On December 11th 2025, students studying Dr Chetun Patel and Professor Ed Balls’ Chancellors and the Treasury module (part of MA Government Studies) had the incredible opportunity to hear from Kwasi Kwarteng, former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Kwarteng served as MP for Spelthorne from 2010 to 2024. He was Secretary of State for Business under Boris Johnson between 2021 and 2022 and later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Liz Truss for 38 days, from September to October 2022.
Students of the Strand Group’s MA Government Studies are accustomed to a variety of high calibre guests, many of whom kindly give their time in order to share their experience in British government. For this year’s cohort, however, Kwarteng was the first guest speaker to have held one of the four Great Offices of State.
The hour-or-so discussion was, unsurprisingly, dominated by his turbulent time as Chancellor. For a figure associated with a period of relative political instability, Kwarteng was notably relaxed, chuckling frequently, and keen to open the discussion up to student questions. There were slight moments of tension at points during the talk, though these largely came as a result of the former Chancellor’s discussions with Ed Balls and Lord Macpherson (a staple guest of the module) – both of whom were in attendance.
The son of Ghanaian immigrants, Kwarteng spoke briefly of his time at St Paul’s and Eton, two of Britain’s most elite educational institutions. He also reflected on his time writing Ghosts of Empire, his book on the legacy of the British Empire, and reminded students that people and personalities are what counts. This framing recurred throughout the discussion and shaped his reflections on his short but consequential time as Chancellor. He appeared to have an acute understanding of the value of history.
Kwarteng was clear about the mistakes made by himself and the prime minister. He identified three in particular. The first was cutting out the Office for Budget Responsibility. This, he admitted, was a serious error – one he “really kicks himself over.” The second was the pace of change. The Truss-Kwarteng agenda moved too fast, without sufficient preparation or signalling to the markets. The third was failing to “walk the walk on spending.” Tax cuts, he accepted, must be credibly balanced with spending restraint; without that, confidence inevitably frays.
Where he was more defensive was over elements of the mini-budget, which he argued was intended to be a Reaganite budget of bold, directional, and unapologetically pro-growth economic policy. The problem, as he and others acknowledged, was not necessarily the growth agenda itself, but the absence of a sufficiently detailed plan to control spending alongside it. He contended that the idea the mini-budget “broke the markets” is misleading, as the turmoil was driven not by a single decision but by a succession of shocks, with energy policy failures acting as an initial fault line.
Kwarteng’s critique of the Treasury was revealing. Falling short of Liz Truss’s accusations of a ‘deep state’, Kwarteng instead referred to the existence of a Treasury orthodoxy, rather than the Treasury orthodoxy. Since Gordon Brown’s time as Chancellor, he argued, the institution has changed fundamentally. It now exercises an “absurd level of control” over spending, operating less as a growth engine and more as an accounting function.
The relationship between Chancellor and Prime Minister loomed large in the discussion. Kwarteng repeatedly emphasised his deference to Truss. She had the mandate from Conservative Party members; the promise made to them was clear. In retrospect, the relationship between Number 10 and Number 11 was ill-defined. Kwarteng wanted to eliminate the familiar saga of tension between the two offices, but the result was ambiguity rather than unity. When pressed on whether he should have pushed back harder, he was firm: the outcome would not have been different. To suggest otherwise, he said, was naïve. Advice, he reflected, is only as good as the willingness of the recipient to hear it. This theme returned when discussing the OBR and market reaction. In retrospect, he argued, advisers warned of “market risk,” but no one possessed the foresight to predict the scale or speed of the collapse that followed. Hindsight, after all, is a beautiful thing.
On the sacking of Tom Scholar, Kwarteng downplayed its significance relative to its portrayal. Truss, he said, believed Scholar was cutting her out of meetings during her time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. If the decision was to be taken, it had to be done quickly. It was not, in his view, a decisive turning point. He then turned to preparation for office; Kwarteng drew a distinction between opposition and intra-governmental change. They only had six weeks to prepare, mostly spent talking with Truss at Chevening House.
Questions on Bank of England independence, inevitable given the presence of the decisions chief architect Ed Balls, prompted Kwarteng to raise concerns about a “democratic deficit” created by the power of unelected institutions. His solution was not abolition, but greater parliamentary oversight, particularly through House of Commons involvement in senior appointments. As a man with a keen interest in history, he was quick to broaden the lens. Decisions in democracies, he suggested, are constrained not just by economics, but by legitimacy, narrative, and trust. Asked to name the best Chancellor of the twentieth century, he chose Neville Chamberlain – an answer delivered with a smile and a pause.
Kwarteng’s story of those weeks in 2022 was not simply one of chaos without ideas, but of ideas without sufficient time, institutional buy-in, or political cushioning. Despite everything, Kwarteng looked back fondly on his time in office. When interviewed by students later on in the evening, he insisted he would do it all again. There was no bitterness, little defensiveness, and a striking willingness to engage.
The value of hearing from the second-shortest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in British history was undoubtably valuable. The discussion was followed by a reception, where the candour continued, though now with drinks in hand. Whether one agrees with him or not, Kwarteng was a significant figure in British politics. Though his name has arguably become shorthand for economic instability, the reality is perhaps more complex – and, as he insisted, more human.