Kwasi Kwarteng: free-market radical set to be chancellor

He began his career in Westminster with a speech in which he demanded that Labour apologise for the financial crash of 2008, despite having worked “not merely in investment banking but in the mortgages division of JPMorgan”, said The Independent’s independent political sketch writer Tom Peck. And “you do not need to be the biggest expert on that crisis to know precisely where it started”, Peck added.

Kwarteng was appointed parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to then-chancellor Philip Hammond in 2017. According to The Times’ reporter Ben Ellery, Kwarteng was afterwards overheard telling someone: “It took Stanley Baldwin eight years to become a PPS and he then became prime minister seven years later. I’ve become a PPS in seven.”

In 2018, Kwarteng replaced Suella Braverman, now tipped to become home secretary, as a minister in the Department for Exiting the EU.

A long-time backer of Johnson, he was elevated to serve in the cabinet in January 2021, as business secretary, becoming the first black Conservative secretary of state.

Yet his time as a MP has also not been without controversy. In the final week of the Tory leadership race between Rishi Sunak and Truss, The Mirror’s Whitehall correspondent Mikey Smith reported that Kwarteng’s Wikipedia page had been edited, “apparently from within Parliament – to remove all mention of the Owen Paterson scandal”.

The mystery editor had scrubbed “from it any mention of him being an outspoken supporter of Mr Paterson – the Tory MP who quit after breaking lobbying rules”, said Smith.

Unlike many of his cabinet colleagues, Kwarteng did not resign in protest at Johnson’s leadership in July, which may endear him to the Tory faithful as well as supporters of the ousted PM.

What does Kwarteng believe?

Kwarteng has described himself as “a pragmatic Thatcherite” and is a staunch believer in low taxation. In an interview with Conservative Home last October, he said: “I don’t believe we can tax our way to wealth.”

“Broadly, higher tax is basically a tax on economic activity,” he added.

According to parliamentary monitoring website TheyWorkForYou, Kwarteng has “generally voted against measures to prevent climate change” and has “consistently voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits”.

Like Truss, he has also taken a tough stance on illegal immigration. 

A committed Brexiteer, Kwarteng is a long-time friend and political ally of the new PM. Indeed, “the pair share a political philosophy and also a street”, as neighbours in Greenwich in southeast London, said the Daily Mail.

Kwarteng co-authored a book with her and fellow Tories Priti Patel, Chris Skidmore and Dominic Raab in 2012, Britannia Unchained, which painted a vision of a free-market, deregulated future Britain.

With Kwarteng now set to help Truss govern, the duo are intent “on avoiding a repeat of the tensions” between Johnson and his chancellor Sunak, said The Times. Kwarteng has reportedly described his approach as one in which he will “facilitate, not emasculate” the demands of the PM.

Yet sharing a common vision may also have its drawbacks.

“The Truss/Kwarteng axis will almost certainly find themselves engaged in the struggle between ideological fantasy and real life,” said Peck in The Independent. “The trouble is, in their case, fantasy is far more likely to win and so everybody else must lose.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/957848/kwasi-kwarteng-free-market-radical-set-to-be-chancellor