Liz Truss’ short-lived government’s former finance minister in Britain claimed in an interview on Thursday that he had advised the former premier to “slow down” the tax cuts that caused economic unrest and ultimately led to her resignation.
After Liz Truss succeeded Boris Johnson, Kwasi Kwarteng was appointed finance minister. Late in September, with the UK experiencing inflation of more than 10%, Kwasi Kwarteng announced a number of unfunded tax cuts.
His “mini-budget” sparked a market panic, drove the pound to an all-time low, and prompted warnings from the central bank and the IMF. Truss, who ran on an economic platform and was elected by the Conservative rank-and-file to office after Johnson’s resignation, sacked Kwarteng in the middle of October. “ 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,” he said on Talk TV in his first interview since his dismissal, which aired Thursday night. “After the mini-budget, we were going at breakneck speed, and I said, you know, we should slow down, slow down,” Kwarteng said.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.”
Kwarteng said he told Truss it was “mad” to fire him because “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.”But “I think she genuinely thought that that was the right thing to buy her more time to set her premiership on the right path,” he said. He did not apologise, but he did acknowledge that he was “responsible” for the disruption that the budget releases caused.