Jeremy Hunt: the new chancellor being ‘thrown in at the deep end’

Jeremy Hunt has succeeded Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor of the exchequer in a dramatic change to Liz Truss’s top team.

The former health secretary was out of the country when Kwarteng was dismissed just after midday today and was “returning to the UK” when his appointment was announced shortly afterwards by No. 10, said The Times.

The new chancellor was “one of Rishi Sunak’s most prominent supporters” during the Conservative leadership election this summer, after being knocked out of the running in the first ballot, said Sky News.

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The prime minister’s choice to replace Kwarteng – who was the head of the Treasury for only 38 days – is “a sign” that she “is trying to get her opponents on side”, the broadcaster added.

Hunt’s background

Born in Kennington, south London, in 1966, Hunt was head boy at the £39,000-a-year Charterhouse boarding school before studying PPE at Oxford University, where he served as president of the Conservative Association.

After Oxford, he worked in consulting and spent two years teaching English in Japan. He went on to establish a PR firm and also ran an educational publisher, Hotcourses, which “puts prospective students in contact with universities, colleges and other educational institutions”, said the BBC.

In 2005 he was elected as Conservative MP for the safe seat of South West Surrey, replacing former cabinet minister Virginia Bottomley. He served as shadow disabilities minister and shadow culture secretary.

Once the Tories were in office, he was named culture secretary and then later promoted to health secretary.

‘Most unpopular’ health secretary

His six years in the post made him the longest-running health secretary – outlasting even the NHS founder, Aneurin Bevan. He was also “very possibly” the “most unpopular” health secretary, said The Times.

Indeed, noted The Guardian, his longevity in the post was “all the more remarkable” given that his reign was “marked by a long battle with junior doctors, widespread cuts and parliamentary backlash over misleading pledges on NHS funding”.

Hunt told the BBC’s Sunday Morning show in May that in his new;y published book - Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS - he has “tried to be honest about the things I succeeded in doing and the things I wasn’t successful in”. He denied that the NHS was on the brink of collapse, but said the situation then was “very, very serious” with doctors and nurses “run ragged by the intensity of work”.

However, healthcare staff accused Hunt of ignoring serious NHS staff shortages as health secretary and driving medics out of the profession.

They said Hunt failed to take sufficient action to boost recruitment while in the job between 2012 and 2018. “For years, Jeremy Hunt and other ministers ignored the staffing crisis,” Sara Gorton, the head of health at Unison, the UK’s largest health union, told The Guardian.

Second time unlucky

After a stint as foreign secretary, Hunt ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2019 when Theresa May stepped down. However, he was beaten comfortably by Boris Johnson, who won with 92,153 votes to Hunt’s 46,656.

In the wake of his defeat, Hunt said the fact he had voted Remain in the European Union referendum was “a hurdle” he was “never able to overcome” in his leadership bid.

As a backbencher under Johnson, he was elected as the new chair of the health and social care select committee in January 2020, succeeding Sarah Wollaston. This position offered him the chance to rebuild his public profile and popularity.

Before the leadership race got underway following Johnson’s resignation in July, Hunt had dropped a series of hints that he could run for the Tory Party’s top job again before the 2024 election. He was ultimately knocked out in the first round of this summer’s leadership race and became a vocal backer of Sunak.

Team Truss

With Truss’s premiership still only a few weeks old, Kwarteng’s dismissal was described by the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason as “genuinely astonishing”.

Some Conservative ministers had argued that Truss’s second chancellor should have “instant credibility, to steady the markets”, Mason continued. With “substantial government experience”, said The New Statesman, “and pedigree in the world of business”, could Hunt be “the Tory saviour?”

With the prime minister “desperately clinging on to her role”, said the Mirror, what’s certain is Hunt will be “thrown in at the deep end”.