Acquaintances of Kwasi Kwarteng, the recently appointed secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, are wondering why it took him 10 years to become the first black British Conservative to run his own government department.
On paper, Kwarteng already had the necessary attributes when he arrived in parliament in 2010. An Eton scholarship, a Cambridge PhD, a City career and a string of books on history and politics that brandished his rightwing and intellectual credentials.
But former colleagues have said he also has a Boris Johnson-like tendency towards impulsiveness and free-thinking that occasionally gets him into trouble.
The MP for Spelthorne failed to disguise his contempt for David Cameron’s touchy-feely approach, which put his career on hold while his peers flourished, and he has occasionally wooed a warlord and oil barons when others might have walked away.
One former minister said it would be tough for Kwarteng, a free marketeer, to join a government in the midst of the biggest economic intervention since the war.
“Kwasi has a huge and quick brain, but he is also restless. He will flourish if he can knuckle down and subdue what he really thinks. But that is a big if.”
Kwarteng, 45, who is of Ghanaian heritage, was born in Waltham Forest, east London. He was sent away to boarding school by his economist father and barrister mother at the age of eight.
At Eton he was seen by fellow pupils as an earnest and thoughtful boy who on occasions was seen discussing TS Eliot with fellow pupils.
Although trained as a serious historian at Trinity – and part of a winning University Challenge team on television in 1995, when he famously muttered “fuck” while trying to recall an answer – in parliament he transformed into a professional politician whose eyes were firmly on government.
But he faltered after falling foul of Cameron and George Osborne. In 2013 he advocated cutting the VAT rate to 15%, funded by adding the charge to children’s clothes and food, reportedly upsetting Downing Street. Then he criticised the chancellor’s Help to Buy housing scheme.
One colleague said he could not help himself. “Kwasi really did not rate their politics or their intellect. And they were a little intimidated by him,” he said.
In 2012, he and other Brexiters from the parliamentary newcomers – Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Liz Truss and Chris Skidmore – published Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity, which included a passage seen as evidence he was ready to take on the unions over workers’ rights.
“The British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor,” it said.
He clocked up many air miles on fact-finding missions paid for by Tory donors and foreign governments. Kwarteng defended the principle of visiting foreign autocratic regimes, saying it offered a greater chance of influencing their behaviour than “shouting from the sidelines without ever setting foot in these places”.
In January 2017, Kwarteng argued in favour of the UK and the US backing Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan warlord, and dropping support for the Government of National Accord (GNA), noting that Haftar controlled much of the country’s oil.
“Such a move would not strictly conform to the ideals of ‘democratic state building’ but it might provide a stable government to give Libya some control of its borders,” he wrote in the Evening Standard.
Three months later, Kwarteng was photographed shaking the hand of Haftar after being flown to Libya by the Conservative Middle East Forum. Haftar is now being sued in the US for $50m (£36.6m), accused of war crimes including starvation sieges that forced families to eat grass and tree bark to survive.
Kwarteng accepted funds from fossil fuel investors and advisers during the last general election campaign. The Guardian has previously disclosed that these included £7,500 from IPGL, a holding company with a 40% stake in Cluff Energy Africa, a London-based company that prospects for oil in west Africa. IPGL is owned by the former Conservative party treasurer Michael Spencer.
Kwarteng also received £4,000 from Majid Jafar, the chief executive of Crescent Petroleum, a privately held company with oil and gas operations in the Middle East. Jafar was a contemporary of Kwarteng at Eton. At the time, a spokesperson for Kwarteng said there was no conflict of interest and that all donations were in line with the ministerial code.
Kwarteng has built up a reputation for being good company among senior Conservatives and has dated several senior party women, including the former home secretary Amber Rudd. He married Harriet Edwards, a City solicitor, in 2019.
Kwarteng lunched Brexiters at the Carlton Club, where he would reportedly enjoy a bottle of the house bordeaux.
The diarist Sasha Swire, wife of the former MP Hugo Swire, described him as “essentially an academic; he is enthusiastic and bombastic, and barely draws breath.”
Kwarteng consistently backed Johnson to become leader and was rewarded with a job as energy minister in 2017, and so he will already know some of the workings of his department. For clues at to what he might do in office, Britannia Unchained said that in Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea “a combination of private enterprise and effective government policy has enabled economic growth rates which we can only dream about in the west.”
In one of his first acts as business secretary, Kwarteng told MPs last week that he was reviewing how EU employment rights protections could be changed after Brexit.
He said the plan was to maintain “a really good high standard for workers in high employment and a high-wage economy. That’s what I’m focusing on. And so the idea that we’re trying to whittle down standards, that’s not at all plausible or true.”
