KWASI Kwarteng thought Liz Truss was “mad” to sack him as chancellor and warned her she would be out of Downing Street within weeks if she kept pushing through her reforms at "breakneck speed".

Mr Kwarteng said he told the short-lived Prime Minister to “slow down” her radical economic programme or she risked being out of No10 within “two months”.

The former Chancellor gave the insight into the chaos of Downing Street under Ms Truss in an interview with Talk TV’s Tom Newton Dunn, his first since leaving the government.

He refused to apologise for the financial turmoil unleashed by his and Ms Truss’s disastrous mini-budget on September 23, but acknowledged “there was turbulence and I regret that”.

He insisted the “strategic goal was right”, but added: “I think we should have had a much more measured approach”.

He said he bore “some responsibility” for the timetable of the mini-budget, but that Ms Truss “was very much of the view that we needed to move things fast”.

He said: “But I think it was too quick. Even after the mini budget we were going at breakneck speed. And I said, ‘You know, we should slow down, slow down’.”

“She said, ‘Well, I’ve only got two years’ and I said, ‘You will have two months if you carry on like this’. And I’m afraid that’s what happened.”

The mini-budget brought in the biggest tax cuts for half a century to boost growth, almost all of which had to be quickly abandoned after the financial markets hated them.

With the Government aiming to borrow to fund the cuts and refusing to allow an independent Office for Budget Responsibility analysis of the measures, the value of the pound slumped, government borrowing costs soared, and mortgage bills shot up.

The Bank of England was forced to intervene to avoid a collapse in pension funds.

Two days after the mini-budget, Mr Kwarteng signalled more tax cuts were coming, causing yet more market mayhem.

Asked repeatedly if he wanted to say sorry to the people facing extra costs in re-mortgaging, Mr Kwarteng refused, saying: “I don’t want to relive the past.”

He added: “I do feel sorry, actually, for the people who are going through this difficult time in terms of re-mortgaging.

“I’m not going to wash my hands of what we did, I think the strategic goals (were) the right thing, but as it said, the delivery and implementation, there was no real tactical plan, there was no real timetable for it and I think we should have done that.”

Mr Kwarteng revealed he had learned of his sacking on October 14 via Twitter as he travelled to meet Ms Truss after cutting short a trip to the IMF in Washington DC.

He said: “I can’t remember whether she was actually shedding tears but she was very emotional.

Describing his thinking at that moment, he said: “This is mad. Prime ministers don’t get rid of chancellors. I think I said to her at the time, ‘This is going to last three or four weeks’.

“Little did I know it was only going to be six days.”

Mr Kwarteng added: “She can’t fire me for just implementing what she campaigned on. And, you know, we had a conversation. And I think it was very much the view that somehow she would survive if I took the fall on that.”

He insisted he and Ms Truss were still “friends”, but said he had not returned a missed call from her several days ago.

Ms Truss quit after only 44 days in office, with her economic measures swiftly ripped up by new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and her successor in No 10, Rishi Sunak.

Mr Kwarteng said Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt cannot blame Ms Truss’s government for the massive black hole in the nation’s finances.

He said: “The only thing that they could possibly blame us for is the interest rates and interest rates have come down and the gilt rates costs have come down.

“It wasn’t that the national debt was created by Liz Truss’s 44 days in government.”

Mr Kwarteng also refused to endorse tax rises expected in his successor’s autumn budget next week.

“You’re not going to grow an economy, or incentivise economic growth by putting up our taxes,” he said.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said today there was “some choice” over the fiscal rules a government followed, but insisted that the UK had to “pay its way”.

He said: “If we don’t give that certainty to the world, what we’ll see is higher interest rates, higher inflation, more instability, and more worries for families and businesses.

“And that’s why it’s so important to show the world that we are a country that pays our way.”

Speaking to broadcasters after new GDP figures revealed that the UK economy is shrinking, Mr Hunt said: “If we are going to bring down debt over the medium term and give people confidence we are paying our way as a country, then yes, there is a very substantial gap in our national finances

He said it was “not just us”, adding: “These are global factors, partly because of what’s happening in Ukraine, partly because of the pandemic, but all of us are having to come to terms with and the sooner we do that, the quicker we can give families and businesses hope that there is a way through the very difficult challenges we face.”