'I’m not going to apologise'
Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has once more refused to apologise for his disastrous mini-budget which caused financial turmoil and which eventually led to him being sacked and Liz Truss being forced out of office.
Kwarteng, whose mini-budget resulted in chaos on the financial markets, the pound hitting an all-time low against the dollar and mortgage rates soaring, said he was ‘not in the business of forgiveness’.
“I’m not going to apologise,” he told Channel 4 News.
“I’ve said very clearly, you know, what was done was done, but I don’t believe that politicians are endlessly, you know, apologising for everything that has gone in the past. I’m looking forward.”
Told that people were left with higher mortgage rates as a result of his disastrous decisions, Kwarteng was unrepentant and said that people were not angry about mortgage rates soaring as a result of his mini-budget – and that instead they say “you tried your best”.
He said: “I know the media will want to go to a world where people are being angry and outrage … but actually, what I found is that some people will come up to people and say, ‘I’m very angry, I’m very upset.’ You get that.
“I’m very struck, actually, by the fact that people are ‘you tried your best. We understand what you were trying to do. It was difficult.’”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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