GG2’s Power List of the 101 most influential Asians is a snapshot of the United Kingdom at a certain moment in time. It would be entirely possible to produce at least half a dozen alternative power lists that would be equally credible. This is because the pool of talent is getting bigger year on year, a tribute to a vibrant multicultural Britain. For all its faults, it shines a beacon to the world.

Now in its 15th year of publication, the GG2 Power List is the definitive guide to Asians in positions of power and influence across the UK. Published by the Asian Media Group (AMG) the list was unveiled at the GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards in central London in March 2025.

A question we are frequently asked is: “How do you decide who is ‘powerful’? Or indeed ‘influential’?”

Sometimes, the choices are obvious.

Rishi Sunak, who launched the list last year, was number one because he was the prime minister.

People are picked because they are recognised in their own fields. Quite often, their achievements are admired nationally or even internationally.

A more elusive element is discerning whether they are a “force for good”.

In deciding who should be on the list we inevitably end up comparing mangoes with lychees. But in the end, the mix of politicians, business folk, academics, scientists, writers, prominent TV presenters and artists are a fair reflection of a multicultural society. Britain would be a greyer, less dynamic country if Nigel Farage were to make them all disappear with a wave of his cigar.

Out of 101 entries, 33 are women. This year there are 24 new entries, which means some very important people have been dropped from last year’s list to make way for the fresh intake.

There has been a real political churn because of Labour’s general election victory. Compared with the governments of Boris Johnson or Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet is much less diverse which is a step backwards for the British Asian community. To be sure, Shabana Mahmood, ranked second, is making history as justice secretary and Lord chancellor.

Mahmood, who was born in Birmingham in 1980 to parents from Pakistan, said in one interview: “The first time I was called a P*** was in the playground at junior school. I was seven years old and I did not know what the word meant.”

On taking office, she admitted: “I’ve carried the weight of many identities in this career. It is a privilege, but also a burden. So, at the very least, I hope my appointment shows the next little girl in Small Heath, or wherever she may be that, in this country, even the oldest offices in the land are within reach of us all.”

Lisa Nandy, who was once on the power list, fell out of it and has re-entered in 11^th place. She might have ranked first if Starmer had made her foreign secretary. After all, she was once shadow foreign secretary. But sec-retary of state for culture, media and sport, can be a stepping stone to higher office if the prime minister so wishes.

This is where the power of patronage is so crucial in deciding where people are positioned on the greasy pole. What the prime minister giveth, he could tomorrow taketh away. In the next cabinet reshuffle, he could move Nandy – or anyone else in the government – up, down or sideways. Or he could give them the sack. There is a shocking account of what happened when Sunak sacked Suella Braverman as home secretary in Ungovernable, the published dia-ries of his chief whip Simon Hart.

Sunak was subjected to a “ghastly 10-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile”.

Braverman has been left off the Power List.

After promoting a woman cabinet minister, Sunak said: “Let’s all agree about one thing. She is xxxxing useless but we can’t get rid of her.”

This is thought by political wags to be a reference to his business secretary and now Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. She has boasted about how she stopped the UK-India Free Trade Agreement from being signed because the Indians had apparently asked for a more liberal visa regime.

Starmer, if he so chooses, can sack Mahmood at any moment but he cannot do that with Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who has his own mandate. Although he is not Donald Trump’s favourite politician, he has won three elections in a row. That was the deciding factor in putting him above Mahmood.

The Power List judging panel considered: “What next for Rishi Sunak?”

Never before have we had to deal with an ex-prime minister. Compared with the other surviving British ex-prime ministers – Sir John Major (82), Sir Tony Blair (71), Gordon Brown (73), Lord David Cameron (58), Lady Theresa May (68), Boris Johnson (60) and Liz Truss (49) – he has youth on his side. He will turn 45 on May 12 this year.

From the backbenches, Sunak has spoken about Ukraine and other subjects but been very careful not to wade into the toxic internal politics of the Conservative party. The Indian prime minister happily received Sunak, his wife, Akshata Murty, their daughters, Krishna and Anoushka, and his mother-in-law, Sudha Murty, which would suggest the former prime minister will remain a figure of consequence in Indo-British relations. The judges decided to keep Sunak in the top 10 for this year but at number 5.

Although there is markedly less diversity in the cabinet, there are Asians in Starmer’s inner circle in 10, Downing Street. They do not have a public profile in the conventional sense but must have influence through sheer proximity to the prime minister.

Nin Pandit wouldn’t pass the “Southall test”, in that that the average Asian on the street or a member of the public for that matter probably would not have heard of her. But she is a new entry, ranked fourth, through virtue of being the principal private secretary to the prime minister.

She was once described by Dominic Cummings as one of “the brilliant women around the table” who would have done the job of prime minister “10 times better” than Boris Johnson.

Pandit is a new entry as is Vidhya Alakeson, who is deputy chief of staff at No 10. She is ranked sixth. She was previously the Labour party’s director of external affairs and has apparently been close to Starmer for the last three years.

In October when Starmer’s then chief of staff, Sue Gray, resigned, she was replaced by Morgan McSweeny, who had masterminded Labour’s general election campaign.

Pandit was brought in to lend stability to the government. Meanwhile, Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson were two new deputy chiefs of staff. Incidentally, Kunal Patel, the deputy prin-cipal private secretary under Pandit, is 51^st.

There are other Asians in key political roles. Ravinder Athwal, ranked 24, who crafted Labour’s general election manifesto, is now a special adviser to the prime minister. On the day of the manifesto launch, it was Athwal – not Starmer or shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves – who was briefing journalists on the fine print.

Varun Chandra, a new entry at 41, is a special adviser to the prime minister on business and investment. At the Labour conference last October, he told business leaders behind closed doors that he would try to be their interface with government.

John Lehal, a new entry at 54, is the Labour party’s chief operating officer.

There is only a sprinkling of Asian ministerial talent in the lower ranks of government. This is represented by Seema Malhotra (44), who is parliamentary under-secretary for migration and citizenship at the home office, and also for equalities in the department of education; and Rushanara Ali (a new entry at 81), parliamentary under-secretary in the ministry of housing, communities and local government.

Three first time MPs, all Labour, are new entries on the Power List – Kanishka Narayan (91), member for the Vale of Glamorgan; Dr Zubir Ahmed (94), member for Glasgow south-west; and Jeevun Sandher (97), member for Loughborough. They are being marked out for future stardom.

In banking, finance and business generally, Asians have got to the top. Banks which were once reluctant to lend money to Ugandan Asians when they first arrived in Britain as refugees, now realise the UK is dependent on Asian entrepreneurship.

C S Venkatakrishnan (8) is CEO of Barclays plc, while Vim Maru, a new entry at 31, heads Barclays Retail. Meanwhile, Pam Kaur, a new entry at 47, is the group chief financial officer at HSBC.

Ashwin Prasad, a new entry at 52, is the chief commercial officer at Tesco. Aki Husain (79) is CEO of Hiscox, the specialist insurance company.

The relationship between wealth and power is not an obvious one. In fact, only a handful of the people on GG2’s Rich List make it on to the Power List. Wealth obviously buys influence. At its most basic, even the busiest restaurant will generally make room for a wealthy patron when other customers may be denied a booking. But it’s how the wealth is used that distinguishes the rich from the powerful.

The Hindujas, who have dominated the Rich List for well over a decade, are also on the Power List but at number 14, one below Samir Shah, the chairman of the BBC. The Hindujas have invested heavily in the healthcare sector because they say they are motivated by the family motto, “Work to give”.

Lakshmi Mittal and his son, Aditya, executive chairman and CEO of ArcelorMit¬tal respectively, are second on the Rich list and at 16 on the Power List.

It is worth mentioning the chancellor’s attack on non-doms is stripping the UK of some of its wealthiest and most influential Asians. People are being lured away by the low tax regime in Dubai.

Lord Jitesh Gadhia (ninth on the Power List), a member of the Court of the Bank of England, its governing body, said: “We now have an exodus of people going to the Gulf. There’s almost a critical mass. It’s like what happened when East African Asians, very enterprising people, arrived in the UK. That’s effectively happening in places like the UAE. The government has got be quite bold in not only stopping the haemorrhaging but also in re-attracting wealth creators and entrepreneurs.”

It is also worth pointing out that Dr Swati Dhingra, an ex¬ternal member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee – she is at number 20 – has just had her three-year term extended by another three years by the chancellor. Dhingra’s influence lies in shaping the Bank’s policy on interest rates.

In academia, Professor Joya Chatterji of Cambridge University, is ranked at number 69. In December she won the Wolfson, the “most prestigious history writing prize” in the UK for book, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century. But there is an even better reason for having her on the Power List. She is passing on the flame – her love of history – to her “beloved PhD students” from all over the world.

The arts are pulling in young Asians even though parents once insisted their children enter “safe” professions such as medicine, law or accountancy. The BBC have turned A A Dhand’s novel, City of Sinners, into Virdee, a six-part crime drama.

The comedian Romesh Ranganath (19) is ubiquitous on TV. The actor Riz Ahmed (25) has made a name both in both America and in the UK. Meera Syal (34) starred in the play, A Tupperware of Ashes, written by Tanika Gupta (90), at the National Theatre where Indhu Rubasingham will soon be in sole charge as its artistic director. The artist Chila Burman (67) lit up London’s West End as well as the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester with her neon installations. The actress Ambika Mod (71) has starred in Netflix dramas.

And one shouldn’t forget the singer Charlie XCX (7), whose mother, Shameera, was born into a Muslim family of Gujarati descent in Uganda.

In medicine, Dr Yusuf Hamied, the London-based head of the Indian pharmacy giant Cipla, has given donations to many charities but his dollar a day cocktail of drugs saved the lives of 15 million AIDs patients in Africa.

Cardiologist Professor Jaspal Kooner has set up a South Asia biobank of 100,000 people in the UK to solve the mystery of why Asians are so vulnerable to heart attacks and diabetes. He needs another £20m-£50m to continue his work, which seems cheap at the prices. “As far as our research is concerned,” says Kooner, “it’s centred around large questions which affect the south Asian population worldwide – that’s a quarter of the world’s population.”

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