‘Prime ministers don’t get rid of chancellors’
KWARTENG BLAMES TRUSS FOR FINANCIAL CHAOS AFTER MINI-BUDGET
AT THE time of writing, Rishi Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt have yet to unveil their “autumn budget”.
But I predict they will be attacked by the same people who thought Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng got it right. They seem to have forgotten what happened after Kwarteng’s minibudget of September 3.
Kwarteng has claimed the financial chaos that occurred after the announcement was mainly Truss’s fault. He said Truss wanted to go even faster with her unfunded tax-cutting measures, even as he was urging the prime minister to slow down.
The former chancellor, who was giving his first interview since his dramatic fall from power, told the Rupert Murdoch-owned Talk TV: “After the mini-budget we were going at breakneck speed and I said, you know, ‘we should slow down, slow down’.”
“She said, ‘Well, I’ve only got two years,’ and I said, ‘You will have two months if you carry on like this.’ “And that is, I’m afraid, what happened.” He added: “I think the prime minister was very much of the view that we needed to move things fast. But I think it was too quick.”
In his analysis, David Wallace Lockhart, a BBC political correspondent, said: “Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng once looked like a dream combination to lead a Conservative government – freedom-loving tax cutters who wanted to prioritise growth, who also happened to be long-term friends.
“But we know it didn’t work out that way. And now Mr Kwarteng has pointed the finger of blame firmly at his former boss.”
Kwarteng revealed that he first discovered he had been sacked as chancellor after seeing a tweet from the political editor of the Times as he drove to a meeting with Truss at 10, Downing Street. “I can’t remember whether she was actually shedding tears but she was very emotional and it was a difficult thing to do.
“I think she genuinely thought that was the right thing to buy her more time to set her premiership on the right path.
“I disagreed, obviously. I thought that if chancellors are sacked by the prime minister for doing what the prime minister campaigned on, that leaves the prime minister in a very weak position.”
He told her: “This is mad. Prime ministers don’t get rid of chancellors.”
Kwarteng said he did not think the prime minister could fire him “just for implementing what she campaigned on” during her summer Tory leadership campaign.
He also praised Rishi Sunak as a “very credible prime minister”.