The last Westminster parliament to run for a full five-year term ended in 2015.
After that we had general elections every two years, in 2017 and 2019, followed by the election now expected by January 2025 at the latest, when this full term will expire.
Not that there has been political stability since 2019. Rather than consult the voters, the Conservative party have changed prime ministers twice in that time running through Johnson and Truss to Sunak.
In the past few days, it has felt as if the tectonic plates under Number 10 Downing Street were shifting again. There have been manifest signs of political panic and – obeying the old mantra of “never let a good crisis go to waste” – political opportunism as well.
Observing tell-tale signs that the government was gearing up under duress, I wondered if, just possibly, Rishi Sunak would go the way of Theresa May and Boris Johnson and deploy the prime minister’s ability to bring about a general election as a tactical weapon in campaigning.
Elon Musk has not yet managed to kill Twitter as a channel of constructive conversation, so I Xed a speculative “are we about to be plunged into a snap general election again?”
No, not this October, it turned out. The prime minister stuck to the planned content in the speech which media speculation had bounced him into delivering prematurely.
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Image: Keir Starmer leads in the polls
But what we saw from the prime minister should put us on alert. The electorate should stand by to be called to the polls at any moment.
Sunak has shifted into ruthless campaign mode and he will call an election if and when he sees any advantage in doing so.
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His U-turn on net zero measures shows that he has made his choice on how he will fight it.
In the past two centuries no British party has won five elections in a row, as the Conservatives are seeking to do.
Sunak’s strategy is to try to present himself as something different, rather than Sir Keir Starmer as the “change candidate” from the past.
Amid the cost of living crisis, high mortgages and inflation, chaos in the NHS and disruption in schools, Sunak knows there would be little point in trying to run on the Conservative’s record in government.
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He claims that he has restored “stability and confidence” in his first year as prime minister, now his new slogan “long-term decisions for a brighter future” attempts to turn the page on all the decisions the Tories have taken over their past 14 years in power.
Symbolically Sunak has torched the accelerated plans to phase out internal combustion cars and gas boilers, which underwrote his predecessor Boris Johnson’s boast that the UK was a “world leader” on net zero. He hopes that this drives a wedge between him and Starmer.
Setting his heffalump trap for Labour,the Conservative leader says it is for people who disagree with him to explain why they want families to pay an extra £5,000, £10,000 or £15,000.
Piling extra challenges for Starmer to overcome, he claimed to have scrapped compulsory extreme measures for a meat tax, seven recycling bins per household, and car sharing.
He and ministers have struggled to identify any examples of politicians advocating such measures, but that won’t stop Tory activists linking them to Labour on the campaigning trail.
Already at PMQs Sunak is happy to smear Starmer with allegations which are unfounded or which Starmer has ruled out on the record.
So while reducing the, allegedly costly, green measures on net zero or sewage versus housebuilding, he simultaneously claims that he is sticking to the UKs environmental ambitions and commitments.
It could work. Nobody likes paying more when times are hard.
Sunak’s claims that he is still “passionately committed” to net zero and that the UK is still on course, provide an alibi for those disinclined to do anything more.
Those queuing up to attack Sunak’s policy shift include the United Nations, Al Gore, One Nation Conservatives and the mainstream media, precisely the supposedly “elitist” coalition which alienated Leave voters in the Brexit referendum and against Labour in old Red Wall constituencies.
Image: The expansion of the ULEZ has been a contentious issue
Although irrelevant to global warming, the Labour Mayor of London’s imposition of ULEZ charges on polluting vehicles certainly helped the Conservatives to hang onto Johnson’s outer London constituency at a by-election. The 7.4% swing against the Tories was much less than in national opinion polls.
If the Conservatives pull off another “hold” in the Mid Bedfordshire by-election on 19 October, it will be taken as vindication of the new “common sense” strategy.
To stay in power, Sunak will need the votes of traditional Conservatives – older, relatively affluent and in the South.
The Conservatives are also generally doing poorly with younger demographics of working age below 50. The red scare of Corbyn pushed enough of them in the Conservatives’ direction.
It will be harder to paint Starmer as a similar threat, but that is unlikely to stop his opponents trying.
That is the Conservative’s best hope of holding together a winning electoral coalition. Initially Sunak’s green moves have fallen flat with Conservative environmentalists from Zac Goldsmith to John Gummer to the Climate Change Committee.
Big businesses are also openly dismayed, especially by the instability of chopping and changing legislated targets and guidelines.
Replies to my snap election ‘X’ were mostly either “bring it on” or “they wouldn’t dare”.
One MP was not so sure: “I point out that I was elected in 2015 when it was the law, we couldn’t have an election for five years… and we had two in three years”.
The prime minister will go for an election if he sees a burst of sunshine breaking through the electoral clouds hanging over the Conservatives.
He could even get a boost just by calling one; polls show that the public is impatient, over half of those questioned want an election by June next year – around 25% want one this year.
For his first year in office the prime minister has been bombarded by events.
He may have been pushed into it but this week was the first time he found the breathing space to launch an initiative.
More long-term ideas from the “real Rishi” are promised in the coming weeks. It is likely that they too will play to the popularist right of the party.
Sunak doesn’t have to appeal to everybody. In their four general election victories the shares of the vote which put the Tories in power were 36.1%, 36.8%, 42.3% and 34.65%.
Electoral Calculus current poll of polls puts Sunak well short of that: Conservatives 27.5% Labour 44.3%. The prime minister will not go quietly.
The Sunak who has shown himself this week will not scruple to do what it takes to shift the dial – short term as well as long term and if he sees the glint of a chance, he’ll take it.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.