Kwasi Kwarteng, the former chancellor who oversaw the ill-fated “mini-budget” under the short-lived government of Liz Truss, has said he will not stand again as an MP at the next election.
The MP’s announcement came as a reminder of the debacle, hours before Truss was to launch a rightwing Conservative movement called PopCon, joined by other senior figures from the party
Kwarteng, who represents Spelthorne, in Surrey, said he had told his constituency association on Monday that he would not fight the election.
He tweeted: “It has been an honour to serve the residents of Spelthorne since 2010, and I shall continue to do so for the remainder of my time in Parliament.”
His has been a generally safe Conservative seat, returning a Labour MP only once in more than 100 years, and Kwarteng secured a majority of 18,393 at the last election. More than 80 sitting MPs have announced they will leave parliament at the next election, more than the 74 who retired in 2019. Kwarteng joins dozens of other Tory MPs who have announced that they will not be contesting the election, at a time when current polls indicate that the party faces a wipeout.
Truss and Kwarteng had once been close but the MP, who was sacked in 2022 by her after only 38 days as chancellor, has since made critical comments, such as that she was “not wired” to be prime minister.
“I love her dearly, she’s a great person, very sincere and honest,” he told the Telegraph’s political editor, Ben Riley-Smith, in a book last year. “But if it hadn’t been the mini-budget, she would have blown up on something else”.
There was an unforgiving reaction from many to the news that Kwarteng is to step down from parliament.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips tweeted: “Kwasi Kwarteng made everyone’s mortgages rise, his tenure as chancellor a dangerous embarrassment. I was stood next to him when I received news that my cat had been hit by a car and forever this association for which he is (as best I know) blameless is what I associate with him.”
As chancellor, Kwarteng was accused of delivering a reckless mini-budget for the rich after his £45bn tax-cutting package sent the pound crashing to its lowest level against the dollar in 37 years.
He has since declared thousands of pounds from media appearances and was due to start advising the Australian iron ore miner Fortescue on its clean energy ambitions from last year October – one year after his disastrous mini-budget crashed the pound.
