Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng already in firing line

LONDON: Kwasi Kwarteng, who has been finance minister for less than a month, is already in the firing line as Britain's economy teeters on the brink after his first policy announcement.

The 47-year-old free-marketer last week announced sweeping tax cuts, spooking currency and bond markets concerned about his mammoth spending commitments, and earned a rebuke from the International Monetary Fund.

Kwarteng is close to Liz Truss, who won the race to become prime minister in September after the resignation of scandal-hit Boris Johnson.

She was voted in by Conservatives on a promise to cut taxes, plans that her rival Rishi Sunak, who was finance minister under Johnson, said were a recipe for disaster in the face of spiralling inflation.

Kwarteng's belief in liberal economics made him the obvious choice to carry out her plans despite the warnings.

The pair were at the forefront of urgent measures to help millions of Britons who are suffering from the strain of rocketing energy prices that have pushed inflation in the United Kingdom to a 40 year high.

The spending plans coupled with the tax cuts sent sterling plunging to its lowest-ever value against the dollar earlier this week, as critics decried the government's KamiKwasi economics.

Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, described the minister as a committed Thatcherite in reference to former leader and free-market proponent Margaret Thatcher, saying there is a lot of pressure on Kwasi Kwarteng.

He might have started out as believing in a smaller state and a more deregulated economy, but he's living in a world where the public expects almost exactly the opposite, Travers told AFP.

Kwarteng replaced Iraqi-born Nadhim Zahawi, who lasted only two months as chancellor.

Zahawi took over from Sunak, who resigned as finance minister in opposition to Johnson before losing to Truss in the contest for 10 Downing Street.

Four years before the 2016 Brexit vote, Kwarteng joined Truss and other Tory rightwingers to write a free-market manifesto called Britannia Unchained, which described British workers as some of the worst idlers in the world.