Is it wrong to kick a person who’s down and out of luck? What about someone who has needlessly saddled you with a monthly mortgage increase of nearly £600? I say find them a corner of hell notably hotter than anyone else’s.
With that in mind, let us bid farewell to the one-time most powerful Black man in British politics, Kwasi Kwarteng, who has announced that he is deserting the ship he helped sink. Like we do when all “great men” transition to ventures anew, now is the time to analyse the “legacy” of “the Black Boris” (as he was called early in his career) to shed light on his vital contributions to British life.
Kwarteng is six feet and four inches of living proof of social mobility in Britain. He moved the right moves, made the right noises and pleased the right people. But, for all that, what do the vapour trails say? There goes the shortest-serving (who didn’t die in service) yet most disastrous chancellor of the exchequer ever, pitied by his peers, hated anew each month by everyone still paying for bricks and mortar.
After the screams subsided and I agreed to my new mortgage under duress, I found myself violently shaking whenever I heard his voice, indeed the voice of any old Etonian. They are the common denominator in all our problems, don’t you see. Could we not conscript our young to fight them?
He was, in his way, a unifying force in Britain, for he united the country against himself and, by extension, his party, with the unintended effect that the Labour party has not had to offer a detailed policy platform, tell the truth, pretend to care, or offer any specific reasons for hope – and nevertheless stands 20 points ahead in the polls.
And he was a role model. Kwarteng helped demonstrate how much youthful academic achievement buttressed by class privilege can breed a dangerously overinflated sense of self-worth. In Britain, like much of the west, we have a habit of creating folklore out of very ordinary people who went to the right conditioning farms (ie, schools) once they go into politics or get a big job that catapults them into the national spotlight. We conflate those youthful academic achievements of theirs (primarily the fruit of socioeconomic benefit) with superhuman prowess.
Kwarteng fascinated us with his appearance on University Challenge, his academic record, his books (which somehow manage to be less popular than mine) and, yes, his attendance at Eton. Sadly, as time passed, he seemed to believe his own hype, to believe his own contrarianism. And so, within 38 painful days, he went up with all the fizz of Cristiano Ronaldo and came down like Giant Haystacks.
So, what does the future hold? In the interview for his next job, what will he cite as his “top three achievements” in the last one? Will he arrive with a PowerPoint and a 38-day plan?
Will GB News come calling? ‘The Wonder of Rwanda Show.’ He did vote for it.
So, farewell and adios, Kwasi: you came, you saw and you left your mark on the country. On all of us, and not in a good way. In a better world, you might be forced into bearing some responsibility for the mess you leave behind, but we are not in that logical place and so there will be something for you in the US or with a hedge fund where a record of damaging lives might even be an asset.
You were a big man, and now you are not, but you are still a child of our time.
Nels Abbey is a writer, broadcaster and former banker. He is the founder of Uppity: The Intellectual Playground
