Labour MP quits party’s shadow cabinet with attack on Starmer’s leadership
A Labour MP has dramatically quit the shadow cabinet mid-way through the party’s Brighton conference with an attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and policies.
Andy McDonald, who had been shadow secretary of state for employment rights and protections, said his position as a member of Sir Keir’s top team had become “untenable”.
The 63-year-old, who has been MP for Middlesbrough since 2012, previously served in former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and is a left-wing ally of Sir Keir’s predecessor.
Mr McDonald previously served in Jeremy Corbyn’s top team and is close to the former Labour leader
In a resignation letter to Sir Keir on Monday, Mr McDonald delivered a fierce rebuke of Sir Keir’s leadership and policies.
He claimed he had been told by Sir Keir’s office on Sunday to go into a meeting “to argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage”.
“This is something I could not do,” Mr McDonald wrote.
“After many months of a pandemic when we made commitments to stand by key workers, I cannot now look these same workers in the eye and tell them they are not worth a wage that is enough to live on, or that they don’t deserve security when they are ill.”
A push for Labour to adopt support for a £15 national minimum wage had been made by left-wing group Momentum and trade unions prior to the party’s conference in Brighton.
In a further attack on Sir Keir in his resignation letter, Mr McDonald added: “I joined your front bench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintain our commitment to socialist policies.
“After 18 months of your leadership, our movement is more divided than ever and the pledges that you made to the membership are not being honoured.”
Prior to the news of his resignation on Monday, Mr McDonald had been criticised for planning to co-host a conference event with Mr Corbyn, who is currently suspended as a Labour MP as part of an antisemitism row.
Mr McDonald had also used a conference fringe event on Sunday to publicly mock Sir Keir’s efforts to reform Labour’s internal rulebook during this week’s Brighton gathering – moves which have angered Mr Corbyn’s former supporters in the party.
Speaking to reporters in Brighton on Monday afternoon after announcing his resignation, Mr McDonald said: “Is it really unreasonable to expect people going to work, our key workers, not to have a level of pay to sustain their position?”
Asked if he was trying to cause trouble for Sir Keir by resigning during Labour’s conference, Mr McDonald added: “Matters have been made difficult for me. I faithfully tried to discharge my duties as a member of the shadow cabinet on this specific issue and it is a point of principle for me.
“We have got to give that demonstration to the people that we seek to serve. And I just ask that the leadership reflect upon this.”
Sir Keir thanked Mr McDonald for his service as a shadow minister and said Labour’s “New Deal for Working People” showed “the scale of our ambition and where our priorities lie”.
“My focus and that of the whole party is on winning the next general election so we can deliver for working people who need a Labour government,” the Labour leader added.
MPs and activists on Labour’s left wing praised Mr McDonald following his resignation, although those from the centre of the party suggested there was “no sense of loss” over Mr McDonald’s departure and “no tears being shed” in Sir Keir’s office.
They also highlighted how the “change” brought to Labour under Sir Keir had been proved by Mr McDonald leaving the shadow cabinet and Dame Louise Ellman returning to the party on the same day.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, another ally of Mr Corbyn, paid tribute to Mr McDonald’s “terrific” record as a shadow minister.
“He has resigned on a point of principle that workers should have decent pay,” Mr McDonnell posted on Twitter.
Jon Trickett, who had been the party’s national campaign coordinator under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, tweeted: “We need more working class MPs not fewer.
“There is now a chasm between the Labour Party and the communities we want to represent. It must change.”
Momentum, which grew out of Mr Corbyn’s two successful leadership election campaigns, claimed Mr McDonald’s resignation showed how Sir Keir was “out of touch” with working people.
“Labour has to be the party of working people not bosses,”said Mish Rahman, a member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee and Momentum’s National Coordinating Group.
“During the leadership election, it seemed like Starmer understood this – but this resignation proves he does not.”
“By asking a shadow minister to argue against a higher minimum wage and decent sick pay he has demonstrated just how put of touch he is with working people.”
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Minutes after McMcDonald’s resignation was announced, an article by Mr Corbyn was published on the website of the i newspaper.
Mr Corbyn wrote that Labour’s leadership had, so far during the conference in Brighton, “shown they want to prop up, not challenge that wealth and power”.
In a tweet promoting his article, Mr Corbyn added: “All over the world people are thirsting for massive social change – we should be part of that global movement, not apart from it.
“If our leadership won’t champion that path, our movement must and will.”
Conservative Party co-chair Oliver Dowden said: “Labour are divided and fighting among themselves. Now they are even resigning during their own party conference!
“Labour’s conference gets more chaotic by the minute. How can people trust them to run the country?”
GameStop shed nearly $3 billion in market capitalization on March 27 as investors second-guessed the videogame retailer’s plans to stockpile Bitcoin (BTC), according to data from Google Finance.
On March 26, GameStop tipped plans to use proceeds from a $1.3 billion convertible debt offering to buy Bitcoin — an increasingly popular strategy for public companies looking to boost share performance.
GameStop’s announcement came a day after it proposed building a stockpile of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and US dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Investors initially celebrated the news, sending shares up 12% on March 26. Shareholders’ sentiment reversed on March 27, pushing GameStop’s stock, GME, down by nearly 24%, according to Google Finance.
GameStop’s stock reversed gains on March 27. Source: Google Finance
Related: GameStop buying Bitcoin would ‘bake the noodles’ of TradFi: Swan exec
Chilly reception
Analysts say the chilly reception reflects fears GameStop may be seeking to distract investors from deeper problems with its business model.
“Investors are not necessarily optimistic on the underlying business,” Bret Kenwell, US investment analyst at eToro, told Reuters on March 27.
“There are question marks with GameStop’s model. If bitcoin is going to be the pivot, where does that leave everything else?”
The sell-off also highlights investors’ more bearish outlook on Bitcoin as macroeconomic instability, including ongoing trade wars, weighs on the cryptocurrency’s spot price.
Bitcoin is down around 7% year-to-date, hovering around $87,000 as of March 27, according to Google Finance.
Bitcoin’s “price briefly jumped to $89,000 but has now reversed its trend,” Agne Linge, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol WeFi’s head of growth, told Cointelegraph.
Linge added that trade wars triggered by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs remain a concern for traders.
Public companies are among the largest Bitcoin holders. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET
Corporate Bitcoin treasuries
GameStop is a relative latecomer among public companies creating Bitcoin treasuries.
In 2024, rising Bitcoin prices sent shares of Strategy soaring more than 350%, according to data from FinanceCharts.
Founded by Michael Saylor, Strategy has spent more than $30 billion buying BTC since pioneering corporate Bitcoin accumulation in 2020, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.NET.NET.
Strategy’s success prompted dozens of other companies to build Bitcoin treasuries of their own. Public companies collectively hold nearly $58 billion of Bitcoin as of March 27, the data shows.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
US Senator John Kennedy grilled prospective Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul Atkins about a potential pardon for Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried during the Senate Banking Committee’s March 27 nomination hearing.
The Louisiana Republican directed a series of questions about the former FTX CEO toward Atkins and probed the prospective SEC chairman about donations Bankman-Fried’s family made to Stanford University.
Senator John Kennedy questions prospective SEC chairman Paul Atkins. Source: Senate Banking Committee
Kennedy then urged the SEC to take action to prevent any potential pardons on behalf of SBF. Kennedy added:
“There should not be two standards of law and punishment for people in America. And every time you come to this committee, I am going to pounce on you like a ninja to find out what the SEC has done because I don’t think the SEC has done a damn thing.”
“I read in the paper that the Bankman-Frieds were trying to get a pardon. They are crooks, and I expect the SEC to do something about it,” the Senator continued.
Reports emerged in January that SBF’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were seeking a pardon for their son from recently-elected US President Donald Trump following his high-profile pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
Paul Atkins answers questions at his nomination hearing. Source: Senate Banking Committee
Related: Ex-FTX CEO moved to transit facility after interview
Presidential pardon “unlikely” for SBF
SBF is unlikely to secure a pardon for several reasons that differentiate the case from that of the Silk Road founder, according to White Collar Support Group executive director William Livolsi.
In the case of Ulbricht, the charges were victimless crimes tied to the operation of a contraband marketplace as opposed to causing billions in investor losses.
Livolsi added that the sentence imposed on Ulbricht of two lifetimes behind bars plus an additional 40 years without the possibility of parole and the public campaign promise made by then-candidate Trump to pardon Ulbricht set the situation apart.
Tucker Carlson interviews SBF from prison. Source: Tucker Carlson
Despite this, SBF has attempted to cozy up to Republicans in several interviews with independent media outlets, including a February interview with The New York Sun and an interview with Tucker Carlson on March 2025.
The Carlson interview was not sanctioned by prison authorities, leading to SBF being thrown into solitary confinement following the interview and moved from a prison facility located in New York to Oklahoma.
Magazine: Legal issues surround the FBI’s creation of fake crypto tokens
US Senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill on March 26 to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The “Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act,” would prohibit the Fed from offering certain products or services directly to American individuals, a key component of any CBDC.
The Texas Republican’s bill can be considered a companion bill to Minnesota Republican Representative Tom Emmer’s anti-CBDC legislation, which was reintroduced on March 6. A companion bill is a piece of legislation that is similarly or identically worded to another bill, and introduced in the other chamber of Congress.
Both bills state that the prohibition should not include any dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless, and private and “preserves the privacy protections of United States coins and physical currency.”
Sen. Ted Cruz’s anti-CBDC bill. Source: Ted Cruz
Since 2020, the Federal Reserve has been exploring a digital version of the US dollar. According to the CBDC Tracker, at least four research projects are currently underway by various Federal Reserve entities.
Cruz has been a vocal opponent of CBDCs since at least 2022, when he introduced legislation that would ban the Fed from introducing a direct-to-consumer CBDC. He followed it up with similar legislation in 2023, and in 2024 sought to block the attempt by then-President Joe Biden’s administration to create a CBDC.
Emmer said at a congressional hearing that “CBDC technology is inherently un-American” and warned that allowing unelected bureaucrats to issue a CBDC “could upend the American way of life.”
Related: North Carolina Senate overrides governor veto, passes bill banning CBDC
Critics denounce CBDCs
While CBDCs have some purported benefits, critics of the technology have long said that digital currency issued directly to citizens could pose privacy infringement and government overreach.
However, some nations and regional governments are still exploring this technology. While European consumers show little interest in CBDCs, lawmakers in the region are pushing to create a digital Euro. Israel has released a preliminary design to create a digital shekel, and Iran will reportedly launch a CBDC in the near future.
In the US, the creation of a CBDC has been met with more resistance. President Donald Trump has vowed to “never allow” a CBDC in the country, and Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, has said that the Fed will not issue a CBDC while he is in charge.
Though CBDCs could modernize legacy financial systems and make them more efficient, they would also centralize the money supply.
Magazine: Asia Express: India mulls new crypto ban to support CBDC, Lazarus Group strikes again
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