FORMER chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has said that he found out via Twitter that he was being sacked.
The MP for Spelthorne was sacked following the announcement of his mini-Budget while Liz Truss was still prime minister.
Speaking to Camilla Tominey on GB News, Kwarteng admitted his financial plans should have followed a “more methodical approach” and that not involving the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was “probably a mistake”.
Reflecting on his time in government, Kwarteng said: “I’m fine actually, I look back on my time in government and I wasn’t just chancellor, I was business secretary before that, and it was a great privilege to be in that position. I was sacked, but that’s politics, there are ups and downs.
‘I’m not in the business of apologising for everything...' In an exclusive interview with @CamillaTominey, Kwasi Kwarteng said he ‘regrets what happened’ but refused to apologise about the rise in mortgage rates. 🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYGZwF pic.twitter.com/ecaV4qujLl
— GB News (@GBNEWS) March 19, 2023
“I found out on Twitter on the way to Downing Street. That was an odd feeling because as I remember it was Steve Swinford from The Times and formerly The Telegraph.
“My special adviser said to me ‘have you seen Steven’s tweet’. And I said ‘no’ and she passed it on to me and it said Kwasi Kwarteng has been or will be sacked. That was pretty definitive.”
The mini-Budget sent the value of the pound tumbling while simultaneously pushing up mortgage rates last autumn.
Kwarteng said that he “regrets what happened” but refused to apologise to those who felt the effects of his ill-fated plans.
He said: “I said publicly, I’m not in the business of apologising for everything. I mean, if politicians apologise for everything that goes wrong, then we’ll be here for the rest of time. I regret what happened.
“I think we should have been more methodical. I don’t think everything I did was right. I look back and think, what could we have done better.
“But I’m very much trying to look forward to actually fighting for the low tax economy that I want to see.”
