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Revision as of 02:54, 18 May 2010
Kwasi Kwarteng (born 1975) is a British Conservative Party politician. After the retirement of Conservative MP David Wilshire, Kwarteng was elected as Member of Parliament for Spelthorne in Surrey in the 2010 United Kingdom general election, winning the seat with 22,261 votes and a majority of 10,019.
Early life
Kwarteng was born in London. His parents migrated to the UK from Ghana (then the Gold Coast) as students in the 1960s.
He won a scholarship to attend Eton College, and then read history at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a member of the winning University Challenge team in 1995, in the first series after the programme was revived by the BBC in 1994. He complete a PhD in Economic History at Cambridge University.
Prior to becoming an MP, Kwarteng worked as an analyst for hedge fund manager Crispin Odey. He is writing a book, Ghosts of Empire, about the legacy of the British Empire, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2010.
Political career
He was Conservative candidate for Brent East at the 2005 General Election, but was beaten into a distant third place by the incumbent Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, who had won the seat after in a 2003 by-election, and Labour challenger Yasmin Qureshi. Kwarteng was chairman of the Bow Group in 2005-6. In 2006, The Times suggested that he could become the first black Conservative cabinet minister. He was sixth on the Conservative list of candidates for the London Assembly in 2008.
After Conservative MP for Spelthorne David Wilshire became mired in controversy arising from the Parliamentary expenses scandal, and announced his retirement from Parliament at the 2010 general election, Kwarteng was selected as Conservative candidate for Spelthorne at an open primary in January 2010. He was described by a local paper as a "black Boris". He was elected with a majority of 22,261, but was heckled with shouts of "scumbag" during his acceptance speech, while paying tribute to his predecessor, who used his expenses to pay £100,000 to a company that was not registered, David Wilshire.
External links
References
- ^ Tories adopt 'black Boris' as candidate, Staines News, 25 January 2010
- Labour holds Rutherglen and Hamilton West, BBC News, 7 May 2010
- ^ Official website
- ^ Telgraph.co.uk political database
- Trinity on University Challenge, Sean Blanchflower.
- ^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article696213.ece Power couple behind the new Tory throne, The Times, 26 March 2006
- Election Highlights of the Day: 08/05/2010, The Independent, 8 May 2010
- Heckling from the crowd mars Kwasi's victory, Staines News, 7 May 2010
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