Liz Truss’ Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng admitted he and the Prime Minister “blew it” with their disastrous mini-budget and said his senior team “got carried away”.
Kwarteng said his biggest regret about his time as Chancellor was that he was “too impatient”.
His comments mark a huge U-turn from his stance when he was still in government, when he fiercely defended the mini-budget and told the UK that “there is more to come”.
September’s mini-budget proposed tens of billions of pounds in tax cuts but was completely underfunded, causing market turbulence and a fall in the pound to a record low against the dollar.
Kwasi Kwarteng has admitted that he and the Prime Minister “blew it” with their disastrous mini-budget.
Liz Truss’s allies previously accused Kwasi Kwarteng of “rewriting history” after he claimed she warned her she was going too far too fast.
Mr Kwarteng added: “People got carried away, including myself. There was no tactical subtlety.
“My biggest regret is that we were not tactically astute and we were too impatient.
“There was a brief moment and those responsible, including myself, blew it.”
Liz Truss’s allies previously accused Kwasi Kwarteng of “rewriting history” after he claimed to have warned her she was moving too far too fast with her radical economic reforms.
The former chancellor said last month he had urged the then prime minister to “slow down” following the September mini-budget that led to her downfall.
Mr Kwarteng acknowledged he bore “some responsibility” for the mini-Budget timing, which spooked financial markets, but said Miss Truss was “very much of the view that we needed to do things quickly”.
He told TalkTV: ‘We tried to do too much too quickly. Too much and too fast. I think the strategic objective was correct. But I think we should have taken a much more measured approach.”
He said he had “some responsibility” for the mini-Budget timetable but that Ms Truss “was of the view that we needed to move things forward quickly”. But I think it was too fast,’ she added.
‘Even after the mini-budget we were going at breakneck speed. And I said, “You know, we should slow down, slow down.” She said, “Well, I’m only two years old,” and I said, “You’ll be two months old if you keep it up.” And I’m afraid that’s what happened.’
On September 23, Kwarteng announced the largest series of tax cuts in half a century.
Using more than £70 billion of increased borrowing, he set out a package that included abolishing the top rate of income tax for the highest earners and reducing the cap on bankers’ bonuses, plus a package of enormously expensive energy support.
The mini-Budget caused turmoil in financial markets, causing the pound to fall, forcing the Bank of England to intervene and raising mortgage rates.
Two days later, Kwarteng signaled that more tax cuts were on the way, further spooking markets.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Truss’s former business secretary, who has long been a supporter of small-state conservatism, said on Friday that his government’s failure was a “huge setback”. The Telegraph reports.
‘We now have the highest taxes in 70 years, and there is no challenge to that.
“There is a long way to go for people with my beliefs to win this argument.”
Asked repeatedly last month if he wanted to apologize to people who face additional costs when remortgaging, Mr Kwarteng declined, saying: “I don’t want to relive the past.”
He added: ‘I actually feel sorry for people who are going through this difficult time in terms of remortgaging.
“I’m not going to wash my hands of what we did, I think the strategic objectives (were) the right thing to do, but as was said, the delivery and the implementation, there was no real tactical plan, there was no real timeline for and I think “We should have done it.”
Reflecting on the sweeping tax cuts and economic reforms he unveiled as part of the mini-budget, Mr Kwarteng told the Financial Times: “It was very exciting, you felt like you were part of a project.”