#BTSpeakingOut – When will we get to the last straw?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

Last Thursday afternoon, UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng told reporters in New York he wasn’t going anywhere. However,  the chancellor was back in the UK a day early on Friday morning. As a statement of existential despair he was spot on. ‘Kamikwasi’ is going nowhere.

Kwarteng was just 34 when he entered parliament, but endured an initially fallow period on the backbenches, co-authoring with Truss and others the Tory party bible of Britannia Unchained.

He began to climb the ranks in the last year of Theresa May’s government as a Brexit minister, and then under Boris Johnson, becoming first a business minister in 2019 and then business secretary in 2021.

So he was the logical choice to be Truss’s chancellor, sidekick and ideological stablemate. It was billed as a partnership of equals, a new double act like George Osborne and David Cameron, one that could last for years.

Instead it was over in 38 days as the embattled prime minister as a last-ditch effort to save her own political skin, switched sides to the “anti-growth coalition” and decided to sack her pro-growth chancellor.

It turns out there are limits to how unpopular so-called Librium Liz is prepared to be.

Kwarteng’s political career is finished. His credibility trashed. Still, at least he won’t be quickly forgotten even if he just lasted 38 days as he forced the Bank of England into a £65bn bailout of pension funds and increased everyone’s mortgages.

While Britain, like many other countries, is facing a crisis of confidence in its leadership and democratic system, parts of the Westminster system seem to work as we saw with the resignation of Boris Johnson and now Kwarteng. Someone needs to be accountable.

The issue of accountability is an important lesson for Barbados, both for elected officials and the voting public, especially as it related to the survey on minors on issues of their sexuality.

As the Bishop of Barbados Michael Maxwell stated, “This matter, in our view, goes beyond an issue of the questions being “offensive” and may very well be described as an act of abuse.

Either the trust reposed by the ministry in the test provider, or by parents in the ministry, was abused, and the rendering of an apology ought not to be the final resolution to this matter.” Worse yet, we discovered this test was administered more than once.

Notwithstanding, Barbadians, particularly parents and students, are yet to get the accountability they deserve. And the buck stops neither with the staff of the Ministry of Education or the IDB but with the Minister.

In Westminster systems of government, individual ministerial responsibility is a constitutional convention that a cabinet minister bears the ultimate responsibility for the actions of their ministry or department. There is no one else to blame

We are aware, like with Truss and Kwarteng in the UK, the Minister of Education has been a long-standing friend of our Prime Minister, in fact the Constitution of Barbados was changed and it specifically accommodated the PM’s bosom buddy. Subsequently, a Member of Parliament was deselected by the latter to secure a political future for the former. As the Bible says, “there is no greater love than this…”

But how far is too far, how much is too much? Will the Minister of Education accept the responsibility that is hers for the untold damage to our children or will it be business as usual; jobs for the boys and girls, if you’re one of the chosen ones. This story of seeming incompetence and indifference must not end here.

– Douglas Leopold Philips, Jr.