DIn a guest article in the Financial Times earlier this week, Kwasi Kwarteng promised that the new Truss government would “unashamedly pro growth”. The text was read as an economic and financial policy manifesto for a change of course: Under Truss and Kwarteng, the country will allow higher government deficits, and they want to try to boost the sluggish economy with tax cuts. And Kwarteng is setting the bar high for future growth: Truss “will make it their goal to take us to 2.5 percent trend growth,” he writes. If that were to happen, it would be almost a miracle. How exactly does he intend to do this? His secret so far.
For weeks, ravens have been whistling from the roofs of Westminster that Liz Truss will promote her old friend and comrade-in-arms Kwasi Kwarteng, previously Minister for Economic Affairs, to Minister for Finance (“Chancellor of the Treasury”). Kwarteng will work alongside Truss at the house next door at 11 Downing Street. He is thus given the second most powerful government office in Great Britain. Like Truss, the 47-year-old politician will be the first black man to hold this office. At the same time one of the most educated: In Cambridge he received prizes for Latin and ancient Greek poems as well as for his historical studies.