Kwarteng: I told Truss to slow down

KWASI Kwarteng has said he told Liz Truss to “slow down” her radical economic reforms or risk being out of No 10 within “two months”.

He also criticised the then-prime minister’s “mad” decision to sack him as chancellor for implementing her tax-cutting agenda, in a bombshell first interview since his ousting. Mr Kwarteng refused to apologise for the financial turmoil unleashed by his and Ms Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, but acknowledged “there was turbulence and I regret that”.

He said the “strategic goal was right”, but “I think we should have had a much more measured approach”. He said he bore “some responsibility” for the timetable of the mini-budget, but that Ms Truss “was very much of the view that we needed to move things fast”.

“But I think it was too quick,” he added. “Even 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 I’m afraid that’s what happened.”

UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor The then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng delivers his mini-budget in the House of Commons in September