Hours after delivering his not-so “mini” Budget last week, Kwasi Kwarteng crossed the road to a small Westminster pub. As the pound crashed to its lowest level since 1985, the UK chancellor sank pints with his economic aides, grinning after unveiling the biggest round of tax cuts in half a century.
The next time he was seen in public, any jollity was gone. Striding determinedly towards Downing Street, he was stalked by a camera crew asking why the markets had so roundly rejected his Budget. As sterling hit all-time lows, Kwarteng walked on, stony-faced.
The 47-year-old, whose doctoral thesis was on 17th-century currency policy, frequently peppers his conversations with historical references to previous economic crises, according to a business leader who knows him well. Now, he is in the middle of one of his own making.