Commentary

Any lessons from the ”sacking” of Kwasi Kwarteng?

By: Dr. Nana Sifa Twum, Communications Consultant

The Ghanaian-descent United Kingdom politician Kwasi Kwarteng has been relieved of his duties as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He took office on the 6th of September 2022 a day after the appointment of Mary Elizabeth Truss as the 77th Prime Minister following the resignation of Mr. Boris Johnson in July this year and was sacked on Friday, the 14th of October 2022, barely after 38 office, the second shortest in UK’s history.

He had been summoned to Downing Street while attending an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington in the United States of America amid chaotic scenes following his infamous mini-budget announcement last month.

He had been advised to resign by his best political and school ally who had appointed him as the second most important figure in the UK government.

He and his boss, Truss, took office at a time when the UK economy, like many others around the globe, was facing severe turbulence. The dismissed Chancellor did not mince words in his letter accepting Truss’ difficult request to Kwasi Kwarteng to resign. He noted that he accepted the offer as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and did so in the “full knowledge that the situation we faced was incredibly difficult, with rising global interest rates and energy prices”.

Rightly so mortgage prices were soaring, inflation was getting worse by the day, energy bills were getting out of hand, interest rates getting worse, the Pound was continuously under pressure from the US dollar, while pension funds were facing challenges. Much more, experts have warned that the UK’s recession could be worse than expected because of the recent market turmoil.

In the words of Prime Minister, Liz Truss, she shares the same vision with his friend and colleague, Kwasi Kwarteng, for the UK and the same firm conviction to go for growth. She reckoned in her acceptance letter to the former Chancellor, “you have been a Chancellor in an extraordinarily challenging time in the face of severe global headwinds.”

For her, the energy price guarantee and the energy bill relief scheme, which made up the largest part of the controversial mini-budget will stand as one of the most significant fiscal interventions in modern times.

Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss are deemed ideological bedfellows, believing intently that low taxes inevitably lead to higher growth. They had penned the now infamous mini-budget together, which called for a lower tax, lower regulation economy early in their parliamentary careers. And such was their alliance.

Against this backdrop, one would ask, what happened that all of a sudden and in Mr. Kwarteng’s absence, Truss would be perhaps compelled by her cabinet to sack someone she had so much expressed confidence in and publicly praise him.

The facts are that ever since Truss took over as the Prime Minister of the UK some few weeks ago, her premiership has been one of hurting downwards towards the hard earth of political and economic realities and has since been fighting tooth and nail for her political survival.

Worsening the situation was the mini-budget, in which the Truss administration pledged to scrap a corporate tax hike from 19 percent to 25 percent which had been scheduled for April next year. This was one of Liz Truss’ major planks of her Tory leadership campaign.

So why should her beloved Chancellor be solely responsible for the mishap, even after the two have insisted publicly they were sticking to the plan not to put up corporation tax even as officials were privately briefing the exact opposite?

Perhaps Liz Truss’ answer to the question by a reporter from the Telegraph at her news conference to officially announce the sacking of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng that why she should remain as Prime Minister, exposed her intentions that she did so just to protect her job. With a poor demeanor and a terribly shaking voice Truss said: “I am absolutely determined to see through what I promised, that is to deliver higher growth, a more prosperous the United Kingdom to see us through the storm we face.”

Before now, He has distinguished himself since he entered politics in 2010. He served as Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy between January 2021 and September 2022. Before then serving as the Minister of State at the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy among many other responsible political positions.

It is a shame that the young brilliant politician has been sacrificed on the altar of Liz Truss’ political ambition in such an unceremonious end for the UK’s First Black Chancellor.