Have the last few wobbly weeks seen a turning point for Johnson as PM?

Published

3 years ago

November 28, 2021

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Have the last few weeks seen a turning point in Boris Johnson’s premiership?

Dozens of Tories have refused to follow the prime minister’s orders in the voting lobbies on issues as diverse as sleaze and social care.

Meanwhile a handful of Tory MPs have gone public with demands for change, with many more complaining in Westminster’s cafes and bars. At times, it has felt like Mr Johnson was losing his political agility.

“There are too many issues at the moment in which the government is shooting itself in the foot with issues and problems which as I say colleagues are warning and warning and warning about and that are visible from Venus, Mars even maybe visible from Pluto,” northern Tory and ex minister Andrew Percy told Sky News.

“And that has got to stop because we owe the people of this country better than that.”

Mr Percy hasn’t always been a rebel, though he accepts that description now.

Not that long ago he occupied the high profile portfolio of Northern Powerhouse minister until 2017 and was an early backer of Mr Johnson’s leadership in the summer of 2019.

Nor can he just be dismissed as one of a small number of irreconcilables.

Almost one in seven Tory MPs – 52 of them – have rebelled more often than Mr Percy, according to the Public Whip website which provides a crude tally of how many times he and his colleagues have voted against their party.

Yet he is one of the few prepared to go on the record in a television interview quite so expansively with their concerns, and as he sits in his office next to a full size Yorkshire flag, he worries, the government’s political antennae is wonky.

“Those are questions that people around the prime minister and then the senior levels of government have to ask themselves.

“They have to look and see if the setup of this government is broad enough, if it is drawn wide enough from the party if it is reflective of our new voter base, if it’s reflective even of our new base on the back benches.”

Last week, he voted like many others against the government’s social care plans because they will mean the less well off having to pay more than affluent voters before the state steps in and picks up care home bills.

Tory rebels cut the government majority from 80 to 26, setting off alarm bells across the party.

Mr Percy blasts Rishi Sunak’s department, saying their focus on keeping control of public spending is getting in the way of the party meeting its promises.

He said: “The Treasury has to be cognizant of what we promised people, what we told people, and I understand absolutely, you know, public spending is at record levels, you know, the amount of debt we are facing following COVID and all the rest of it is really, really very challenging.

“And these same conversations are happening in governments all across the world. I totally appreciate the challenge, but commitments were made, be that on rail, they were made on social care, they were put into our manifesto, people voted for us on the basis of those and therefore, you know, we need to ensure that we are making good on those promises.”

Beneath the surface this argument, between Tories who want to spend whatever it takes to deliver for voters, and those who think strong public finances are the bedrock of the Tory claim to competence.

Not all promises cost money, however, and Tories across the party are worried one of their biggest weaknesses stems from making offers that never materialise.

Ex-minister Tim Loughton, now a Tory on the home affairs select committee, points the finger firmly at France for the migrant crisis.

However he worries that the government has talked up its ability to find a quick fix too often when it is unable to find an easy solution.

“There is a genuine concern that the government has talked tough,” he told me. “The government genuinely wants this trade to end, as we all do, but we haven’t been able to achieve that on our own because most of the cards are in the hands of French.

“And perhaps it wasn’t wise to overpromise when we couldn’t rely on the partnership we need to solve this.”

Soon there will be two opportunities for voters to pass their verdict, with two traditionally safe Tory seats heading to the polls for a byelection.

This Thursday will see the vote in Bexley and Old Sidcup where the south London voters will choose a successor to popular minister James Brokenshire, who died of cancer in October.

Two weeks later, voters in North Shropshire will elect a successor to disgraced ex-minister Owen Paterson. Few expect an upset in Bexley, although some Liberal Democrats say they are putting in a concerted effort in Shropshire.

On the streets of Bexley, however, there was little sign of danger for Mr Johnson, where at times voters appeared more forgiving than his own MPs.

Tory voters there talk of Mr Johnson going “off the boil” and “fumbling” and doing things that mean they “lack confidence”.

Asked if that means they will take their vote elsewhere, most said not, often arguing he had been dealt an unprecedented bad hand.

This could be dismissed as an outlier result in a safe Tory seat, but the national opinion polls suggest that even after the most recent few weeks, Mr Johnson’s party enjoys an advantage.

The most recent YouGov survey from last week puts the Tories on 36% and Labour on 35%.

Older voters in the 65 and above category are twice as likely to vote Tory than Labour, an advantage Labour has not yet begun to directly tackle.

Meanwhile there is little sign Keir Starmer’s Labour is winning over Tory votes directly. Amongst those who voted Tory in 2019, 6% would now choose to vote for Labour but twice as many, 11%, would go for the little known Brexit Party successor, Reform UK.

The last three weeks have seen doubts about Mr Johnson in Westminster unthinkable even during Tory conference in early October, as well as calls for him to shake up his team and signs of fissures in government.

It is not yet clear those doubts in Westminster have filtered through and changed the voting habits in the country.

Politics

Scotland’s former first minister Humza Yousaf hits out at Starmer’s ‘dog whistle’ stance on immigration

Published

1 hour ago

May 17, 2025

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Scotland's former first minister Humza Yousaf hits out at Starmer's 'dog whistle' stance on immigration

Former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has attacked Sir Keir Starmer for his “dog whistle” stance on immigration after the prime minister said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers”.

In a piece penned by Mr Yousaf for LBC, the former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) repeated claims the prime minister’s recent remarks on immigration were a “modern echo” of Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 Rivers Of Blood speech.

The prime minister stirred controversy earlier this week when he argued Britain “risked becoming an island of strangers” if immigration levels were not cut.

After many MPs criticised his language, Sir Keir rejected the comparison to Powell, with his official spokesperson saying migrants have made a “massive contribution” to society but his point was that the Tories “lost control of the system”.

In the LBC piece published on Saturday, Mr Yousaf said: “Powell’s 1968 speech warned of immigration as an existential threat to ‘our blood and our culture’, stoking racial panic that led directly to decades of hostile migration policies.

“Starmer’s invocation of ‘strangers’ is a modern echo – a dog-whistle to voters who blame migrants for every social ill, from stretched public services to the cost-of-living crisis.

“It betrays a failure to understand, or deliberately mask the fact that Britain’s prosperity depends on migration, on openness not building walls.”

Sir Keir made the comments at a news conference in which measures were announced to curb net migration, including banning care homes from recruiting overseas, new English language requirements for visa holders and stricter rules on gaining British citizenship.

The package is aimed at reducing the number of people coming to the UK by up to 100,000 per year, though the government has not officially set a target.

The government is under pressure to tackle legal migration, as well as illegal immigration, amid Reform UK’s surge in the polls.

Mr Yousaf concluded his article saying the UK was “on the brink of possibly handing the keys of No 10 to Nigel Farage”.

Politics

Everstake defends non-custodial staking as SEC weighs industry input

Published

10 hours ago

May 17, 2025

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Everstake defends non-custodial staking as SEC weighs industry input

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has held discussions with Everstake, one of the largest non-custodial staking providers globally, to explore clearer regulatory definitions around staking in blockchain networks.

The meeting, which also involved the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, comes at a time when over $193 billion in digital assets are staked across major proof-of-stake (PoS) networks.

However, despite the massive scale of participation, staking remains in a legal gray zone in the US as regulators wrestle with its classification under existing securities law.

The previous SEC administration also took enforcement actions against major players such as Kraken, Coinbase, and Consensys due to their staking services. The agency, under pro-crypto President Donald Trump, has recently dismissed these enforcement actions.

During the meeting, Everstake told the SEC that non-custodial staking should not be classified as a securities transaction. The company said that users maintain full control over their digital assets throughout the staking process and do not transfer ownership to a third party.

They argued that this makes staking a technical function, not an investment product.

“Our main assertion is that staking is not a financial instrument or security transaction, but rather a technical process, a base-layer protocol mechanism—akin to an oracle in a database—that maintains the integrity and functionality of decentralized networks,” Everstake founder Sergii Vasylchuk told Cointelegraph.

Everstake calls for regulatory clarity

In a letter submitted to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force on April 8, 2025, Everstake asked the agency to extend regulatory clarity to non-custodial staking and custodial and liquid staking models.

In the letter, which came in respond to Commissioner Hester Peirce’s call for input on regulatory treatment of blockchain services, Everstake argued that non-custodial staking should not be considered a securities offering.

It claimed that non-custodial staking, where users retain control of their tokens, does not involve the pooling of assets or the expectation of profits from managerial efforts.

In its model, Everstake said users delegate only validation rights while maintaining ownership of their digital assets. The staking rewards are algorithmically distributed by the blockchain network itself, and the firm merely provides technical infrastructure.

Non-custodial staking fails the Howey test

The letter also details why non-custodial staking fails each prong of the Howey test. Users do not make an investment of money in a common enterprise, do not expect profits from Everstake’s efforts, and are not dependent on the company’s management for financial returns.

Instead, any rewards come from network-level incentives and fluctuate with the market value of the underlying asset.

Everstake proposes specific criteria that should exempt non-custodial staking from securities classification. These include user asset control, absence of pooled funds, permissionless unstaking, and the provision of purely technical services.

It likens non-custodial staking to proof-of-work mining, which the SEC has previously ruled out as a securities transaction.

Margaret Rosenfeld, Everstake’s chief legal officer, also told Cointelegraph that “with non-custodial staking, there’s no handover of assets, no investment contract, and no third-party risk.” She added:

“Treating it as a securities offering undermines the decentralized model and risks chilling innovation in the blockchain sector.”

Nevertheless, the SEC has so far withheld a definitive stance. Rosenfeld said that the agency did not make any “specific commitments” on staking guidance. However, it continues to listen to industry stakeholders.

“The Task Force is actively engaging with a range of stakeholders—including those involved with non-custodial staking, ETFs, and broader blockchain infrastructure—to gather input.”

In an April 30 letter to the SEC, nearly 30 crypto advocate groups led by the lobby group the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) asked the agency for clear regulatory guidance on crypto staking and staking services.

Magazine: Binance Wallet ‘killing’ MetaMask and airdrops, Chinese RWA tokens: Asia Express

Politics

New Zealand man arrested in $265M crypto scam tied to FBI probe

Published

12 hours ago

May 17, 2025

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New Zealand man arrested in 5M crypto scam tied to FBI probe

A man from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, has been arrested in connection with an FBI-led investigation into a global cryptocurrency fraud operation that allegedly stole $450 million New Zealand dollars ($265 million).

According to New Zealand Police, the man is one of 13 individuals charged after authorities executed search warrants across Auckland, Wellington, and California over the past three days.

The charges stem from allegations that members of an organized criminal group manipulated seven victims to obtain large amounts of cryptocurrency, which was then laundered through multiple platforms between March and August 2024.

The US Department of Justice has indicted the man under federal law, including charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, per the announcement.

New Zealand man arrested in $265M crypto scam tied to FBI probe — *Source: New Zealond Police*

Scammer used stolen funds to purchase luxury vehicles

Prosecutors allege the stolen funds were used to purchase $9 million worth of luxury vehicles and spent lavishly on high-end goods, including designer handbags, watches, and clothing, as well as services such as nightclub access, private security, and rentals in Los Angeles, Miami, and the Hamptons.

The accused appeared in Auckland District Court and was granted bail with interim name suppression. He is scheduled to reappear on July 3.

“We have worked closely with our law enforcement colleagues in the United States in support of their investigation,” the police stated. They added:

“Today’s search warrant and arrest reflects the importance of international partnerships where criminals are operating across borders.”

The investigation remains ongoing.

Crypto thefts surge to $360 million in April

Digital asset thefts skyrocketed in April 2025, with nearly $360 million stolen across 18 separate hacking incidents, according to data from blockchain security firm PeckShield.

The figure marks a staggering 990% jump from March when reported losses stood at just $33 million. The sharp rise was largely attributed to a single unauthorized Bitcoin transfer that accounted for the bulk of the month’s losses.

On April 28, blockchain analyst ZachXBT identified a suspicious $330 million BTC transaction. The incident was later confirmed as a social engineering attack that targeted an elderly US resident, resulting in one of the largest individual crypto thefts to date.

Magazine: Binance Wallet ‘killing’ MetaMask and airdrops, Chinese RWA tokens: Asia Express