Kwasi Kwarteng was Conservative Candidate for Brent East at the General Election of 2005, Chairman of the Bow Group in 2006 and a candidate for the London Assembly in 2008. He holds a doctorate in Economic History from Cambridge University, has worked as an investment analyst, and is currently writing Ghosts of Empire, a book about the international legacy of the British Empire.
It’s only two weeks before Christmas, so my mind takes me back to Christmases when I was a child. I loved pantomimes and I remember the various fairy tales and children’s stories; Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington, that kind of thing. And Alistair Darling’s effort on Wednesday afternoon reminded me of another pantomime which some people may not have seen. It went something like this...
In a distant kingdom, far away, there was an old king who had two sons. The first son was slow of body and mind, a dull plodder. The second son, from a second marriage, was 15 years younger. He was a free spirit who enjoyed travel and speaking to learned men from all over the kingdom and beyond.
The old king was constantly fighting wars and ran up huge debts. He kept a very lavish household, which was run by unruly barons. He had dozens of cooks, almoners, chamberlains, jugglers and falconers. It was a very extravagant court. The wars he fought were also expensive. The kingdom seemed to be fighting constantly and the cost of running the household and fighting at the same time became very high.
As the king approached his eightieth year, he realised that he was not going to live much longer, so he called his sons to his bedside and said, “I have done my best to keep the kingdom strong, but, as you can see, I have run up huge debts and leave you a bad inheritance: the treasury is empty and foreign money lenders are pressing to be repaid. As is our custom, I will leave each of you half of my kingdom, and each of you will have to govern your part in the way you see fit”.
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