From Keir Starmer being showered in glitter to David Cameron’s comeback: 2023’s unexpected political moments

Published

2 years ago

December 23, 2023

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It may seem pretty standard nowadays for chaos to follow wherever politics goes.

But there were a number of unexpected political moments this year that left even the most seasoned Westminster watcher open-mouthed.

We take a look at some of the most surprising incidents from the past 12 months.

Glitter bombing

As the end of the Labour’s annual conference drew near and Sir Keir Starmer took to the stage to give his closing speech, he may have been preparing to face a heckle or two.

But the party’s leader probably couldn’t have predicted being showered in glitter by a protester demanding changes to the voting system.

On a serious note, it was quite the breach of security, and being in the room, it felt like an age before his guards tackled the protester to the ground.

But Sir Keir used the incident to his advantage, took off his bedazzled jacket and literally rolled up his sleeves to get on with the job.

The crowd were in the palm of his hand for the rest of his speech.

The Stockton moment

Things often get a little heated during Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, but a sweary heckle from the Tory frontbench ended up making headlines.

Labour MP Alex Cunningham had put a question to Rishi Sunak, asking why so many children in his Stockton-on-Tees constituency were living in poverty.

Home Secretary James Cleverly was then heard making a comment, which Mr Cunningham claimed was as follows: “Because it’s a s***hole”.

Cue anger from Labour and northern Tories, and a denial from Mr Cleverly.

However, as the pressure continue to build, a source close to the minister had to fess up, revealing that while Mr Cleverly didn’t slag off Stockton, he did refer to Mr Cunningham as a “s*** MP”.

Greenpeace at Sunak’s house

When the prime minister headed off to California for a family holiday – taking in a Taylor Swift show in the process – his manor house in North Yorkshire was getting a make-over.

Five activists from Greenpeace climbed onto the roof of his constituency home to stage a protest against the government’s plans to grant more than 100 new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

And they made their point by draping the imposing building with black fabric, as if it had been covered in oil.

MPs of all stripes attacked the protesters for targeting Mr Sunak’s home, with an ex-police chief branding it a “major security breach”.

But the group called it a “proportionate response to a disastrous decision” amid a climate crisis – as well as saying they wouldn’t have done it if the prime minister or his family were at home.

Keegan comment

Another sweary moment makes it onto our list, but this one was slightly more self-congratulatory.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan found herself in political hot water at the end of the summer holidays after it was revealed over 100 schools had to fully or partially close over concerns about reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

But it was what she said after an interview on the topic that really got our attention.

Still wearing her mic, Ms Keegan was recorded saying: “Does anyone ever say, ‘you know you’ve done a f****** good job’ because everyone else has sat on their a**** and done nothing?

“No signs of that, no?”

The minister later apologised, but said she was “frustrated with the interviewer” who was “making out it was all my fault”.

Cummings’ COVID comments

While Ms Keegan’s language could be described as colourful, she has nothing on the expletive vocabulary of one particular former adviser.

Onlookers knew the appearance of Dominic Cummings at the COVID inquiry was sure to get spicy, as he has made no secret of his distain for most of the people he worked with in Downing Street.

But no one quite expected it when the well-spoken lawyer at the hearing began to read out Mr Cummings’ most graphic description of ministers from his WhatsApps.

“Useless f***pigs, morons and c****,” he said.

Mr Cummings stood by the remarks, however, telling the inquiry the barbs “understated the position” of “chaos” in Number 10.

The long exit

There were quite a few high-profile exits from parliament this year, but perhaps the most remarkable was the drawn-out departure of former culture secretary Nadine Dorries.

The Mid-Bedfordshire MP and close ally of Boris Johnson announced she was quitting the Commons “with immediate effect” soon after the ex-prime minister was found to have lied to the House over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street.

But it took her another 81 days to officially resign her post in a letter to Mr Sunak.

So why the long pause? Well, Ms Dorries had been expecting to be elevated to the Lords in Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list, but it didn’t happen.

She has since blamed that on Mr Sunak blocking the move, and said she hung on to investigate what had happened to her peerage.

Ms Dorries remains without one, but has written a book about a plot she believed took place in Westminster against Mr Johnson and his government.

The return of Cameron

Reshuffle days are always the height of excitement in Westminster, as we wait to see who will be kicked out of their plush offices, and which MPs will be moving in.

But when Mr Sunak’s most recent rejigging of cabinet began, no one expected the suit about to get out of the car.

Former prime minister David – now Lord – Cameron shocked everyone with his appearance on Downing Street, and in the coming hours, he was confirmed as the new foreign secretary.

You can hear the surprise in the voices of Sky News’ Kay Burley and deputy political editor Sam Coates in the video above…

Tech bro duo

The word of the year is AI, and as a former Silicon Valley resident, Mr Sunak has tagged himself onto the topic of the moment.

He hosted a summit with experts and politicians from around the world at the famous Bletchley Park to discuss its future.

But a surprise Q&A session back in central London after the main event was the one that drew all the focus.

The prime minister, used to being interviewed himself, instead posed questions to the tech entrepreneur and controversial X owner Elon Musk.

From encouraging people to be more “comfortable failing” through to claiming AI friends may be better than real ones, it was a strange conversation that perhaps may have been better behind closed doors.

But Mr Sunak was keen to laugh along with his jokes and try to show off his own credentials to the world’s most famous tech bro.

Minister suggests wrong kind of rain to blame for floods

Having fallen from the dizzy heights of deputy prime minister under the short tenure of Liz Truss, Therese Coffey never seemed quite so happy in her role as environment secretary.

But one of her worst days in the gig must have been on a visit to an area of Nottinghamshire hit hard by flooding caused by Storm Babet.

She faced an awkward exchange with local residents whose homes had been ruined by the water, and they didn’t seem convinced by her citing of statistics over how much the government had spent on flood defences.

Appearing before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that same week, she suggested the damage from the storm was harder to predict because the rain came in from the east.

She lost her job a matter of weeks later in the aforementioned reshuffle.

Braverman steps on guide dog at Tory conference

The former home secretary has faced some cruel putdowns in the press due to her tough stances on topics like immigration, antisemitism and… homelessness.

But Suella Braverman left the door wide open to being dubbed “Cruella” when she was spotted on the floor of the Conservative Party conference.

A tweet went viral showing her stepping with her high heels onto the tail of a dog – and not just any dog, a guide dog for the blind.

Ms Braverman was later quoted as saying she was unaware she had stepped on the dog’s tail, telling a fringe event: “I was unaware until a few minutes ago – I don’t think any dogs were harmed in the filming of my visit, but let me just issue for the record an apology to all dogs out there.”

Squirrel faux pas

All eyes have been quite rightly focused on the Middle East since the horrific terror attacks on 7 October in Israel, and the conflict in Gaza that has followed.

But while it may have been on the mind of Jim Shannon, he probably should have left it at the door when he took part in a Westminster Hall debate on squirrels.

The DUP MP was telling his colleagues about an organisation in his constituency set up to protect red squirrels, whose numbers have notoriously dwindled due to the impact of their grey cousins.

However, Mr Shannon may have crossed the line when he said: “Grey squirrels are the Hamas of the squirrel world.”

Politics

Upcoming budget will be big – and Starmer has some serious convincing to do as he fights for survival

Published

2 hours ago

November 24, 2025

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Upcoming budget will be big - and Starmer has some serious convincing to do as he fights for survival

Wednesday’s budget is going to be big.

It will be big in terms of tax rises, big in terms of setting the course of the economy and public services, and big in terms of political jeopardy for this government.

The chancellor has a lot of different groups to try to assuage and a lot is at stake.

“There are lots of different audiences to this budget,” says one senior Labour figure. “The markets will be watching, the public on the cost of living, the party on child poverty and business will want to like the direction in which we are travelling – from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a pretty good package.”

The three core principles underpinning the chancellor’s decisions will be to cut NHS waiting lists, cut national debt and cut the cost of living. There will be no return to austerity and no more increases in government borrowing.

Politics Live: Reeves’s ‘mansplaining’ claims are just a ‘smokescreen’, says shadow chancellor

What flows from that is more investment in the NHS, already the big winner in the 2024 Budget, and tax rises to keep funding public services and help plug gaps in the government’s finances.

Some of these gaps are beyond Rachel Reeves’ control, such as the decision by the independent fiscal watchdog (the Office for Budget Responsibility) to downgrade the UK’s productivity forecasts – leaving the chancellor with a £20bn gap in the public finances – or the effect of Donald Trump’s tariffs on the global economy.

Others are self-inflicted, with the chancellor having to find about £7bn to plug her reversals on winter fuel allowance and welfare cuts.

By not pulling the borrowing lever, she hopes to send a message to the markets about stability, and that should help keep down inflation and borrowing costs low, which in turn helps with the cost of living, because inflation and interest rates feed into what we pay for food, for energy, rent and mortgage costs.

That’s what the government is trying to do, but what about the reality when this budget hits?

This is going to be another big Labour budget, where people will be taxed more and the government will spend more.

Only a year ago the chancellor raised a whopping £40bn in taxes and said she wasn’t coming back for more. Now she’s looking to raise more than £30bn.

That the prime minister refused to recommit to his manifesto promise not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance on working people at the G20 in South Africa days ahead of the budget is instructive: this week we could see the government announce manifesto-breaking tax rises that will leave millions paying more.

Freeze to income thresholds expected

The biggest tax lever, raising income tax rates, was going to be pulled but has now been put back in neutral after the official forecasts came in slightly better than expected, and Downing Street thought again about being the first government in 50 years to raise the income tax rate.

On the one hand, this measure would have been a very clean and clear way of raising £20bn of tax. On the other, there was a view from some in government that the PM and his chancellor would never recover from such a clear breach of trust, with a fair few MPs comparing it to the tuition fees U-turn that torpedoed Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems in the 2015 general election.

Instead, the biggest revenue raiser in the budget will be another two-year freeze on income tax thresholds until 2030.

This is the very thing that Reeves promised she would not do at the last budget in 2024 because “freezing the thresholds will hurt working people” and “take more money out of their payslips”. This week, those words will come back to haunt the chancellor.

Two-child cap big headline grabber

There will also be more spending and the biggest headline grabber will be the decision to lift the two-child benefit cap.

This was something the PM refused to commit to in the Labour manifesto, because it was one of the things he said he couldn’t afford to do if he wanted to keep taxes low for working people.

But on Wednesday, the government will announce it’s spending £3bn-a-year to lift that cap. Labour MPs will like it, polling suggests the public will not.

What we are going to get on Wednesday is another big tax and spend Labour budget on top of the last.

For the Conservatives, it draws clear dividing lines to take Labour on. They will argue that this is the “same old Labour”, taxing more to spend more, and more with no cuts to public spending.

Having retreated on welfare savings in the summer, to then add more to the welfare bill by lifting the two-child cap is a gift for Labour’s opponents and they will hammer the party on the size of the benefits bill, where the cost of supporting people with long-term health conditions is set to rise from £65bn-a-year to a staggering £100bn by 2029-30.

Mansion tax on the cards

There is also a real risk of blow-up in this budget as the chancellor unveils a raft of revenue measures to find that £30bn.

There could be a mansion tax for those living in more expensive homes, a gambling tax, a tourism tax, a milkshake tax.

Ministers are fearful that one of these more modest revenue-raising measures becomes politically massive and blows up.

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This is what happened to George Osborne in 2012 when he announced plans to put 20% of VAT on hot food sold in bakeries and supermarkets. The plan quickly became an attack on the working man’s lunch from out-of-touch Tories and the “pasty tax” was ditched two months later.

And what about the voters? Big tax and spend budgets are the opposite of what Sir Keir Starmer promised the country when he was seeking election. His administration was not going to be another Labour tax and spend government but instead invest in infrastructure to turbocharge growth to help pay for better services and improve people’s everyday lives.

Seventeen months in, the government doesn’t seem to be doing things differently. A year ago, it embarked on the biggest tax-raising budget in a generation, and this week, it goes back on its word and lifts taxes for working people. It creates a big trust deficit.

Government attempts to tell a better story

There are those in Labour who will read this and point to worse-than-expected government finances, global headwinds and the productivity downgrades as reasons for tax raising.

But it is true too that economists had argued in the run-up to the election that Labour’s position on not cutting spending or raising taxes was unsustainable when you looked at the public finances. Labour took a gamble by saying tax rises were not needed before the election and another one when the chancellor said last year she was not coming back for more.

After a year-and-a-half of governing, the country isn’t feeling better off, the cost of living isn’t easing, the economy isn’t firing, the small boats haven’t been stopped, and the junior doctors are again on strike.

The PM told me at the G7 summit in Canada in June that one of his regrets of his first year wasn’t “we haven’t always told our story as well as we should”.

What you will hear this week is the government trying to better tell that story about what it has achieved to improve people’s lives – be that school breakfast clubs or extending free childcare, increasing the national living wage, giving millions of public sector workers above-inflation pay rises.

You will also hear more about the NHS, as the waiting lists for people in need of non-urgent care within 18 weeks remain stubbornly high. It stood at 7.6m in July 2024 and was at 7.4m at the end of September. The government will talk on Wednesday about how it intends to drive those waits down.

But there is another story from the last 18 months too: Labour said the last budget was a “once in a parliament” tax-raising moment, now it’s coming back for more. Labour said in the election it would protect working people and couldn’t afford to lift the two child-benefit cap, and this week could see both those promises broken.

Can PM convince his MPs?

Labour flip-flopped on winter fuel allowance and on benefit cuts, and is now raising your taxes.

Downing Street has been in a constant state of flux as the PM keeps changing his top team, the deputy prime minister had to resign for underpaying her tax, while the UK’s ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, was sacked over his ties to the Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted paedophile. It doesn’t seem much like politics being done differently.

All of the above is why this budget is big. Because Wednesday is not just about the tax and spend measures, big as they may be. It is also about this government, this prime minister, this chancellor. Starmer said ahead of this budget that he was “optimistic” and “if we get this right, our country has a great future”.

But he has some serious convincing to do. Many of his own MPs and those millions of people who voted Labour in, have lost confidence in their ability to deliver, which is why the drumbeat of leadership change now bangs. Going into Wednesday, it’s difficult to imagine how this second tax-raising budget will lessen that noise around a leader and a Labour government that, at the moment, is fighting to survive.

Politics

Rising crypto token value capture may fuel 2026 rebound: Bitwise CIO

Published

6 hours ago

November 24, 2025

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Rising crypto token value capture may fuel 2026 rebound: Bitwise CIO

Crypto tokens are becoming increasingly efficient at capturing value, thanks in part to new regulations and upgrades, which could send prices surging in 2026, according to Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan.

Hougan said in an X post on Saturday that in the chaos of the current market pullback, big news is getting lost, such as the level of value capture in digital assets trending upward.

“Most of today’s tokens were created in a regulatory era where value capture was risky; as a result, they defaulted to vague governance-style design choices,” he said.

“Under the new regulatory climate, that’s being unwound. I think we’ll start to feel this effect in 2026.”

Uniswap rallied after investor-friendly proposal

Uniswap (UNI), the native token behind the crypto protocol of the same name, surged earlier this month after the Uniswap Foundation and Uniswap Labs introduced a proposal to make the token more attractive as an investment.

Among the ideas being floated were a protocol-level fee mechanism to burn the tokens and building a Protocol Fee Discount Auctions system to increase liquidity provider returns.

Hougan said this is one of the most obvious examples of a token trying to capture value, and predicts that if the proposal passes, it could send UNI into the top ten by market cap in the future.

“The big knock on UNI has always been that it is a governance token. Uniswap is great, but activity on Uniswap didn’t benefit UNI tokenholders,” he said.

“Except now, UNI is considering flipping the fee switch. If the vote goes through, ~16% of trading fees will be used to burn UNI. I suspect this will push UNI toward being a top 10 token by market cap over time.”

Fusaka upgrade could see Ether lead rebound

Hougan also pointed to Ethereum’s Fusako upgrade as a catalyst that could “significantly increase token value capture.”

The Fusako upgrade mainnet launch is expected in December and will roll out upgrades to Ethereum’s execution layer and improvements to staking economics, among other upgrades.

“I suspect the market will start to orient around the positive impacts of Fusaka soon, particularly if it’s delivered Dec. 3 as expected. It’s an under-appreciated catalyst and one reason ETH could lead the crypto rebound,” Hougan said.