Kwarteng, who was educated at a good prep school, Eton and Cambridge, has argued that many supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and critics of British imperialism have "a very kind of cartoon-like view" of the past, arguing:

So within that time and geography there's a huge amount of variety, different cultures and different time periods and getting a sensitivity to that is hugely important and I think a lot of the debate around Black Lives Matter and imperialism or colonialism has a very kind of cartoon-like view of what was happening over centuries across a quarter of the world.