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Kwasi Kwarteng

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2024-05-19
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2024-05-19
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  1. “Yeah, I wouldn't have put it as bulldy as that, but I'd have said that's an absurd question because we don't kill protesters in London.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “But dead body. No, it can't happen. But anyway, so that's where I disagree with you. I don't think they can be easily categorized as good people or bad people. I think there's always a mix.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I think he does. And actually, we haven't even talked about him, but it wouldn't surprise me if he comes back in some shape or form. Absolutely.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Similarly, I think Theresa May was a little bit more cunning than many people thought. And actually even Boris, you know, for all his exuberance, he genuinely thought he was a force for good. I don't think he probably still does.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, yeah. I mean, all that stuff, the virtue and these are the goodies and these are the baddies. I think that's a bit simplistic. I think there was a lot of virtue in some of the baddies that you think. And I think there was a lot of vice in some of the goodies that you. I wouldn't just characterize them in that sort of sheep and goats way. Well, there's a good book in that. I don't think Liz Truss went in there thinking I'm going to destroy everything. I think she thought she was doing good.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, I think in terms of, I think Blair probably is Blair the first of the list of the last seven? I mean, he was there the longest and probably had the most impact. Contested legacy, but had the most impact. I think Cameron was up there. I think Boris is in a space of his own. I think he had phenomenal skills, but he had flaws, quite deep flaws. And then the others were perhaps less, I don't think Gordon was a great chancellor, but I don't think he had the temperament for the trying to control too much, I think, from what I hear. I have respect for him, though. He's a great mind and powerful intellect. But I don't think temperamentally he was right for the job.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So I think with Liz and what we were trying to do compared to those other leaders, it was in a way too ideological. You lost sight of the practical deliverability of it. When Rab Butler said politics is the art of the possible, I think that is a very important phrase. And I also think the judgment issue, you know, when things go wrong, the church will keep buggering on KBO and having a measure of calmness is really important. And you look at someone like Antony Eden, he was totally brittle and very, very volatile. That's what they describe him. And I think having the temperament just to see things through and be calm, David Cameron was very good at this. I mean, whatever else one says about him, he did have a good temperament. He was not very excitable. And I think that those things of judgment and thinking about politics as the art of the possible, absolutely fundamental.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Now, where have I had that? But also looking forward, I mean, I find. In a way, I'm sad to leave the House of Commons because I think this is going to be the most interesting period. I feel like I'm walking because you left just before this incredibly interesting period. And I feel that's one way. But if Labour do get in, how they respond to this crisis that we're facing. And as I keep saying, it's a global crisis. It's not, I mean, in Britain, we've got particularly dramatic features, but it's something which is pretty commonplace across the world. That's interesting to me.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I've got lots of books. I mean, I can't, I don't have enough time to write them. I mean, I want to write a book on the Empire, which is called Master of the World on Congo. I'd like to write something on politics, not just about my crazy experience.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Generally, well, actually, what name, but I mean, you say that, but what George Osborne did was what Alistair Darling said he was going to do if he won the election. That's basically where we were. And actually what I wanted to do, and maybe you're right. I did want to...”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Wild that actually that you. Politician, you're a bit of a provocateur. Yes, I hadn't made that connection. But I mean, I like, I think that was, and we, again, looking back at our experience as MPs when we came in in 2010, all we were talking about was how long is the coalition going to last? I'd go on radio programs. And we weren't talking about politics. We talked a bit about tuition fees. And then there was this whole sort of debate about austerity, which was a kind of slightly artificial debate.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “They're quite journalistic in nature. Neil Ferguson's like that was my Andrew Roberts. It's like George III is a genius and a hero. I mean, there's that line in John May and Arcane said, you know, words have to be a little wild because they're the first battalions that storm the Towers of Thorn. You're definitely a little wild. Isn't that your problem? Talk about writing.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Like, I mean, lots of them, I consider friends. I mean, I love Seabag Montefiori. He's a great sort of journalist, actually, of history. I think he's a very colorful historian. I used to read, and these people I was reading, they're still very active. I was reading as an undergraduate Neil Ferguson, Andrew Roberts. Right wing, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seabag, I mean, he's not really any wing. But on the left, you've got, I mean, there's a guy called, what's his name, Tim Schneider? Do you know him? Yeah, he's my colleague. He's a colleague. Yeah, he's very good. He's a hero. Back in the day, EP Thompson, does anyone read him now?”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Absolutely. He's not really. But that's like in any political thing. I mean, you mentioned Iraq. It's exactly the same. There are people who are still fuming about that. But I don't think time, I think the new government, if there is a new government, I think the problems of growth, a lot of the fundamental problems will still be around. And I think people will look back and say, okay, they screwed up the delivery, but actually we get what they were trying to do. My life will move on. That's one of the reasons I think we should probably leave politics and do something else because I think, I don't know what Liz Truss is trying to do.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “But I think there's a phenomenon about referendums. You basically have everything's binary and polarized. If we'd had this debate, and we probably did in 2014, I would have been a sort of mild Brexiteer, and you probably would have been a mild Romania. The positions were much more nuanced. But when you get into this sort of binary, you know, the red team versus the blue team, all the positions become harder. So people that I knew were kind of moderate remainers became extreme remainers. People I knew as moderate Brexiteers who wanted the customs union. You know, people like Dan Hannan were quite happy with. They were just interested in the sovereignty bit. They became hardline Brexiteers. So the positions hardened. And so, of course, you were in this crazy world where Brexit was either 100% right or 100% wrong.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “We've made them worse. We'd be dealing with growth. We'd be dealing with the size of the public sector. We'd be dealing with environmental challenges. But we've made the worst. It's not clear to me that they are worse. I mean, if you look at Germany, our growth is exactly the same.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I can't say, but you see, what I don't like about the sort of Remainer position is this idea, and I don't think it's your position, but some people have this, that if we stayed in the EU, everything would be We'd be dealing with exactly the same problems”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think there was a middle way. I think he could have distinguished himself from the leaders, but he needed a positive vision.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “In that big and small ways, but then, of course, the Sunakites will blame the trust sites, the trust sites will blame Rishi, the Borisites. Do you see what I mean? There's all that factionism But actually, they're all responsible because Rishi Sunak, if we do lose, he can't walk away from it because he's been leader for two years. You can blame the other law up to a point. But he took the leadership. And I was very struck by the fact that he said, oh, he inherited a mess. I mean, could you imagine Wister Churchill saying, oh, I've inherited a mess in 1940. You get on with it. You don't blame the other.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “What are your worries? So, what happens, and you've seen this, you've been fighting these battles. You know, what happens when parties lose is very simply, one faction says we weren't right-wing or weren't left-wing enough. And the other lot says, We got to be more left wing centre, or we've got to move to the center. And it's a very crude debate. It's a silly debate. And it's very nasty because everyone will be blaming each other. My own view is that all the leaders since May have contributed to this in their small ways.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I can see why they think that. I don't think that I'm going to be campaigning for the Tories and all the rest of it. But I can see why a swing of floating voter can think actually we've seen that. Let's move on.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “So, my view on this is that there's a pendulum. We've got first past the post, there are two main parties, and there's always a pendulum. And when it goes, it goes. And I think we could well be at that point. I don't think it's impossible for the Tories to win, but I think it's unlikely. But actually, even if we had the most charismatic leader ever, I think the pendulum when it swings, it swings. And I think people have said we've had enough of these guys. Let's let the other people go.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “He's not quite that. I mean, he's not, you know, he's okay, but he's not gifted in that way. Very analytical, very bright. And what I was really impressed with about him was his temperament. And that comes from all sorts of things. That comes from his Hindu faith, his family, his man of means. We can't be coy about that. He's got his wealthy. So he's got that sort of stability that comes from that, that he projects. His problem, and this is a problem for the party, is that no one really knows what he's about. And that's why I think we're struggling. Or one of the reasons why we're struggling. On top of all the Boris and the Liz and all that stuff.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So Rishi soon had been energy minister and we'd had all sorts of tussles about tax. I mean, the thing that I, and I was just in Aberdeen last month, you know, the so-called energy profits levy, which I know is very popular and many of your listeners will appreciate that, I think will have very damaging consequences to the North Sea. And you already see this with the S&P green tension. The S&P realize that if they do anything to harm the oil industry in the North Sea, lots of jobs and there'll be lots of bad economic impact. And I thought that was wrong and argued against that. And actually Rishi, temperamentally, I think is much better placed. And I've always personally got on with him”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “So that's the conspiracy theory stuff I don't buy. And then the second point was that struck me was people very close to her saying, this isn't going to end well, which was interesting.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Think her view is a problem, her issue is to try and sell these books so she's trying to generate noise to sell books. It's not a great JK Rowling doesn't need to rest and quiet at night in terms of the book sales. But I think that the point she's trying to say when she went to America, there's very much more of a market. For that sort of grievance politics, which I don't like. You know, it's a conspiracy, it's the deep state. They're against you because you're white or they get against you because you're a conservative or they're against you because you're Christian. And I think she's trying to feed into some of that. So when she said they should abolish the UN, I mean. At that point, I was like, You've been foreign secretary. How on earth can you publicly say that? And I was concerned.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Conspiracy theory. Whenever someone says this is a conspiracy, this is a deep state. I just turn off because human beings don't work like that. They're not smart enough.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “So the two things that I hate are the conspiracy theory stuff. I mean, we've talked about history, all our lives, adult lives”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, and the husband said it's all going to end in tears. Well, thank you, Hugh. Thanks for telling me. And then the election agent. Your own election agent. Saying to you, Well, yes, you should stand for Lida, but it would be better if you came second. And I thought that was just remarkable. I mean, if my election agent had said that to me, there'd be real crisis of self-doubt.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “There's going to be something but ideologically I was very much where she was but then you don't know what people are going to do maybe you do know I didn't see it but you don't know how they react and actually the funny thing about her book was that both her husband and her election agent said it was going to end badly I mean, there's a bid in the book”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Bored in the thing. Who we should have got back from reckless and catastrophic decisions. And obviously, that's the thing. You're in this world where you've got to make quite snap, almost binary decisions. And I knew that there were candidates that I liked that weren't standing. And there were three essential candidates, Penny Morden, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak. And I made the calculation that Liz Truss would be better. And somehow you always imagine, like with Boris, it was the same. You always think they're going to be reined in or...”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I think you're right. I think the temperament. And what I've learned is temperament is probably the most important thing. It's more important than almost an experience, actually. Because what was extraordinary about this. But what was extraordinary about her was that on paper, she was the most experienced, she'd been in cabinet for, what, eight years, from 2014?”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “she had the right temperament for it and I've said that because you've got to have a very cool temperament you know when when things and things do go very badly wrong you need to keep an even an even temper”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “She's a really good friend of yours. Yeah, she was Well, look, I think I don't agree with that, but I think there were definitely. Would”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “They were kind of quite surprised. I mean, it was a real, and again, it was the sort of style that was a very, very bold statement. And people were like, really? Wow. Oh God. That was the reaction. Why?”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Yeah, and you're not cutting spending. Again, it's a difficult thing to explain, but you're reducing the rate of growth of spending.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Mixed record, but sometimes it has my big problem with this, looking back, because at the time I signed up to it and I made a statement and I confess that, but when we were thinking about this, is that you can't just reduce taxes willy-nilly without showing some restraint on the other side of the ledger. And we should have done this at the same time. So what Jeremy Hunt came up with in the November, his statement on basically the spending envelope, should have been put together with the mini-budget. And then I think.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “So that's my growth is the key. Because if you don't get growth, you've got a cake and you're just simply just trying to slice it in different ways. And it's not sufficient to pay for the kinds of services you'd expect in a 21st century modern economy.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “British economy, okay, it went wrong, but what's the big idea? We haven't discussed this, but it's a problem that racial reuse will, and across the Western world, we're facing, certainly in Europe, is that we have a public sector that's growing, let's say at 5% a year, order of magnitude. And we have growth figures that are between 0% and 1%. And the logic of that, if your costs are going up in terms of the money you're spending, is going up much faster than the money you're getting in through tax and through the size of the economy. You essentially have to raise more tax by lifting up rates. And of course, that damages growth. That's the theory. So that's the doom loop. And even I heard Rachel Reeves use that phrase. So the problem is how do you get out of that doom loop? How do you actually grow the economy so that you can get tax revenues to pay for public services? And as I say, this is a problem that every country in the Western world is facing.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I think it was difficult. But then I made a very deliberate statement that that was the only thing because people were worried that we were going to clear everyone out. And I said, no, it's just Tom You know, just to show that we're doing a new, this is a new chapter. But I don't think that was what caused the whole thing to fall apart. I think the pace of it, the fact that it was unbalanced, we didn't have spending reductions. Because we'd have had an almighty political route, but at least that would have been more credible than saying essentially we can have our cake and eat it.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “No, I think that was a difficult decision, but I think that happened to happen because what we haven't talked about was the whole Treasury itself. The Treasury is essentially almost like an accounting function. So money comes in, money goes out, and it doesn't have any real mandate to drive growth. And she was very clear about that. And that totally was in agreement with her about. We had to sort of gear the department towards more growth.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Look at the other civil servants. Yeah, there was a style that was, and I think she brought a lot of that to the top job. And I think you can, the system can protect you when you're a Secretary of State. But when you're at the top of this machine. You're totally exposed”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Well, I said after the mini-budget, just slow everything down. And she said, well, I've only got two years. I said, you'll have two months if you carry on like this. And I actually think, and I've said this, I think that if it had been for the mini-budget, there would have been other things. I mean, it was the fracking vote that did for her. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. But again, there was that chaos. The whips didn't know whether it was a three-line confidence vote.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “He felt very febrile. That was what, and dangerous is not the right word, but it feels slightly uncomfortable. And I never thought this is going to last. I just thought.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “It's like anything in life. If you drive a car at 150 miles an hour, that's a lot more dangerous than if you drive it at 20 miles an hour. There is a risk with speed.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “We could blame, we can blame. I wouldn't blame them. I mean, I think we were responsible. I mean, as a political leader, you've got to put your hand up and say, I was responsible, not for everything, but I was responsible. And that's one of the things in Liz's book. I'm not hearing.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “And the government bonds were what's called long dated. So they're 20 years to redemption. And they borrowed money. And of course, when interest rates go up, the price of the bonds goes down. So what they were holding had totally collapsed in value. And essentially they needed to be bailed out. And what the Bank of England said, okay, well, open this window so you can borrow the money and we'll support you or we'll buy back the bonds. But the window will close on the 14th of October, which is the day I was sacked. Because the Prime Minister was terrified that when the market opened on the Monday the 17th, the bank wasn't providing any support and there would have been a massive freeform. So you had to signal.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Have they? Yeah. Okay. I'll listen to that. But so what happened was that there were these funds that had borrowed money essentially to buy government bonds.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “In various ways. So I put my hand up, did an interview with Koonsberg where I don't remember exactly what words I said, but they thought, you know, he's gone mad. He's doubling down. He's going to cut taxes more. So there was that the markets were reacting to that. And what killed the government was the guilt market. So the currency was doing all sorts of things. What happened with the guilt market was, and it's sort of complex, but I might as well try and explain as best I can.”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “But they stuck with that, and I don't think Labour will change that. And then, of course, we said, well, if we're going to reduce the top rate of tax, we should reduce the standard rate. And we took one P off and that cost $6 billion. So all of these things added, so the $35 billion of unfunded tax cuts ended up being at $45 billion. Then you put that on top of the energy intervention and you're spending a ton of money. And there's no...”

    2024-05-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 74. Kwasi Kwarteng: Liz Truss, becoming Chancellor, and Britain on the brink (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source