University Challenge winner short of answers to fuel and energy crises
‘He didn’t do a very good job of calming people down during the fuel crisis and there was a lack of political planning around how to deal with the energy crisis’
KWASI KWARTENG is a man under pressure. Still in the first year of his job as Business Secretary, he has become the Cabinet’s go-to fall guy for everything from the twin crises over fuel and gas to the wages row with business.
The Tory party conference this week was used by some government figures to drip poison about Mr Kwarteng and his department. He was accused of being “asleep at the wheel” by some, while others put it about that he was “useless”.
His supporters, unsurprisingly, have suggested Mr Kwarteng was the victim of a whispering campaign by ministers trying to pass the buck for their own failings, like a clique of schoolboys ganging up on the new kid in class to get him into trouble.
The question now facing Boris Johnson, who decided to keep Mr Kwarteng in his post in last month’s reshuffle, is whether the 46-year-old is out of his depth, or whether the problem lies with the structure of his department itself.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has only existed for five years, created by Theresa May from a merger of the departments for energy and climate change (DECC) and for business, innovation and skills (BIS).
Mrs May was merely the latest in a long line of prime ministers who have wrestled with the problem of what to do with an alphabet soup of briefs that do not necessarily merit their own departments but might together be too much for one minister.
The department for trade and industry (DTI), the department of energy (DOE), as well as DECC and BIS, have all been consigned to history as successive prime ministers have failed to find a formula that will marry up these reluctant bedfellows, and it is by no means certain that BEIS will prove to be a long-lasting union. Would it be better if it was run by someone else? Critics of Mr Kwarteng have accused him of failing to react fast enough to the gas price crisis or the driver shortages that have led to supply chain problems with fuel, food and other goods. There have been harsh words from other ministries and even some in Downing St.
“He has p----- off No 10 quite a bit over the past few weeks,” said one source. “There is a feeling that BEIS is dysfunctional and that Kwasi is against the principle of an industrial strategy.
“He didn’t do a very good job of calming people down during the fuel crisis and there was a lack of political planning around how to deal with the energy crisis.” Another criticism levelled against Mr Kwarteng is that he is a “cerebral” figure (he was an Eton scholar who attained a double first and a doctorate from Cambridge, won a scholarship to Harvard and even won University Challenge) who is good at big-picture politics and strategy but struggles to exert “grip” in a crisis, when a grasp of details of what is happening on the ground – and how to solve problems quickly – is essential.
The fact that the MOD sent Air Commodore Richard Pratley to help BEIS get on top of the fuel crisis has been briefed out to undermine Mr Kwarteng, whose department is, ultimately, in charge of fuel supply.
Allies point out the fuel and supply chain crises were caused by HGV driver shortages that are the responsibility of the Department for Transport, headed by Grant Shapps, and that the gas price rise, caused by a worldwide surge in demand, could only have been averted by the sort of long-term planning for energy security that predates Mr Kwarteng’s appointment in January.
When Mrs May created BEIS she said she wanted “an energy policy that emphasises the reliability of supply and lower costs for users”, but immediately lost interest in the plan as she switched her attention to her net zero carbon policy. It left BEIS as the orphan of an ideology that no longer existed, with the result that security of supply – and the lower costs it would have assured – were deprioritised.
Is it, then, time to break up BEIS and resurrect the department of energy, headed in the past by such heavyweights as Lord Carrington, Tony Benn and Lord Lawson? One source in the department insisted: “If we went back to a pure energy and climate change ministry, it would quickly be captured by the eco lobby and its decisions would have zero regard for the UK’S competitiveness.”
It is a view shared by senior figures in No 10.
For now, then, it would seem that BEIS as a department is here to stay.
But the announcement yesterday that the Prime Minister has brought in Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco chief executive, to help fix the supply chain crisis shows that Mr Johnson’s patience with his ministers may be wearing thin.