Kwasi Kwarteng

“Cutting VAT is a classic case of shutting the stable door, when the horse has already galloped a couple of furlongs down the road.”

“One good outcome of elections is that fresh talent comes into the House of Commons.”

“The British in South Africa always portrayed themselves as more enlightened and tolerant than the 'narrow-minded', 'intolerant' Boers.”

“It's the easiest thing in the world to assume that what seems so obvious at one moment in time is a hard, perpetual fact of life.”

“The idea that historians aren't affected by what goes on around them I think is slightly fanciful.”

“The idea that, in the age of Google, Facebook and the internet, government can control the 'commanding heights' of the economy is one of the great delusions of our age. Modern techonology, social media, the explosion of online retail, among many other things, have meant that governments have less and less control.”

“It's often been said that conservatism is successful because it chimes with these basic human instincts. It's time for us to ask fundamental questions about what the Conservative Party is for, and what it actually believes.”

“In our media-driven age, the mere fact of having name recognition is a big advantage. When the leadership election was confined only to Conservative MPs, relatively obscure figures could emerge quickly.”

“I remember being told after the 1992 general election that Labour could never win a majority in Britain ever again.”

“In Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Angola and Cameroon maize is a staple, yet the earliest mention of maize in west Africa comes from a Portuguese document that lists it as being loaded on to slave ships bound for Africa.”

“But while the British empire is easy to write about, it is very difficult to summarise. This is because what we call 'empire' spans 400 years in time and thousands of miles in space; every continent on Earth was directly affected by it.”

“Clearly, for capitalism to work properly we must expect some upward normalisation of interest rates at some future point, to provide greater incentive for savers to save and investors to invest.”

“If you are a borrower, the more you borrow, the more it costs.”

“Frontrunners always attract envy, and a desperate campaign to stop them in their tracks.”

“Conservatives should never be shy in promoting a strong case for individual enterprise. We should acknowledge where the system doesn't work, and seek to amend it.”

“Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most controversial modern politician.”

“From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher's style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.”

“For the British working class, the restrictions of conflict actually improved their diet. Under Lord Woolton, the minister for food, a programme of free school meals was introduced. Priority supplies of milk were provided for pregnant women and nursing mothers, while orange juice, milk and cod liver oil were given to the under-fives.”

“Mrs Thatcher not only made history by becoming Britain's first female prime minister, she was the first woman to hold any comparable position in the western world.”

“The contrast between a figure such as Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire before he was 30, and Alfred Krupp, who spent 60 years building one of the biggest manufacturing concerns in the world, is striking.”