Rishi Sunak is a prime minister who has always found it easy to build consensus on the world stage.
But when it comes to his own backyard, this premiership tells a very different story.
PM’s own deputy chair rebels on Rwanda – live updates
With voters, he is struggling to build any sort of coalition, still bumping along 18 or so points behind Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour after 15 months in office, while this week he finds himself battling 60 of his own MPs convinced his flagship Rwanda plan won’t work.
And to hammer home the knock-on effect of that failure to deliver on the small boats promise, new polling by YouGov points to a Tory wipeout worse than in the Blair landslide of 1997, with Mr Sunak’s Conservatives predicated to win just 169 seats, while Labour would win 395, giving Sir Keir a majority of 120 seats.
The message from the Tory right is clear: sort out illegal migration or face electoral oblivion.
To that end, rebel MPs are pressing the prime minister to toughen up his Rwanda bill.
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Calls to ‘strengthen’ Rwanda bill
For now, Number 10 seem to be standing its ground – after all, amendments which the right argues strengthen the bill could provoke a rebellion on the One Nation centrist wing of the party, or even the Rwandan government, which has warned London the bill must stay within international law.
There is going to be a lot of rows, noise, and tension over the coming 48 hours, but even on the rebel side, there is a sense MPs won’t torpedo the entire bill should the government refuse to accept the amendments laid by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, which aim to tighten the bill around getting planes off the ground in the face of injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights, or asylum seekers being allowed to make individual claims.
As one senior rebel put it to me the other day, it’s one thing to abstain, or vote for rebel amendments, and another to collapse the whole bill entirely.
So far, only Suella Braverman has come out to say she will vote down the bill if it’s not amended.
Read more:
The by-election battles of Sunak’s premiership
Mysterious election poll designed to cause trouble
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PM ‘will not hesitate’ to protect security
The bigger problem for the PM is the rot. Even if he manages to pass the bill, the can is only kicked down the road.
His government will face individual court battles and perhaps a tussle with the court in Strasbourg. He might win in the Commons this week, but if the policy doesn’t work, he’ll face the wrath not just of many of his MPs but many former Conservative voters too.
Last December, after much drama, Mr Sunak headed off a Conservative revolt over his flagship bill, when – despite all the noise – the government won the vote with a majority of 44, with 37 MPs either abstaining or absent and not one voting against.
But even if the prime minister can carry his plan through the Commons this week, the question on all the minds of MPs – amplified by the polling out today – is whether it can even dent Labour’s lead.
As a senior minister lamented to me last December during those Tory rows over Rwanda: “This is the week our hopes of 1992 turned into 1997.”
In other words, even if Mr Sunak can win the battles with his rebel MPs, he has lost the war with a party irreconcilably divided and a public that’s tuned out.
His best hope is that steady progress – on the boats, the economy, NHS waiting lists – can slowly turn the tide.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, marks their 50th birthday amid a year of rising institutional and geopolitical adoption of the world’s first cryptocurrency.
The identity of Nakamoto remains one of the biggest mysteries in crypto, with speculation ranging from cryptographers like Adam Back and Nick Szabo to broader theories involving government intelligence agencies.
While Nakamoto’s identity remains anonymous, the Bitcoin (BTC) creator is believed to have turned 50 on April 5 based on details shared in the past.
According to archived data from his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto once claimed to be a 37-year-old man living in Japan and listed his birthdate as April 5, 1975.
Source: Web.archive.org
Nakamoto’s anonymity has played a vital role in maintaining the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network, which has no central authority or leadership.
The Bitcoin wallet associated with Nakamoto, which holds over 1 million BTC, has laid dormant for more than 16 years despite BTC rising from $0 to an all-time high above $109,000 in January.
Satoshi Nakamoto statue in Lugano, Switzerland. Source: Cointelegraph
Nakamoto’s 50th birthday comes nearly a month after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, marking the first major step toward integrating Bitcoin into the US financial system.
Related: Bitcoin at 16: From experiment to trillion-dollar asset
Nakamoto’s legacy: a “cornerstone of economic sovereignty”
“At 50, Nakamoto’s legacy is no longer just code; it’s a cornerstone of economic sovereignty,” according to Anndy Lian, author and intergovernmental blockchain expert.
“Bitcoin’s reserve status signals trust in its scarcity and resilience,” Lian told Cointelegraph, adding:
“What’s fascinating is the timing. Fifty feels symbolic — half a century of life, mirrored by Bitcoin’s journey from a white paper to a trillion-dollar asset. Nakamoto’s vision of trustless, peer-to-peer money has outgrown its cypherpunk roots, entering the halls of power.”
However, lingering questions about Nakamoto remain unanswered, including whether they still hold the keys to their wallet, which is “a fortune now tied to US policy,” Lian said.
Related: Bitcoin’s next catalyst: End of $36T US debt ceiling suspension
Is Satoshi Nakamoto wealthier than Bill Gates?
In February, Arkham Intelligence published findings that attribute 1.096 million BTC — then valued at more than $108 billion — to Nakamoto. That would place him above Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the global wealth rankings, according to data shared by Coinbase director Conor Grogan.
Satoshi’s new addresses. Source: Conor Grogan
If accurate, this would make Nakamoto the world’s 16th richest person.
Despite the growing interest in Nakamoto’s identity and holdings, his early decision to remain anonymous and inactive has helped preserve Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos — a principle that continues to define the cryptocurrency to this day.
Magazine: 10 crypto theories that missed as badly as ‘Peter Todd is Satoshi’
The United States stock market lost more in value over the April 4 trading day than the entire cryptocurrency market is worth, as fears over US President Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to ramp up.
On April 4, the US stock market lost $3.25 trillion — around $570 billion more than the entire crypto market’s $2.68 trillion valuation at the time of publication.
Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market”
Among the Magnificent-7 stocks, Tesla (TSLA) led the losses on the day with a 10.42% drop, followed by Nvidia (NVDA) down 7.36% and Apple (AAPL) falling 7.29%, according to TradingView data.
The significant decline across the board signals that the Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market” after falling 6% across the trading day, trading resource account The Kobeissi Letter said in an April 4 X post. This is the largest daily decline since March 16, 2020.
“US stocks have now erased a massive -$11 TRILLION since February 19 with recession odds ABOVE 60%,” it added. The Kobessi Letter said Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement was “historic” and if the tariffs continue, a recession will be “impossible to avoid.”
Source: Anthony Scaramucci
On April 2, Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
Trump said the reciprocal tariffs will be roughly half the rate US trading partners impose on American goods.
Related: Bitcoin bulls defend $80K support as ‘World War 3 of trade wars’ crushes US stocks
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has pointed out that while the stock market continues to decline, Bitcoin (BTC) remains stronger than most expected.
Crypto trader Plan Markus pointed out in an April 4 X post that while the entire stock market “is tanking,” Bitcoin is holding.
Source: Jeff Dorman
Even some crypto skeptics have pointed out the contrast between Bitcoin’s performance and the US stock market during the recent period of macro uncertainty.
Stock market commentator Dividend Hero told his 203,200 X followers that he has “hated on Bitcoin in the past, but seeing it not tank while the stock market does is very interesting to me.”
Meanwhile, technical trader Urkel said Bitcoin “doesn’t appear to care one bit about tariff wars and markets tanking.” Bitcoin is trading at $83,749 at the time of publication, down 0.16% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
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