Kwarteng was sacked as chancellor last month by the then prime minister after less than six weeks in the job after the government’s £45bn tax cuts caused economic turmoil, with the government’s borrowing costs soaring and the pound to fall to a 37-year low. Truss subsequently resigned after 45 days in office, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history. In his first interview since leaving office, Kwarteng told TalkTV: “After the mini budget we were going at breakneck speed and I said, you know, we have to slow down, slow down. He said, “Well, I’ve only got two years,” and I said, “You’ll have two months if you keep it up.” And that is, I’m afraid, what happened.” He added: “I think the Prime Minister was of the view that we needed to move things along quickly. But I think it was too quick.” Kwarteng was Britain’s shortest-serving chancellor since 1970 and was replaced by Jeremy Hunt. He said Truss was “very emotional” when she sacked him as chancellor and added she first learned of his sacking via a tweet as she traveled to a Downing Street meeting. Kwarteng said: “I can’t remember if she actually shed tears, but she was very emotional and it was hard to do. “I think she honestly thought this was the right thing to do to buy her more time to get her premiership on the right track. “I disagreed, obviously. I thought that if chancellors are sacked by the prime minister for doing what the prime minister did, that leaves the prime minister in a very weak position.” On his disastrous mini-budget, Kwarteng acknowledged “there was turmoil and I regret that”. He said: “I really feel sorry for people who are going through this difficult time when it comes to re-mortgaging. “I think it’s a really stressful thing to do.” MP for Spelthorne, Surrey, added: “I am responsible. I won’t wash my hands [of] the. “I was Chancellor of the Economy. I was also part of the top team. But looking back, I think we could have taken a much more measured approach.” But he said Hunt and the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, could not blame the Truss government for the black hole in the nation’s finances. “The only thing they could possibly accuse us of is that rates and interest rates have come down and gold rates have come down,” he said. “The black hole and the structural problems are already there. I mean, it wasn’t like the national debt was created by Liz Truss’s 44 days in government.”
