A blip or a worrying sign? Tories begin inquest after surprising by-election loss
It’s an unwritten rule of politics that every electoral action can have an opposite – if not quite equal – reaction.
The question being asked by many Tories this morning will be whether the party’s recent relentless focus on winning new supporters in traditionally Labour-held areas in the north is starting to cost them in their strongholds in the south.
As ever, the reality is more complex.
Chesham and Amersham presented a potent mix of local and national issues that the Lib Dems were able to capitalise on.
The HS2 rail line runs through the constituency and proposed planning changes are a big concern here too.
And as the losing Tory candidate has said, the Lib Dems threw the kitchen sink, the microwave and everything else at this seat.
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Tories lose seat for first time in 47 years
Tactical voting may have also been at play with Labour voters switching to the Lib Dems to ensure a government defeat.
But all that said, this trend – of traditional Tory regions in the south being eaten away by the opposition parties – was visible in May’s local election results.
David Cameron’s old Oxfordshire constituency of Whitney and the bastion of moneyed Home Counties Toryism Chipping Norton both got Labour councillors in that vote.
Meanwhile further south in Sussex, the conservative leader of Worthing Borough Council explicitly blamed the focus on levelling up in the north and prevalence of planned housing developments in the south for a loss of seats in his region.
The Lib Dems are echoing that this morning, saying that voters in places like Chesham and Amersham are fed up of being taken for granted.
Demographic change as young families move from inner London, along with chunky support for remaining in the EU in 2016 may also have played a part.
The messaging from Tory sources this morning is that this is a predictable mid-term protest vote against a party that has been in power for ten years and the seat can be retaken at a general election.
That may be right – but remember, that logic wasn’t borne out in the Hartlepool by-election where the Tories took the seat in May.
It also comes at a time when the government is polling well, in the midst of a successful vaccine rollout.
All of that means this is a more surprising result than Hartlepool.
But just because this brick has turned yellow, doesn’t mean the whole blue wall is guaranteed to come falling down.
For a start, there are genuine questions about whether there is a big enough crop of seats the Tories would realistically lose in a general election to counter their wins in the north.
What’s more, while in the north the Tories are now single-handedly taking votes from Labour, in the south the spoils of disillusioned conservative voters are more frequently being shared between a number of opposition parties.
For Labour, this is bad news.
This by-election saw the opposition vote collapse to just over 600 votes.
May’s bumper round of polling also saw good gains for the Green Party, as well as the Lib Dems.
Expect questions for Sir Keir Starmer today about why Labour is failing to win in places like Chesham and Amersham when the Lib Dems are.
The practical question for the next general election may be whether anti-Tory electoral pacts are the only way to get close to pushing Boris Johnson out of power.
Countless prime ministers have learnt the lesson of taking voters for granted the hard way.
It’s an irony not lost on Tories that the same sense of disillusionment they are trading off in the north now appears to be costing them votes in the south.
This is a stunning result for the Lib Dems and while it’s too soon to talk about the southern blue wall crumbling, it’s certainly wobbling.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Electrocuted on their genitals and mouths sewn up: Inside Bangladesh’s ‘death squad’ jails
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.
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