On Tuesday the former Chancellor of the Exchequer of the British government (the equivalent of our Minister of Economy) Kwasi Kwarteng announced that he will not run in the next general elections, which should be held by the end of the year.
Kwarteng is 48 years old, and between September and October 2022 he was part of Liz Truss’s government. In that short period of time he managed to become the protagonist of one of the most glaring political failures in the recent history of the United Kingdom, namely the disputed debt-financed tax reduction plan for the rich, which had been judged by the markets to be risky and unsustainable and had caused the pound to collapse: on that occasion, the Bank of England had to intervene with an emergency plan to calm investors in the financial markets.
Due to political pressure, Kwarteng had been replaced by Jeremy Hunt, and Truss herself was forced to resign soon after, just six weeks after taking office: no other prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom had lasted so short a time.