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With a Cambridge PhD in economic history, he ought to have been one of the best qualified Chancellors in British history.
Instead, supposed brainbox Kwasi Kwarteng takes the dubious honour of being the quickest to be sacked – lasting just 38 days.
The only other Chancellor to have survived less time in office was Iain Macleod, in Edward Heath’s government in 1970, who died of a heart attack after only 30 days.
In Mr Kwarteng’s case, the humiliation of his record-breaking failure will live with him for years. Within minutes of his defenestration yesterday, his enemies were mocking him with comparisons to the shelf lives of cheese, lettuce and beetroot.
Mr Kwarteng’s short tenure at the Treasury was marked by upheaval in the financial markets after his disastrous mini-Budget.
Yet he tried to take it all in his stride – almost casually ambling on to the stage at the Conservative conference on October 3, where, to nervous laughter, he jokingly dismissed the chaos caused by the top tax rate U-turn as ‘a little turbulence’ and said it had been a ‘tough day’.
His over-confidence was still evident less than 24 hours before the axe fell.
Supposed brainbox Kwasi Kwarteng takes the dubious honour of being the quickest to be sacked – lasting just 38 days. Pictured leaving Downing Street yesterday
In New York on Thursday, asked if he and the PM would still be in their jobs this time next month, he said: ‘Absolutely, 100 per cent. I’m not going anywhere.’
Yet before the day was out, he was hauled back to London, with 50,000 members of the public following the progress of his British Airways jet on flight tracking apps.
He will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. But before becoming Chancellor, Mr Kwarteng was not even widely known to the public. The 47-year-old MP for Spelthorne, Surrey, was elected in 2010 when David Cameron came to power, but his ministerial career began less than four years ago, with a call-up to the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Shortest reigns… from Lady Jane to Cloughie
Lady Jane Grey – Queen for nine days
The 16-year-old was fifth in line to the throne but dying King Edward VI declared she should be made Queen in 1553. She was deposed and later executed.
George Canning – PM for 119 days
Britain’s shortest-serving Premier took office in 1827 but died suddenly of pneumonia.
Iain Macleod – Chancellor for 30 days
The D-Day veteran suffered a fatal heart attack at 11 Downing Street aged 56 in 1970.
Louis XIX – King of France for 20 minutes
He ascended to the throne in 1830 after his father abdicated, but he had to abdicate himself minutes later after power transferred to the House of Orleans.
Brian Clough – Leeds football manager for 44 days
Clough took over from Don Revie in 1974, but Leeds started the season disastrously and he was fired.
Brian Clough (pictured) lasted just 44 days as manager of Leeds United
He took a place at the Cabinet table in 2021 as Business Secretary. His ministerial office there allegedly boasted a large whiteboard on which was scrawled ‘MSH’, standing for ‘Making S*** Happen’.
Mr Kwarteng’s education and banking background had appeared to set him up to be a hugely successful Chancellor. Born in east London in 1975, he is the only child of his mother Charlotte, a barrister, and economist father Alfred, who came to Britain from Ghana as students in the 1960s.
He went to a state primary school, but transferred to the private prep school Colet Court, from where he scooped a scholarship to Eton.
He was regarded as one of Eton’s brightest pupils, excelling at Latin, Greek, German and French – and is said to have spoken Italian better than the teachers.
Like Boris Johnson, who attended Eton a decade earlier, Mr Kwarteng shone at the Wall Game, a hybrid of football and rugby, where he played First Wall, described by an Etonian as ‘an almost suicidal position that involved spending much of the match having his head scraped against brickwork’.
He was a prefect and won Eton’s Newcastle Scholarship prize – as did Mr Johnson – for his excellence in written examinations.
Aged 18, Mr Kwarteng is said to have told a nervous, inexperienced tutor interviewing him for a place at Trinity College, Cambridge: ‘Oh, don’t worry, sir, you did fine.’
He was described as ‘supremely confident’ at Cambridge, where he cut a striking figure dressed in full brown tweeds and ‘bumbling around with a pipe in his mouth’, according to former dons.
He gained a double first in classics and history, then won a Kennedy scholarship to Harvard University before returning to Cambridge for a PhD in economic history.
As a 19-year-old undergraduate, he was on the Trinity College team crowned University Challenge champions in 1995. Buzzing in response to a question about a donkey, he then swore: ‘Oh f***, I’ve forgotten.’ But his team won the notoriously difficult quiz.
To this day, 6ft 5in Kwarteng’s contemporaries say he is ‘basically an academic’. Nonetheless he had a lucrative spell as a fund manager at the investment bank JP Morgan before turning to politics.
He entered Parliament in the same year as Liz Truss and the pair have been firm friends, even buying houses just 350 yards apart in Greenwich, south London. They were neighbours in Downing Street too, until she sacked the man she called her ‘great friend’, saying she was ‘incredibly sorry’.
He tried to take it all in his stride – almost casually ambling on to the stage at the Conservative conference on October 3 (pictured), where, to nervous laughter, he jokingly dismissed the chaos caused by the top tax rate U-turn as ‘a little turbulence’
Mr Kwarteng was said to have been among a small group of Tory MPs sitting around Miss Truss’s kitchen table when they plotted her leadership campaign after Mr Johnson’s resignation in July.
When Miss Truss became the frontrunner in this summer’s Conservative contest, one friend of the pair described the ‘slight social misfits’ and ‘amiable geeks’ as being like ‘Batman and Robin’.
But the duo, often called ‘ideological soulmates’, took their tax plans further than she had outlined in the leadership contest.
Widespread surprise at the size of the tax-cutting agenda the pair had embarked upon – and fears of an increase in borrowing to fund the measures – spooked financial markets and Tory MPs.
As pressure grew, Miss Truss and Mr Kwarteng announced a U-turn on scrapping the 45p top rate of tax during the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.
When Miss Truss became the frontrunner in this summer’s Conservative contest, one friend of the pair (pictured together in July) described the ‘slight social misfits’ and ‘amiable geeks’ as being like ‘Batman and Robin’
A decade ago, Miss Truss and Mr Kwarteng co-authored a political book about economic growth, Britannia Unchained, with three other rising stars of the Conservative Party: Dominic Raab, Priti Patel and Chris Skidmore. They were all smiles at the publisher’s launch in 2012. But having done away with her Cabinet rivals Mr Raab and Miss Patel, and lost her ally Mr Kwarteng, Miss Truss is now the only one still in government.
Mr Kwarteng left No 11 for the last time just after 1pm. He can now spend more time at his £1.74million Victorian villa with his wife Harriet Edwards, 36, a lawyer, whom he married in 2019 and their daughter, Ida, born last year.
Four people served as chancellor in the 22 years from 1997 to 2019: Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Philip Hammond.
But in the three years since there have been five, including Nadhim Zahawi who served the third shortest tenure with 62 days, and Sajid Javid, whose 204 days were the fourth shortest.
The latest, Jeremy Hunt, must hope the PM can survive long enough to ensure he does not join the same ill-fated club.
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