Ha ha, serves him right.

I met Kwasi Kwarteng once briefly back in 2006 or 2007, when I was doing my infamous Tax Simplification proposal for The Bow Group. This is where I first mentioned merging all existing taxes on land and buildings etc into a flat-rate property tax, more or less as an afterthought.

I didn’t see this as a biggie, but everybody picked up on the LVT bit. The dozens of spurious KLNs it provoked were what really set me on the road to full-on Georgism. Had people just said, fair enough, nice and simple, does what it says on the tin, then I might well have forgotten all about it.

The other four Bow Group chaps I met were genuine thinkers, and all went on to Greater Things. So I won’t mention names, but in case anybody stumbles across this: AB was the nicest and most helpful; SG was the greatest PR officer of all time; RH has a sense of humour and saw the bigger picture; AL was a bit prickly but liked discussing things on an intellectual level. It was never clear to me whether AL supported LVT or not; I think he did in a hyper-detached way in principle but would never really be pinned down one way or another. He certainly opposed it politically i.e. worries about losing Home-Owner-Ist votes.

But KK was a big fat full of himself public schoolboy idiot whose contribution boiled down to “You are wrong because I say so.” and then walking off again.

So it was gratifying to see him fall flat on his face when he got the golden opportunity to actually do something positive and instead come up with a crock of crap which was political suicide and mightily unsettled the financial markets. And got him promptly sacked. He is now blaming his former boss, of course.