Kwasi Kwarteng has refused to apologise for the misery caused by his disastrous mini-budget.
Mortgage rates soared in the wake of September’s fiscal event, in which the then chancellor announced £45 billion-worth of unfunded tax cuts.
That led to a crash in the markets, with the value of the pound plummeting and the Bank of England forced to intervene to bail out the pensions industry.
But in his first interview since being sacked by Liz Truss, Kwarteng refused three times to apologise for the impact of the mini-budget on ordinary people.
He would only say that he “regretted” the “turbulence” which followed the announcement, but stopped short of an apology.
Asked by Talk TV presenter Tom Newton Dunn is he wanted to “say sorry”, Kwarteng replied: “I’m not going to, I’m not going to comment on that. I think it was regrettable. And I think people were very, very concerned. Interest rates were going up. The Bank of England has put interest rates up and all of that was happening. But there was turbulence and I regret that.”
Newton Dunn replied: “We can get into all of that, I’ve asked if you want to say sorry?”
Kwarteng said: “You’re gonna do what you do, which is I don’t want to relive the past. I just want to focus on where we are next week. I think there was turbulence and I regret that.”
Newton Dunn then said: “So no apologies.”
The former chancellor replied: “I’m not going to reiterate that. I think that you know, I do feel sorry actually for the people who are going through this difficult time in terms of remortgaging. I think that it is a really stressful thing to do. And I really feel sympathy for that, but I’m not going to wash my hands of what we did.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kwarteng insisted he told Truss to “slow down” with the pace of the economic changes she wanted to introduce after becoming PM.
But the claim is likely to raise eyebrows as two days after the mini-budget – which included plans to scrap the 45p income tax rate paid by the highest earners, cut stamp duty, reverse the rise in national insurance and cancel a planned rise in corporation tax – he told the BBC there was “more to come”.
Kwarteng also criticised the Truss’s “mad” decision to sack him after just 38 days as chancellor for implementing her tax-cutting agenda.
She ended up resigning after only 44 days in office, with her economic measures swiftly ripped up by new chancellor Jeremy Hunt and her successor in No 10, Rishi Sunak.