He might not say it publicly, but Sir Keir Starmer thinks power is coming his way
It was a speech Sir Keir Starmer said he’d waited four years to give. And after the glitter was dusted off, there is no doubt the Labour leader was still basking in the afterglow the morning after what one colleague described as the “speech of his life”.
I’ve interviewed the Labour leader a number of times, at low and high points of his leadership, and the Keir Starmer on show this week was more assured and confident than I had seen before.
He might not say it publicly, but this is a man who thinks power is coming his way. And that’s because, coming out of this conference, Sir Keir believes Labour has “earned the right to” a hearing from the country.
“I knew what I needed to do, I’ve been wanting to give this speech for four years… I knew this conference was going to be about national renewal, I knew this years ago, we got the opportunity to do it, and there was a buzz in the room.”
It might seem curious to you that the Labour leader needs to even care that much when his party is 18 points ahead in the polls, according to our Sky News poll tracker. But hoping that the Tories lose the next election because voters are still fed up with them is risky. What if Rishi Sunak gets it together before polling day?
Sir Keir doesn’t just want the Tories to lose, he wants Labour to win.
PM won’t call election ‘because he thinks he’ll lose’, says Starmer
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‘PM thinks he’ll lose election’
Yes, his speech was light on policy, although in our interview on Wednesday, he did go further on NHS waiting lists than before as he committed to whittling them back by five million by the end of his first term should Labour win a general election (Gordon Brown got waiting lists to 2.3 million in the last year of the last Labour government and Sir Keir vowed to do the same should he take the keys to Number 10).
More pledges and policies will be rolled out in the coming months. For Sir Keir the prize here in Liverpool for Labour was to start a national conversation and be heard – and in that, he and his team believe they have succeeded in that.
And the reason it really matters to Labour is voter volatility. While the vast majority of voters want change, a huge chunk of them are still not convinced the change is Labour.
To even begin to convince them it is, Sir Keir first has to get their attention. And even after that, the challenge remains huge. Sir Keir requires an even bigger swing than the record 10.2 per cent Sir Tony Blair achieved in 1997 to win a majority. He needs to gain over 120 seats to win outright.
Ask any shadow cabinet member if Labour is going to win the general election, and they know the drill: we are confident but not complacent, we won’t take the voters for granted.
For it could be a bumpy ride. The Conservative Party will come at Sir Keir on policy issues – be that on his green energy plans and immigration – and his character.
The most tense moments in our interview were undoubtedly when I pressed him on whether he regretted backing Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister, given the former Labour leader had described Hamas as “friends”.
These will be exactly the questions political opponents will pose running into a general election as they look to put doubts about the Labour leader in voters’ minds.
Labour sources tell me Sir Keir’s speech has had “unusual levels of cut through”, helped by the glitter bombing and his reaction to it – which I’m told focus groups say showed he had “character” and was a leader who was “composed and calm”.
“The backdrop to all of this is a lack of trust in all politicians,” explained one Labour figure. “Delivery is hard in opposition but they are aware of how much Keir has changed the party in a short space of time and that gives an increasingly strong reason to believe.”
Glitter gone, a leader taking nothing for granted. But his response to Rishi Sunak’s assertion to me last week that a general election is “not what the country wants” says it all.
“He’s completely wrong about that,” Sir Keir told me: “What he really meant was he’s not happy to go to the electorate because he thinks he’ll lose.” Which presumably means Sir Keir thinks he’ll win.
Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
Source: Financial Services GOP
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
Related: Crypto has a regulatory capture problem in Washington — or does it?
The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
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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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