Kwasi Kwarteng is a British politician serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2022. He previously served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2021 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Spelthorne in northern Surrey since 2010. Kwarteng was appointed on November 16, 2018, as Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union, following the resignation of Suella Braverman. Following the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019, Kwarteng was promoted to Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, attending Cabinet as part of the role.
Early life
| Name | Kwasi Kwarteng |
| Net Worth | $3 million |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Age | 47 years |
| Height | 1.74m |
How Old Is Kwasi Kwarteng?
Kwasi Kwarteng whose birth name is Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng was born on May 26, 1975 (age 47 years) in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, United Kingdom. He is the son of a Ghanaian parent and is the only child of Alfred K. Kwarteng and Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, who had emigrated from Ghana as students in the 1960s. His mother is a barrister and his father is an economist in the Commonwealth Secretariat. After starting school at a state primary school, Kwarteng attended Colet Court, an independent preparatory school in London, where he won the Harrow History Prize in 1988.
Kwarteng then went to Eton College, where he was a King’s Scholar and was awarded the prestigious Newcastle Scholarship prize. He read classics and history at Trinity College, Cambridge, achieving a first in both subjects and twice winning the Browne Medal. He was a member of the team which won the University Challenge in 1995 (in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994). Whilst at Cambridge, he was a member of the University Pitt Club and has since returned to visit.
Which University Did Kwasi Kwarteng Attend?
He attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship and then earned a Ph.D. in economic history from the University of Cambridge in 2000. Before becoming a member of parliament, Kwarteng worked as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and as a financial analyst at JPMorgan Chase and other investment banks. He wrote a book, Ghosts of Empire, about the legacy of the British Empire, published by Bloomsbury in 2011. He also co-authored Gridlock Nation with Jonathan Dupont in 2011, about the causes of and solutions to traffic congestion in Britain.
Kwasi Kwarteng’s Political career
Kwasi Kwarteng was the Conservative candidate in the constituency of Brent East at the 2005 general election after being considered “a rising star on the right of the party”. He finished in third place behind the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather (who had won the seat in a 2003 by-election) and Yasmin Qureshi of the Labour Party. Kwarteng was chairman of the Bow Group from 2005–06. In 2006, The Times suggested that he could become the first black Conservative cabinet minister. He was sixth on the Conservative list of candidates for the London Assembly in the 2008 London Assembly election but was not elected, as the Conservatives claimed only three London-wide list seats.
Kwarteng was selected as the Conservative candidate for Spelthorne at an open primary in January 2010 after the incumbent Conservative MP, David Wilshire, became mired in controversy arising from the Parliamentary expenses scandal and announced that he would be retiring from Parliament at the next general election. Kwarteng won the seat with 22,261 votes (numerically more votes but a lower percentage of the vote than his predecessor). Kwarteng did not vote on the backbench EU Referendum Bill in October 2011. He irritated Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in 2013 by criticizing the Help to Buy housing scheme as inflationary.
In 2014, his book War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures and Debt was published. It is a history of capital and the enduring ability of money, when combined with speculation, to ruin societies. The book has been translated into Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. In 2015 his next book, Thatcher’s Trial: Six Months That Defined a Leader, was published. Kwasi Kwarteng was re-elected at the 2015 general election with an increased majority. Kwarteng backed the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 referendum.
Following the 2017 general election, Kwarteng was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. On 16 November 2018, Kwarteng replaced Suella Braverman as a minister in the Department for Exiting the EU. Kwarteng was a vocal supporter of Boris Johnson in the 2016 and 2019 Conservative Party leadership elections. After Johnson’s victory in the latter election, on 25 July 2019 Kwarteng was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy along with Jo Johnson, brother of the Prime Minister. He was appointed to the Privy Council on the same day.
In September 2019, Kwarteng was criticized by former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell for stating on The Andrew Neil Show: “I’m not saying this, but, many people are saying that the judges are biased” after the Court of Session ruled that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was illegal. Kwarteng added: “The extent to which lawyers and judges are interfering in politics is something that concerns many people.”
On 8 January 2021, as part of a mini-reshuffle, Kwasi Kwarteng replaced Alok Sharma as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He became the second black man to serve in the Cabinet, the first being Paul Boateng, who served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and the first black Conservative. He also became the first black man to run a government department by being appointed to the level of Secretary of State. He has committed his department to cut global emissions to stop climate change. In May 2021, Kwarteng opened a new electric car battery plant in Oxfordshire.
Kwasi Kwarteng was criticized in March 2021 for dissolving the Industrial Strategy Council, the advisory body seeking to regenerate Britain’s regions. In the days after the COP26 climate summit, Kwarteng met oil industry bosses to encourage them to continue drilling in the North Sea. In January 2022, while on a trip to Saudi Arabia, Kwarteng accepted flights and hospitality from Saudi Aramco, the majority state-owned energy firm. Kwarteng visited Saudi Arabia on 29 January. He was flown by Aramco to Dammam on 30 January and then gifted an overnight stay at the firm’s guesthouses within their residential compound. The next day, 31 January, Kwarteng was flown by Aramco to Jubail, and then Riyadh. He returned to the UK on 1 February.
Kwarteng was also gifted a £300 Lenovo tablet. The BEIS department transparency data revealed that Kwarteng traveled to Saudi Arabia on a commercial flight costing the taxpayer £4430. He also visited Aramco’s Shaybah oil field with the Saudi energy minister, although this was not logged in BEIS transparency records. Many politicians criticized Kwarteng for taking the Saudi state’s hospitality, particularly in light of their human rights record, while others have raised concern about whether he has broken the ministerial code.
He was earmarked by Boris Johnson to be dismissed as Business Secretary during a planned cabinet reshuffle in June 2022, something that left him “very upset”. During the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, Kwarteng and Liz Truss were said to have drawn up a pact to make him Chancellor of the Exchequer if she became prime minister.
Other roles
From August 2021, high European wholesale natural gas prices caused some smaller domestic suppliers in the United Kingdom to go out of business. In September 2021, the fuel supply crisis caused serious disruption to the supply of road fuel. Kwarteng said that “There is no question of the lights going out, of people being unable to heat their homes. There will be no three-day working week, or a throwback to the 1970s.”
Kwasi Kwarteng also said: “The government will not be bailing out failed companies. There will be no rewards for failure or mismanagement.” Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow business secretary, accused Kwarteng of being “complacent about the situation we are facing” as though it “was normal for a number of suppliers to go down each winter. But what we are dealing with is far from normal – 800,000 customers losing their suppliers yesterday alone, 1.5 million in the last six weeks.”
Kwarteng was an outspoken supporter of Owen Paterson, who had been found by the Commons Select Committee on Standards to have committed “an egregious case of paid advocacy”. In reaction to this ruling, Kwarteng called for the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, to “decide her position”. The government later U-turned its support for Paterson, who resigned as an MP. The opposition called for an investigation into Kwarteng, claiming he may have breached the ministerial code.
On 15 November 2021, Kwasi Kwarteng published a letter of apology to Stone, in which he said he “did not mean to express doubt about your ability to discharge your role” and apologized for “any upset or distress my choice of words may have caused”. However, Kwarteng was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss on 6 September 2022. A supporter of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) in the 2016 referendum, Kwarteng is considered a member of the right wing of the Conservative Party.
Books
The author of Ghosts of Empire (2011), a book about the legacy of the British Empire, Kwarteng’s views on colonialism have been described as “nuanced”. Kwarteng has argued that many supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and critics of British imperialism have “a very kind of cartoon-like view” of the past, arguing: “So within that time and geography there’s a huge amount of variety, different cultures and different time periods and getting a sensitivity to that is hugely important and I think a lot of the debate around Black Lives Matter and imperialism or colonialism has a very kind of cartoon-like view of what was happening over centuries across a quarter of the world.”
In August 2012, Kwarteng co-authored a book with four fellow MPs titled Britannia Unchained. The book argues for a radical shrinking of the welfare state in order “to return it to the contributory principle envisioned by its founder Sir William Beveridge – that you get benefits in return for contributions”.
Who Is Kwasi Kwarteng’s Wife?
Kwasi Kwarteng is married to Harriet Edwards, they had their wedding in December 2019. His wife is a City solicitor Harriet Edwards. Their daughter was born on 15 October 2021. He has lived in Bayswater, and in January 2022 purchased a house in Greenwich. Kwarteng is described by friends as an “intensely private” person. He was previously in a relationship with former Conservative Home Secretary Amber Rudd. As of mid-2022, Kwasi Kwarteng and his wife Harriet Edwards are still married and living a happy life with their daughter.
Kwasi Kwarteng net worth
How much is Kwasi Kwarteng worth? Kwasi Kwarteng’s net worth is estimated at around $3 million. His primary source of income is from his career as a politician. Kwasi Kwarteng’s salary per month with other career earnings is over $450,000 dollars annually. He is one of the richest and most influential politicians in the United Kingdom. His successful career has earned him some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy car trips. Kwasi Kwarteng stands at an appealing height of 1.74m and has a good body weight which suits his personality.
