Kwasi Kwarteng literally wrote a book about how to avoid making the mistake he made

His own analysis of Thatcher should have been a warning to him, writes John Rentoul

He obviously admires Margaret Thatcher’s courage and determination (PA)

The “markets would be disappointed” if the government planned to borrow more than 4 per cent of national income, Alan Walters told Margaret Thatcher before the 1981 Budget – it could lead to “a funding crisis either in the summer or the autumn”.

According to a historian of the period, it “essentially meant that investors, or ‘the market’, would stop buying British government debt, thereby requiring the introduction of some form of bailout by the International Monetary Fund, which would be a national humiliation”.

That historian is Kwasi Kwarteng, the recent chancellor of the Exchequer, who in 2015 published a book called Thatcher’s Trial: Six Months that Defined a Leader. It is an excellent work of contemporary history, identifying the period between the controversial Budget in March 1981 and the cabinet reshuffle of September that year – the clearout of the “wets” – as the critical period of Thatcher’s premiership.