Kwasi Kwarteng

The Right Honourable Kwasi Kwarteng MP
Official portrait, 2021
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 September 2022
Prime Minister	Liz Truss
Preceded by	Nadhim Zahawi
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
In office 8 January 2021 – 6 September 2022
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Alok Sharma
Succeeded by	Jacob Rees-Mogg
Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth
In office 24 July 2019 – 8 January 2021
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Claire Perry
Succeeded by	Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union
In office 16 November 2018 – 24 July 2019
Prime Minister	Theresa May
Preceded by	Suella Braverman
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Member of Parliament for Spelthorne
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 May 2010
Preceded by	David Wilshire
Majority	18,393 (37.2%)
Personal details
Born	Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng (1975-05-26) 26 May 1975 London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Harriet Edwards ​ (m. 2019)​
Children	1
Residence(s)	11 Downing Street, London
Education	Trinity College, Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Website	Campaign website

Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng (born 26 May 1975) is a British politician serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2022. He previously served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2021 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Spelthorne in northern Surrey since 2010.

In November 2018, Kwarteng was appointed Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union. Following the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019, Kwarteng was promoted to Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, attending Cabinet as part of the role. In January 2021, Kwarteng was promoted to Business Secretary, becoming the first black MP to serve as a Secretary of State. After Johnson resigned in 2022, Kwarteng supported Liz Truss's bid to become Conservative leader. Following Truss's appointment as Prime Minister, she appointed Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Initially an economic historian, Kwarteng is the first black person to serve in a Great Office of State.

Early life and education

Kwarteng was born in the London Borough of Waltham Forest on 26 May 1975, the only child of Alfred K. Kwarteng and Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, who had emigrated from Ghana as students in the 1960s. His mother is a barrister and his father an economist in the Commonwealth Secretariat.

After starting school at a state primary school in Waltham Forest, Kwarteng attended Colet Court, an independent preparatory school in London, where he won the Harrow History Prize in 1988. Then Kwarteng went to Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar and was awarded the Newcastle Scholarship prize. He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a first and twice winning the Browne Medal. He was a member of the team which won the BBC quiz show University Challenge in 1995. At Cambridge, he was a member of the University Pitt Club, and has since returned to visit. He was a Kennedy Scholar for a year at Harvard University, and then earned a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000, with a thesis titled Political thought of the recoinage crisis of 1695–7.

Early career

Before becoming a member of parliament, Kwarteng worked as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and as a financial analyst at JPMorgan Chase as well as at WestLB and the hedge fund Odey Asset Management. He wrote a book, Ghosts of Empire, about the legacy of the British Empire, published by Bloomsbury in 2011. He also co-authored Gridlock Nation with Jonathan Dupont in 2011, about the causes of and solutions to traffic congestion in Britain.

Early political career

Considered "a rising star on the right of the party" in 2015, Kwarteng was the Conservative candidate in the constituency of Brent East at the 2005 general election. He finished in third place. Kwarteng was chairman of the conservative think tank Bow Group in 2006. In the same year, The Times suggested that he could become the first black Conservative cabinet minister. He was sixth on the Conservative list of candidates for the London Assembly in the 2008 London Assembly election, but was not elected, as the Conservatives obtained only three London-wide list seats.

Parliamentary career

2010 election and tenure

Kwarteng at a Policy Exchange event in 2012

Kwarteng was selected as the Conservative candidate for Spelthorne in January 2010 after the incumbent Conservative MP, David Wilshire, became mired in controversy arising from the Parliamentary expenses scandal and announced that he would be retiring from Parliament at the next general election.

Kwarteng won the seat with a majority of 10,019 votes (21.2%). Kwarteng did not vote on the backbench EU Referendum Bill in October 2011. Kwarteng criticised the Help to Buy housing scheme as inflationary in 2013.

In 2014, his book, War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures and Debt, was published. It is a history of capital and the enduring ability of money, when combined with speculation, to ruin societies. In 2015, his next book, Thatcher's Trial: Six Months That Defined a Leader, was published.

Kwarteng was re-elected at the 2015 general election with an increased majority of 14,152 votes. Kwarteng backed the UK's withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 referendum.

Early ministerial career (2017–2019)

Following the 2017 general election, Kwarteng was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. On 16 November 2018, Kwarteng replaced Suella Braverman as a minister in the Department for Exiting the EU.

Kwarteng was a vocal supporter of Boris Johnson in the 2016 and 2019 Conservative Party leadership elections. After Johnson's victory in the latter election, on 25 July 2019 Kwarteng was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy along with Jo Johnson, brother of the Prime Minister. He was appointed to the Privy Council on the same day.

In September 2019, Kwarteng stated on The Andrew Neil Show: "I'm not saying this, but, many people are saying that the judges are biased" after the Court of Session ruled that Boris Johnson's prorogation of parliament was illegal. Kwarteng added: "The extent to which lawyers and judges are interfering in politics is something that concerns many people." Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and the then Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick distanced themselves from his comments and defended the judiciary. Opposition MPs, the chair of the Bar Council, and the chair of the Law Society of England and Wales criticised his comments.

Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2021–2022)

On 8 January 2021, as part of a mini-reshuffle, he replaced Alok Sharma as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He has committed his department to cutting global emissions to stop climate change.

Dissolving ISC

In March 2021, he was criticised for dissolving the Industrial Strategy Council, the advisory body seeking to regenerate Britain's regions. In the days after the COP26 climate summit, Kwarteng met oil industry bosses to encourage them to continue drilling in the North Sea.

In January 2022, while on a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kwarteng accepted flights and hospitality from Saudi Aramco, the majority state-owned energy firm. Kwarteng was also gifted a £300 Lenovo tablet. The BEIS department transparency data revealed that Kwarteng travelled to Saudi Arabia on a commercial flight costing the taxpayer £4,430. He also visited Aramco's Shaybah oil field with the Saudi energy minister, although this was not logged in BEIS transparency records. Some politicians criticised Kwarteng for accepting the Saudi state's hospitality, particularly in light of their human rights record, while others raised concerns over whether he broke the ministerial code.

2021 gas crisis

Main article: 2021 United Kingdom natural gas supplier crisis

From August 2021, high European wholesale natural gas prices caused some smaller domestic suppliers in the United Kingdom to go out of business. In September 2021, the fuel supply crisis caused serious disruption to the supply of road fuel. Kwarteng said that "There is no question of the lights going out, of people being unable to heat their homes. There will be no three-day working week, or a throwback to the 1970s." He also said that the government would not rescue failed companies. Ed Miliband, Labour's shadow business secretary, accused Kwarteng of being complacent.

Role in the Owen Paterson scandal

Kwarteng was an outspoken supporter of Owen Paterson, who had been found by the Commons Select Committee on Standards to have committed "an egregious case of paid advocacy". In reaction to this ruling, Kwarteng called for the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, to "decide her position". The government later U-turned its support for Paterson, who resigned as an MP. The opposition called for an investigation into Kwarteng, claiming he may have breached the ministerial code.

On 15 November 2021, Kwarteng published a letter of apology to Stone, in which he said he "did not mean to express doubt about your ability to discharge your role" and apologised for "any upset or distress my choice of words may have caused".

Chancellor of the Exchequer

Chancellorship of Kwasi Kwarteng 6 September 2022 – present
Chancellor	Kwasi Kwarteng
Party	Conservative
Nominated by	Liz Truss
Appointed by	Elizabeth II
Seat	11 Downing Street
Coat of arms of HM Government

Kwarteng was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss on 6 September 2022. On 23 September 2022, he announced a set of economic policies in what the Treasury described as a Fiscal Event; this was dubbed a "mini-budget" by the media. He refused to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to assess the economic impact of the budget and provide a forecast.

Among the policies announced by Kwarteng was a cut in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% to start in April 2023, the abolition of the 45% higher rate of income tax in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the lifting of the stamp duty threshold, the freezing of energy bills, the reversal of the increase in National Insurance from April 2022, the abolition of the proposed Health and Social Care Levy, and the scrapping of the limit on bankers' bonuses. The Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson called it "the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years" and commented that "the plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path, and hope that we get better growth". The following week, sterling fell to its lowest-ever level against the US dollar, and turmoil in government bond prices led the Bank of England to launch an emergency bond buying programme. The International Monetary Fund cautioned that the measures Kwarteng announced "will likely increase inequality".

Following criticism from several Conservative MPs including Michael Gove, Kwarteng said on 3 October 2022 that the government would not pursue the plan to abolish the 45% higher rate of income tax paid by people earning over £150,000 a year. Kwarteng said the plan had become a "distraction from our overriding mission to tackle the challenges facing the country".

Political views

Kwarteng is considered a member of the right-wing of the Conservative Party.

Same-sex marriage law

In 2013, he voted twice against allowing same-sex couples to marry, and has subsequently abstained from votes relating to same-sex marriage issues.

Racial issues and colonialism

Kwarteng's views on colonialism have been described by a PoliticsHome writer as "nuanced". Kwarteng has argued that many supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and critics of British imperialism have "a very kind of cartoon-like view" of the past, arguing:

So within that time and geography there's a huge amount of variety, different cultures and different time periods and getting a sensitivity to that is hugely important and I think a lot of the debate around Black Lives Matter and imperialism or colonialism has a very kind of cartoon-like view of what was happening over centuries across a quarter of the world.

Economic issues

In August 2012, Kwarteng co-authored a book with four fellow MPs, titled Britannia Unchained. The book argues for a radical shrinking of the welfare state in order "to return it to the contributory principle envisioned by its founder Sir William Beveridge – that you get benefits in return for contributions".

Personal life

Kwarteng is described by friends as an "intensely private" person. He was previously in a relationship with former Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd. He married City solicitor Harriet Edwards in December 2019. Their daughter was born in 2021. He has lived in Bayswater, and in January 2022 purchased a house in Greenwich. He is a member of the Garrick Club.

Publications

• Kwarteng, Kwasi (2011). Ghosts of empire : Britain's legacies in the modern world. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4088-2290-6. OCLC 904756788.
• Kwarteng, Kwasi (2011). After the Coalition. Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss. London: Biteback. ISBN 978-1-84954-212-8. OCLC 771875676.
• Kwarteng, Kwasi (2011). Gridlock nation : why Britain's transport systems are heading towards gridlock and what we can do to stop it. Jonathan Dupont. London: Biteback. ISBN 978-1-84954-112-1. OCLC 751663991.
• Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 2012. ISBN 9781137032232. OCLC 809314985. {{cite book}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)
• Kwarteng, Kwasi (2014). War and gold : a five-hundred-year history of empires, adventures and debt. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4088-4815-9. OCLC 872709558.
• Kwarteng, Kwasi (2015). Thatcher's trial : six months that defined a leader. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4088-5917-9. OCLC 919896895.

External links

• Official website
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Blog at Conservative Home
• Spelthorne Conservatives