore in 1966 and trained at MIT, Barclays CEO Venkatakrishnan took over the 335-year-old bank in November 2021. Barclays reported pre-tax profits of £9.1 billion for 2025, up from £8.1bn a year earlier.
Former prime minister Sunak, since leaving Downing Street, has joined the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford and the Hoover Institution, and works as a part-time adviser to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Anthropic. He attended the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February, where he argued that India was uniquely positioned to lead the next phase of AI development.
Chandra was appointed by Starmer to the current role of trade envoy to the US, in January this year.
Born in South Shields to parents from Bihar, Chandra was alongside Starmer at Chequers when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi came for the signing of the UK-India Free Trade Agreement. He also travelled with Starmer to China and was present when the prime minister met Trump in Scotland. The GG2 Power List features influential Asians in law, including Dame Bobby Cheema- Grubb (17), Pushpinder Saini (22), Anuja Dhir (34), Sir Akhlaq Choudhury (38) and Kaly Kaul (91).
In the arts, Indhu Rubasingham (19), artistic director of the National Theatre, actor Riz Ahmed (12); Dame Meera Syal (31), actress Ambika Mod (42), sitar maestro Anoushka Shankar (78) and sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor (80) reflect the breadth of south Asian creative talent in Britain.
Priya Dogra (45), chief executive of Channel 4, the first person of colour to lead a major broadcaster, alongside the BBC’s Amol Rajan (36) and Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy (51) are featured from the media.
Emran Miah (32), permanent secretary in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, the first British Asian to head a government department in nearly 20 years; Vijay Rangarajan (67), chief executive of the Electoral Commission, are also in the list.
n Coverage of the GG2 Leadership and Diversity Awards will be published in Eastern Eye’s edition of April 3.
Copies of the GG2 Power List are available for sale; contact Saurin Shah on email saurin.shah@amg.biz or call 020 7928123.
