On Thursday, July 7, 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned from his position as leader of the Conservative Party after losing the backing of key cabinet members.
At the entrance to Number 10 Downing Street on Thursday, Johnson said, “The process of selecting that new leader should begin now.” And as I will until a new leader is in place, I have constituted a cabinet today.
“Thank you for that fantastic mandate, the largest Conservative majority since 1987, and the biggest proportion of the vote since 1979,” Johnson said in his thank-you speech to the electorate.
“And the reason I have fought so hard in the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so, but because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019,” he added.
With millions of people wondering who will take over as prime minister, Boris Johnson’s statement has sparked the second leadership contest for the ruling Conservative Party in the past three years.
Before the party convention in October, a new leader is anticipated to be chosen, but Johnson is still in charge until then.
Kwasi Kwarteng, a British citizen with Ghanaian origin, is among those predicted to follow Boris Johnson, along with others like Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, and Dominic Raab.
The Business Secretary and Spelthorne’s MP is Kwasi Kwarteng. During a discussion in Room 10, he was one of the Cabinet ministers who asked the Prime Minister to step aside.
Tweeting after Boris Johnson’s announcement, the 47-year-old said, “we now need a new Leader as soon as practicable. Someone who can rebuild trust, heal the country, and set out a new, sensible and consistent economic approach to help families.”
Following Paul Boateng, Kwasi Kwarteng was appointed Business Secretary on January 8, 2021, as part of a mini-reshuffle. Paul Boateng was the first black man to hold a position in the Cabinet.
Brief about Kwasi Kwarteng.
Kwasi Kwarteng describes himself as having been born and raised in London by his Ghanaian parents, Alfred K. Kwarteng and Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, on his website, kwasi.kwarteng.mp@parliament.uk.
At Cambridge University, he majored in Classics and History before attending Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship. In 2000, he earned his PhD in economic history from Cambridge. Kwasi held jobs as an author and a financial analyst in the City before to entering politics.
On May 6, 2010, he was chosen to serve as the MP for Spelthorne, and he was re-elected in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Kwasi has held positions on the Public Accounts Committee, the Work and Pensions Select Committee, and the Transport Select Committee since being elected.
Kwarteng has also worked as the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s and the Leader of the House of Lords’ Parliamentary Private Secretary. He was appointed as a Minister of State in the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in 2019 after serving as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Exiting the European Union in 2018.
Kwasi Kwarteng was appointed to the position of Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in January 2021.
The MP in Spelthorne has continuously backed regional businesses, and in 2013 he established the Spelthorne Business Plan Competition to identify and help the region’s upcoming business leaders. Since then, every year has seen a successful completion of the competition with the exception of 2020 owing to the pandemic.
Kwasi Kwarteng has written several books and continues to have a keen interest in history, as well as in music and languages.