Ekow Nelson
Many hoped Britain would elect its first non- white Prime Minister after Boris Johnson. It may instead get its first Black Chancellor of the Exchequer, one- door (and possibly one-step) removed from PM. But who exactly is he?
A few weeks ago, I wondered aloud whether Britain would elect Rishi Sunak as its first non-white Prime Minister. Were the decision up to the elected members of parliament, Sunak would be cruising to No. 10 Downing Street. Alas, this is unlikely to happen.
As the British Conservative Party’s leadership campaign narrows and its membership of older and largely white men and women cast the deciding vote, it is becoming clear that Liz Truss will be Britain’s next Prime Minister on 5th September 2022.
Avenging Johnson’s fall
The cavalier and sometimes shambolic style of Boris Johnson may not have endeared him to much of the establishment. The voters may have had enough of his compulsive mendacity and tendency to downplay his habitual rule breaking.
But among grassroots supporters of the Tory Party, the Prime Minister remains as popular as ever. And they are out to seek revenge on the candidate viewed as the ‘assassin’ – Rishi Sunak – whose resignation from cabinet, along with other ministerial exits, precipitated Johnson’s downfall.
That this is an inaccurate characterisation of what happened, does not matter. That all of this mess was of Johnson’s own making, is of little interest to much of the membership. They are just determined to reward Liz Truss for being a loyal lieutenant and out to punish Sunak, whom they also blame for the parlous state of the British economy, even if their beloved Johnson has been the head of Government and First Lord of the Treasury since July 2019.
Who is behind the leading candidate?
Many of the Prime Minister’s cabinet have all lined up behind Truss. The most energetic among them is the Business and Energy Secretary, the Rt. Hon. Kwasi Kwarteng, Truss’s most visible cabinet supporter who first introduced her initially wobbly campaign to the public. Even when she was trailing badly in the early stages of the contest among MPs, he stood by her and made her case for the leadership vigorously
He successfully positioned an insider as the insurgent candidate. If Sunak is the out of touch technocrat, beholden to the economic orthodoxy of an unreconstructed Treasury, Truss is the radical reformist who would take on the establishment and follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher.
On the verge of a huge victory, attention has now turned to who Liz Truss would appoint to the most important offices of state. Of these, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the grandest and most coveted.
Will she appoint the first Black Chancellor?
If Truss is successful, it is rumoured, indeed expected, that she would appoint her consiglieri, Kwasi Kwarteng, as the next occupant of No.11 Downing Street.
That would also make Kwarteng the first Black person to occupy the office. Whatever your politics, this would be a moment of pride for Black people in Britain, and for Ghanaians in particular, from whose stock he hails.
His father, Albert, an economist and barrister mother, Charlotte, emigrated from Ghana to the United Kingdom as students in the 1960s. But everything else about their son is quintessentially English and of the posh kind.
Early beginnings of the putative Chancellor
Kwarteng came to national attention when he appeared on University Challenge – a popular highbrow TV quiz programme – in 1995, as part of Cambridge University’s Trinity College team. He dazzled the audience with his competitive streak, muttering the f-word when he stumbled over questions, which prompted one national newspaper to rename the quiz show, ‘Rudiversity’ Challenge. With his agile mind and expansive knowledge, he single-handedly helped Trinity College win the competition that year.
He had been one of 14 King’s Scholars at the elite Eton College where Boris Johnson, David Cameron and 18 other British Prime Ministers were also educated. He graduated from Cambridge University with a First in History and Classics and twice won the prestigious Browne medal – a gold medal in Latin and Greek poetry competition – endowed to the University of Cambridge in 1774 by the English Physician, Sir William Browne.
After a brief spell at Harvard on a Kennedy scholarship, he returned to Cambridge to complete a PhD in economic history. His thesis was on ‘Political thought of the recoinage crisis of 1695-7’. As crisis that led to monetary contraction, unemployment and civil unrest and ultimately laid the foundations for the move away from the bi-metallic monetary system to the development of fiat money.
A slow rise to the top
Kwarteng joined JP Morgan as an investment banker and became MP for the constituency of Spelthorne in the south of England in 2010. Almost immediately, he established his political positioning with the publication of ‘Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity’, a Brexiteer’s manifesto, co-authored with the radical set of the 2010 intake of MPs, including Liz Truss and Dominic Raab, who incidentally is backing Rishi Sunak.
Truss, Raab and Priti Patel (another of the co-authors of the ‘manifesto’), have all gone on to occupy two of the great offices of state – Raab and Truss at The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Patel, the Home Office. Even Rishi Sunak, elected five years later in 2015, became Chancellor. Yet the most cerebral of the radical bunch of 2010 languished on the backbenches and later in middle ranking ministerial positions, until Boris Johnson elevated him to the cabinet in 2019.
His time may yet have come
With his old friend Liz Truss about to become Britain’s third female Prime Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng’s time for very high office beckons.
If appointed, he would be following in the footsteps of great British Statesmen including William Pitt the Younger, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill, Stafford Cripps, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Macmillan, James Callaghan, Nigel Lawson, and Gordon Brown.
Many of these men went on to become Prime Minister. But I am not making any predictions yet!
© Ekow Nelson
August 2022, Abu Dhabi
reimagining 
Reblogged this on The Ade Sawyerr Blog.