Steerpike Steerpike

Kwasi prepares for life in No. 11

(Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

When you’re preparing for power, there’s not a moment to spare. Fresh from knifing each other in the pages of the Mail on Sunday, team Truss have now turned their attention to government, insisting there’s no time to now do Nick Robinson’s long-awaited interview with the Foreign Secretary. And few know that better than Kwasi Kwarteng, a long-time Truss ally, who is widely tipped to become her next door neighbour and Chancellor in the new government.

Given the focus on avoiding the looming energy crisis, Steerpike was intrigued to see that someone within parliament has helpfully tried to clean up Kwarteng’s Wikipedia entry, ahead of his rumoured move into No. 11. A section describing Kwasi’s role during the Owen Patterson affair was removed at 11:43 today by an I.P address within the Palace of Westminster. The offending section read:

Kwarteng was an outspoken supporter of Owen Paterson, who had been found by the Committee on Standards to have committed ‘an egregious case of paid advocacy.’ In reaction to this ruling, Kwarteng called for the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, to ‘decide her position’. The government later U-turned its support for Paterson, who resigned as an MP. The opposition called for an investigation into Kwarteng, claiming he may have breached the ministerial code. On 15 November 2021, Kwarteng published a letter of apology to Stone, in which he said he ‘did not mean to express doubt about your ability to discharge your role’ and apologised for ‘any upset or distress my choice of words may have caused’.

The doyens of Wikipedia were not impressed by this ham-fisted attempt to change the record. Within twenty minutes, the section was back, with an embarrassing addendum:

On 30 August 2022, this section was removed from Kwarteng’s Wikipedia entry, with it being revealed that an IP address from the House of Commons had removed it.

Talk about cleaning up politics eh?

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