Kwasi Kwarteng

Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng’s background

Kwasi Kwarteng was born in London in 1975. The son of parents from Ghana who had emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, Kwasi was an outstanding student, winning one of the top scholarships to Eton College, where he won the Newcastle Scholarship, the school’s most distinguished academic prize in philosophy and ethics, in his penultimate year.

Kwasi went on to win further awards and prizes in Classics and History at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, before completing his PhD in economic history at Cambridge. His time as a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard exposed him to US politics in which he has maintained a keen interest ever since.

After years as a financial analyst, Kwasi was elected as one of the first black Conservative MPs in 2010. He has represented Spelthorne in this capacity since then and, from 2015, he has held a number of positions right at the heart of the British Government, particularly regarding Brexit, Energy and the Net Zero economy and, latterly, he held the highest responsibility for economic policy.

Kwasi was made a Minister in the Department for Exiting the EU I 2018. He was responsible for the Withdrawal Agreement, and spent 10 months immersed in the parliamentary detail of the Bill.

When Boris Johnson won the General Election in 2019, Kwasi was appointed to Privy Council attending Cabinet, and he became the first black Conservative MP to attend Cabinet as Minister of State when he was appointed as Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

In his trailblazing career, Kwasi became the first black Conservative MP to serve as a Secretary of State when he was appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in January 2021. In this role, Kwasi was responsible for not only for energy policy, but also for deregulation of business and UK research and development. While serving as Secretary of State, Kwasi instituted annual auctions for offshore wind and helped devise the first UK Innovation Strategy, published in 2021. Kwasi also managed to drive nuclear investment with the signing of the Sizewell C deal.

On 6th September 2022 Kwasi was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, the first black MP to hold this role. After a turbulent five weeks when the mini-budget was given the thumbs down by the markets, Kwasi was sacked by Liz Truss, who subsequently resigned six days later. The mini budget remains controversial, and represents the attempt of the then government to get growth back on the agenda.

Growth, together with the need to decarbonise economies, is arguably the biggest challenge faced by Western economies today. There are very few people in the world who have had such extensive experience in climate finance and the drive to net zero.

In addition to his active career in politics, Kwasi is a widely known historian. His books include Ghosts of Empire (2011), War & Gold (2014) and Thatcher’s Trial (2015).