One of the most quoted pieces of folk wisdom is that “voters don’t like divided parties”.
The implication is that a political party which can’t keep its own house in order is unlikely to be trusted to run the country.
This month epic disunity has been on display in both the government and the opposition.
Bitter divisions have become almost routine among Conservative MPs, as they have dethroned and installed five leaders and prime ministers in just eight years.
Division in Tory ranks has undoubtedly been an electoral asset for Labour, helping to explain its massive lead in opinion polls. Now there are fears on the opposition side that heartfelt disagreements over the man-made humanitarian crisis in the Middle East could start pulling down Labour as well.
Suella Braverman slashed back at Rishi Sunak with a diatribe which included the phrases “uncertain”, “weak”, irresponsibility”, “magical thinking”, “betrayal” and “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver”.
More on Jess Phillips
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It was sharpened with the ominous wake-up call that Sunak was “rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest” and therefore had “no personal mandate to be prime minister”.
Two outspoken female Conservative MPs – Miriam Cates and Dame Andrea Jenkyns – added to the tension by asking for a ballot to express no confidence in Sunak.
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Image: Braverman lashed out at the PM in a letter published after she was sacked
Some 40 Tory MPs stirred up the internal party debate further by putting their names to a parliamentary measure paving the way to Braverman’s preferred cause of resiling from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer suffered the worst parliamentary rebellion since he was elected Labour leader in 2020.
Some 56 of his MPs defied the party whip to vote for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The Labour revolt was a token gesture on a matter of principle. In practice, it could not change what happens in the Middle East.
Neither the Israeli nor Hamas leadership will take any notice of what the opposition in the British parliament is saying about their conduct of war. Especially since the ceasefire amendment, put forward by the SNP, was heavily defeated by 293 to 125.
In keeping with the dreadful death toll in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, the mood in the Labour Party is sombre but free of the mutual recriminations so prevalent in Conservative ranks.
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Jess Phillips quits Labour frontbench
Shadow cabinet members were making no secret of their distress at talented colleagues sacrificing potential future ministerial careers.
For senior figures it is not the first time they have confronted divided loyalties.
For example, in 2005 Tony Blair suffered a major defeat when the Commons rejected his attempt to introduce 90-day detention for terror suspects.
The punishment for some Labour rebels was five years’ purgatory for their ministerial ambitions.
In spite of his disciplinarian reputation, Starmer has not so far been so strict as Blair.
Four of the middle-ranking ministers who quit on Wednesday only got the chance to do so because they were reinstated after previously rebelling in October 2020 against authorisation for so-called undercover “spy cops” to break the law.
Labour’s revolt might have been bigger if members of the shadow cabinet did not have more than a whiff of general election victory and real power in their nostrils. Few want to miss out on a share in that.
They also know that it is important to send out the signal to the electorate that they are united and ready to share the burdens of office, including difficult decisions.
John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, put his finger on this in his media round on Thursday, repeatedly stressing: “We are behaving as we would in government, we are not a protest movement.”
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Labour is ‘not a protest party’ says MP John Healey
The New Labour government’s decision to go to war in Iraq has long haunted the party because of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and its disastrous consequences in the region.
Ironically Starmer has now got his party into a similar state of agreeing to disagree on the current Middle East controversy – close to the Conservative position, but without the passion and internal party strife.
Back in March 2003, the vote to “use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction” was genuinely consequential.
Prime Minister Blair had committed to be bound by the outcome, even though he was not legally obliged to secure backing from parliament before entering a war.
Image: Starmer is yet to be as strict as former Labour PM Blair
His government prevailed, by 412 to 125, only thanks to Tory party support. Eighty-four Labour MPs rebelled. Two ministers, Robin Cook and Clare Short, resigned from the cabinet.
Fallout from the Iraq invasion lay behind Labour’s move to the left in the 2010s.
A war-weary Ed Miliband broke with defence bipartisanship to inflict one of the major foreign policy setbacks of David Cameron’s premiership, by defeating the PM’s call to punish President Bashar al Assad militarily for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn, a prominent member of the Stop the War Coalition, was elected party leader.
In this decade Starmer has taken Labour in the opposite direction. His no-tolerance approach to perceived left-wing antisemitism resulted in the suspension of Corbyn and his close allies Diane Abbott and Andy McDonald, so disbarring them from standing again as Labour candidates.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer faced a revolt from the frontbench but his shadow cabinet remains intact
The resignations over a ceasefire mean that there are now no members of the Socialist Campaign Group in Starmer’s campaign team.
It is possible that disagreement over Israel-Hamas could turn into a debilitating sore in the Labour Party.
It is more likely that internal arguments will be overtaken by events. Key UK allies, including the US and France, are pressurising Israel to show restraint while, by some analyses, it could complete its military objectives in a matter of weeks.
In her resignation letter, former shadow Home Office minister Jess Phillips spoke for many of the Labour MPs who backed the ceasefire amendment, saying “I must vote with my constituents, my head, and my heart” but she stressed she did not feel she was rebelling against Starmer.
Rebelling may make it easier locally for some of the 56 to retain their seats at the election.
Image: Phillips will no longer serve as a shadow minister – but may more easily retain her seat
This could offset the handful of constituencies – such as in Bristol and Brighton – where Labour’s more moderate official stance could cost it support to the Greens.
In all, the impact of Labour’s disagreement has been modest so far.
Older, more centrist voters may be attracted by Starmer’s resistance to pro-Palestinian pressure. In polls taken since the conflict broke out, two-thirds of Muslim voters are continuing to support Labour and the party’s lead in voting preference is still around 20%.
Meanwhile Braverman’s histrionics and the consequent cabinet reshuffle have distracted public attention from Labour’s agonising over the marches and the ceasefire vote.
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Tory MPs, including party officials and former cabinet ministers, are continuing to argue the toss openly with each other over a wide range of policy and personnel issues.
The voters appear to have registered the different levels of disunity in both parties.
An Opinium poll this month asked whether voters agreed or disagreed that the parties were united.
Labour’s ratings were down significantly from a month earlier, from a net positive of +12 to -8.
Unsurprisingly polling for the Conservatives, who are not divided over Gaza, changed less since October.
For them the damage of disunity has already been done elsewhere on other matters. The Conservative Party’s net disunity rating worsened by just three points this month to an Arctic chill of -43.
Solana decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Loopscale has temporarily halted its lending markets after suffering an approximately $5.8 million exploit.
On April 26, a hacker siphoned approximately 5.7 million USDC (USDC) and 1200 Solana (SOL) from the lending protocol after taking out a “series of undercollateralized loans”, Loopscale co-founder Mary Gooneratne said in an X post.
The exploit only impacted Loopscale’s USDC and SOL vaults and the losses represent around 12% of Loopscale’s total value locked (TVL), Gooneratne added.
Loopscale is “working to resume repayment functionality as soon as possible to mitigate unforeseen liquidations,” its said in an X post.
“Our team is fully mobilized to investigate, recover funds, and ensure users are protected,” Gooneratne said.
In the first quarter of 2025, hackers stole more than $1.6 billion worth of crypto from exchanges and on-chain smart contracts, blockchain security firm PeckShield said in an April report.
More than 90% of those losses are attributable to a $1.5 billion attack on ByBit, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange, by North Korean hacking outfit Lazarus Group.
Launched on April 10 after a six-month closed beta, Loopscale is a DeFi lending protocol designed to enhance capital efficiency by directly matching lenders and borrowers.
It also supports specialized lending markets, such as “structured credit, receivables financing, and undercollateralized lending,” Loopscale said in an April announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
Loopscale’s order book model distinguishes it from DeFi lending peers such as Aave that aggregate cryptocurrency deposits into liquidity pools.
Loopscale’s main USDC and SOL vaults yield APRs exceeding 5% and 10%, respectively. It also supports lending markets for tokens such as JitoSOL and BONK (BONK) and looping strategies for upwards of 40 different token pairs.
The DeFi protocol has approximately $40 million in TVL and has attracted upwards of 7,000 lenders, according to researcher OurNetwork.
United States Senator Jon Ossoff expressed support for impeaching President Donald Trump during an April 25 town hall, citing the President’s plan to host a private dinner for top Official Trump memecoin holders.
“I mean, I saw just 48 hours ago, he is granting audiences to people who buy his meme coin,” said Ossoff, a Democrat, according to a report by NBC News.
“When the sitting president of the United States is selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him. There is no question that that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.”
Senator Ossoff said he “strongly” supports impeachment proceedings during a town hall in the state of Georgia, where he is running for reelection to the Senate.
The Senator added that an impeachment is unlikely unless the Democratic Party gains control of Congress during the US midterm elections in 2026. Trump’s own Republican Party currently has a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
TRUMP holders can register to dine with the US President. Source: gettrumpmemes.com
On April 23, the Official Trump (TRUMP) memecoin’s website announced plans for Trump to host an exclusive dinner at his Washington, DC golf club with the top 220 TRUMP holders.
The website subsequently posted a leaderboard tracking top TRUMP wallets and a link to register for the event. The TRUMP token’s price has gained more than 50% since the announcement, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The specific guest list is unclear, but the memecoin’s website states that applicants must pass a background check, “can not be from a [Know Your Customer] watchlist country,” and cannot bring any additional guests.
On April 25, the team behind TRUMP denied social media rumors that TRUMP holders need at least $300,000 to participate in an upcoming dinner with the president.
“People have been incorrectly quoting #220 on the block explorer as the cutoff. That’s wrong because it includes things like locked tokens, exchanges, market makers, and those who are not participating. Instead, you should only be going off the leaderboard,” they wrote.
The TRUMP token jumped on news of the private dinner plans. Source: CoinMarketCap
Legal experts told Cointelegraph that Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures, including the TRUMP memecoin and Trump-affiliated decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol World Liberty Financial, raise significant concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
“Within just a couple of days of him taking office, he’s signed a number of executive orders that are significantly going to affect the way that our crypto and digital assets industry works,” Charlyn Ho of law firm Rikka told Cointelegraph in February.
“So if he has a personal pecuniary benefit arising from his own policies, that’s a conflict of interest.”
Crypto investor sentiment has seen a significant recovery from global tariff concerns, but analysts warn that the market’s structural weaknesses may still result in downside momentum during periods of weekend illiquidity.
Risk appetite appeared to return among crypto investors this week after US President Donald Trump adopted a softer tone, saying that import tariffs on Chinese goods may “come down substantially.”
However, the improved investor sentiment “does not guarantee that Bitcoin will avoid volatility over the weekend,” analysts from Bitfinex exchange told Cointelegraph:
“Sentiment improvements reduce fragility, but they do not eliminate structural risks like thin weekend liquidity.”
“Historically, weekends remain vulnerable to sharp moves — especially when open interest is high and market depth is low,” the analysts said, adding that unexpected macroeconomic news can still increase volatility during low liquidity periods.
Bitcoin (BTC) staged a near 11% recovery during the past week, but its rally has previously been limited by Sunday liquidity dynamics.
BTC/USD, 1-year chart. Source: Cointelegraph
Bitcoin fell below $75,000 on Sunday, April 6, despite initially decoupling from the US stock market’s $3.5 trillion drop on April 4 after US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that Trump’s tariffs may affect the economy and raise inflation.
The correction was exacerbated by the lack of weekend liquidity and the fact that Bitcoin was the only large liquid asset available for de-risking, industry watchers told Cointelegraph.
“While improved sentiment creates a more stable foundation, cryptocurrency markets are still susceptible to rapid movements during periods of reduced trading volume,” according to Marcin Kazmierczak, co-founder and chief operating officer of RedStone blockchain oracle firm.
“The sentiment recovery provides some cushioning, but traders should remain cautious as weekend liquidity constraints can still amplify price movements regardless of the current market mood,” he told Cointelegraph.
Crypto investors may have “maxed out on tariff-related fears”
Cryptocurrency markets may have priced in the full extent of tariff-related concerns, according to Aurelie Barthere, principal research analyst at crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
“It feels like we’ve maxed out on tariff-related fear,” she told Cointelegraph, adding:
“While many remain uncertain about where things are headed over the next month or so, it also seems like markets were just waiting for the slightest signal that we’re back in the game.”
“Whether the rally is sustainable depends on whether we can break through previous resistance levels, at least in isolation. It could have legs, as markets now seem to believe there’s a ‘Trump put’ under equities, the US dollar and US Treasurys,” Barthere added, warning of more potential volatility amid the upcoming negotiations.
Nansen previously predicted a 70% chance that crypto markets will bottom and start a recovery by June, but highlighted that the timing will depend on the outcome of tariff negotiations.
The tariff negotiations may only be “posturing” for the US to reach a trade agreement with China, which may be the “big prize” for Trump’s administration, according to Raoul Pal, founder and CEO of Global Macro Investor.