Adam Boulton: Quitter politicians – an impossible job or the wrong people at the wrong time?

Published

1 year ago

March 24, 2024

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There goes another one. The Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced this week that he is quitting at the age of 45, explaining: “I don’t feel I’m the best person for that job any more.”

He is just the latest in a spate of national leaders to stand down voluntarily when seemingly at the peak of their powers.

Last year New Zealand’s former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, found she had “no more in the tank” aged 43.

Nicola Sturgeon went at 53 to spend “a little bit more time on Nicola Sturgeon the human being”, since being first minister of Scotland “takes its toll on you”.

Politicians at the very top are not the only ones calling an early end to their careers.

The number of MPs standing down from the Commons has now reached 100 and counting.

That is what might be expected ahead of a likely “change election” when the opposition is poised to take over from incumbents. A major cause for concern is the comparatively young age of many of those giving up and quitting so soon.

From resigning prime ministers to departing MPs something must be going wrong if politics only holds such a passing attraction for people of talent.

Maybe the jobs of leader and people’s representative are more impossible than they have ever been in the social media age. Or perhaps the wrong people are going into politics at the wrong time. They are quitters not fighters.

“Poster Child” almost seems an apt description for some of those joining the exodus from Westminster: Nicola Richards 29, Mhairi Black 29, William Wragg 36 and Deheena Davison, 30.

Most of the MPs going prematurely have only known one government in their time at Westminster. The majority of those standing down have only been MPs since 2010 at the earliest. More than a dozen were first elected in 2017 and 2019.

The prospect of imminent or actual defeat has of course concentrated the minds of those handing in their parliamentary passes voluntarily. Two out of three who announced they are not standing again are Conservatives.

Adverse circumstances higher up the food chain

Higher up the food chain, Varadkar, Ardern and Sturgeon were praised at first for going in their own time for no particular reason. It soon became apparent that they were in adverse circumstances.

Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform investigating alleged fraud by the SNP is still under way. Ms Sturgeon and her husband have both been interviewed under caution.

Meanwhile her party’s standing and support for Scottish independence have both headed south in opinion polls.

Ms Ardern once talked about seeking a third term as prime minister. Instead, under her successor as leader, her Labour Party was walloped by the conservative National Party in last year’s election, amid a reaction against the “woke” values she personified.

As his country’s youngest-ever prime minister, gay and from an Indian ethnic background, Mr Varadkar also embodied Ireland’s rapid liberalisation.

But this month, he and Dublin’s political establishment suffered the setback of resounding defeat in a double referendum attempting to modernise the constitution on “relationships” outside marriage and the role of women.

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Mr Varadkar, from the right of centre Fine Gael party, owes his seven years in office to a series of pacts with the opposition Fianna Fail, which were largely designed to keep the republican Sinn Fein away from power.

A general election is due soon and Sinn Fein now tops the polls in the south under Mary Lou MacDonald. Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill is first minister in Northern Ireland.

Not like previous generations

Today’s quitter politicians certainly face some stark challenges but they are all going down without a fight, unlike many in previous generations.

William Gladstone and Harold Wilson both regained the premiership after losing it. Others like Ted Heath and Margaret Beckett stayed on for years after their glory days of power.

Most of the MPs going now plan to leave politics altogether. They complain that the pressures of the job have become intolerable. Some talk of worries for their mental health and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Pay is not the main issue. The government has accepted IPSA’s recommendation of a 5.5% increase taking an MP’s salary to £91,346 a year.

While it is true that wage inequalities have increased to the benefit of the very highest earners, MPs and ministers in the UK and elsewhere have more than maintained their differential above the average professional salary.

Some of those leaving now, perhaps with backgrounds in teaching or local government, say they are worried that they might not be able to earn as much. Some are announcing their intention to quit now hoping to be at the front of the queue for opportunities.

Being a minister in a failing government is not so attractive when it means an automatic six-month quarantine before taking up new employment.

Organised pile-ons and email campaigns

Mr Varadkar explained: “Politicians are human beings and we have our limitations.

“We give it everything until we can’t any more.”

He speaks for many of those calling it a day. They talk of the pressures of being on call 24/7. Thanks to the internet, constituents can contact them with less effort than ever and monitor their activities and apparent work rate. Organised pile-ons and email campaigns are a common hazard.

Far worse, a growing minority of the public regard MPs as fair game. At the extreme this has resulted in the recent murder of two MPs, Jo Cox and David Amess, and a number of other violent assaults.

Women MPs also have to deal with vile abuse and threats online every day. Some consider the male-dominated atmosphere at Westminster to be “toxic”.

Tony Blair was the first prime minister to have young children in Downing Street for a century. Since then Brown, Cameron, Johnson, Truss and Sunak have each taken families into Number 10.

As the demand for younger political leaders grows, so do their difficulties bringing up children. Some of the women leaving office, including Ms Ardern, talk of the personal and private pressures. Blair was the most successful British politician of his generation but says he would be “really worried” if any of his four adult children wanted to go into politics.

Plenty of nutters and demagogues

Mainstream parties are now having trouble finding candidates who look like decent, long-term prospects. There are always plenty of nutters and demagogues looking for an opening but sensible men and women willing to serve their country with a career in parliament are in short supply.

As a result, both the Conservatives and Labour are having to pick young candidates with local links. A significant number of these potential MPs have some knowledge of the ropes thanks to family connections to politicians and others in “the Westminster Bubble”, including journalists. They are not necessarily good long-term bets.

Single people in their 20s and early 30s cannot know where their lives are heading. Those now leaving parliament after a few years presumably took a wrong turning when they became MPs. The electorate that has been paying to train them will not get the benefit of their expertise in future.

Most ex-prime ministers still have something to offer in the public realm. But they choose to do it away from the crumbling palace of Westminster. Theresa May is the latest to say that she can better concentrate on what she cares about by leaving the Commons.

Few linger long once they have been elected. The average tenure of an MP is falling. The average age of MPs is around 50 compared to 57 in the US House of Representatives and 64 in the Senate. Admittedly the US has its unique problems of gerontocracy, but elsewhere in the English-speaking world it ought to be possible to get more use out of our mature politicians.

As things stand we are all caught in a vicious cycle. The quality of those seeking to govern is diminishing; that in turn breeds disrespect for politicians, which makes the job less appealing than ever.

As Leo Varadkar put it: “We give our all until we can’t anymore.”

Politics

DeFi security and compliance must be improved to attract institutions

Published

3 hours ago

April 9, 2025

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DeFi security and compliance must be improved to attract institutions

Opinion by: Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch

Institutional players have been closely watching decentralized finance’s growth. Creating secure and compliant DeFi platforms is the only solution to build trust and attract more institutions.

Clear waters attract big ships

Over the past four years, institutional DeFi adoption has gone from 10% of hedge funds to 47%, and is projected to rise to 65% in 2025. Goldman Sachs is reaching their arms to DeFi for bond issuance and yield farming.

Early adopters are already positioning themselves in onchain finance, including Visa, which has processed over $1 billion in crypto transactions since 2021 and is now testing cross-border payments. In the next two years, institutional adoption will speed up. A compliant regulatory framework that maintains DeFi’s core benefits is necessary for institutional adoption to engage confidently.

DeFi’s institutional trilemma

It is no secret that many DeFi security exploits happen every year. The recent Bybit hack reported a $1.4 billion loss. The breach occurred through a transfer process that was vulnerable to attack. Attacks like these raise concerns about multisignature wallets and blind signing. This happens when users approve transactions without full details, rendering blind signing a significant risk. This case calls for stronger security measures and improvements in user experience.

The threats of theft due to vulnerabilities in smart contracts or mistakes by validators make institutional investors hesitate when depositing large amounts of money into institutional staking pools. Institutions are also at risk of noncompliance due to a lack of clear regulatory frameworks, creating hesitation to enter the space.

The user interface in DeFi is often designed for users with technical expertise. Institutional investors require user-friendly experiences that make DeFi staking possible without relying on third-party intermediaries.

Build it right, and they will come

Institutional interest in bringing traditional assets onchain is enormous, with the tokenized asset market estimated to reach $16 trillion by 2030. To confidently participate in DeFi, institutions need verifiable counterparties that are compliant with regulatory requirements. The entry of traditional institutional players into DeFi has led some privacy advocates to point out that it can counter the essence of decentralization, which forms the bedrock of the ecosystem.

Recent: Securitize to bring BUIDL tokenized fund to DeFi with RedStone price feeds

Institutions must be able to trust DeFi platforms to maintain compliance standards while providing a safe and seamless user interface. A balanced approach is key. DeFi’s permissionless nature can be achieved while maintaining compliance through identity profiles, allowing secure transactions. Similarly, transaction screening tools facilitate real-time monitoring and risk assessment.

Blockchain analytics tools help institutions to maintain compliance with Anti-Money Laundering regulations and prevent interaction with blacklisted wallets. Integrating these tools can help detect and prevent illicit activity, making DeFi safer for institutional engagement.

Intent-based architecture can improve security

The relationship between intent-based architecture and security is evident; the very design is built to reduce risks, creating a more reliable user experience. This protects the user against MEV exploits, a common issue of automated bots scanning for large profitable trades that can be exploited. Intent-based architecture also helps implement compliance frameworks. For instance, restricting order submissions to clean wallets and allowing resolvers to settle only the acceptable orders.

It’s well understood that in traditional DeFi transactions, users rely often on intermediaries like liquidity providers to execute trades or manage funds. This leads to counterparty risk, unauthorized execution and settlement failure. The intent-based architecture supports a trustless settlement that ensures users commit only when all conditions are met, reducing risk and removing blind trust from the picture.

DeFi platforms must simplify interactions and UX for institutional investors. This system bridges the gap between. Through executing offchain while ensuring security, the intent-based architecture makes DeFi safer and more efficient. However, one of the challenges to this includes integrating offchain order matching while maintaining onchain transparency.

Late adopters of DeFi will struggle to keep up

For the early adopters of DeFi, there is a competitive advantage in liquidity access and yield advantages, whereas late adopters will face more regulatory scrutiny and entry barriers. By 2026, the institutional players that have failed to adopt DeFi may struggle to keep up. This is seen in the examples of early adopters like JPMorgan and Citi’s early tokenization projects. TradFi leaders like them are already gearing up for onchain finance.

The way forward

Regulatory bodies, supervisory agencies and policy leaders must provide clear, standardized guidelines to facilitate broader institutional participation. Uniform protocols underpinning wider institutional involvement are underway. DeFi platforms must be prepared beforehand to provide all the necessary pillars of compliance and security to institutional players who want to embrace mainstream adoption. Executing this shall require combined efforts from regulators, developers and institutions.

Opinion by: Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Politics

Kalshi accepts Bitcoin deposits in bid to woo crypto-native users

Published

3 hours ago

April 9, 2025

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Kalshi accepts Bitcoin deposits in bid to woo crypto-native users

Prediction marketplace Kalshi has started taking Bitcoin (BTC) deposits in a bid to onboard more crypto-native users.

The company that lets users bet on events ranging from election outcomes to Rotten Tomatoes film ratings has seen a strong uptake among crypto traders, Kalshi told Cointelegraph on April 9. For instance, event contracts for betting on Bitcoin’s hour-by-hour price changes have seen $143 million in trading volume to date, a spokesperson said.

Kalshi is a derivatives exchange regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). As of April 9, it listed some 50 crypto-related event contracts, including markets for betting on coins’ 2025 highs and lows, as well as on headlines such as US President Donald Trump’s proposed National Bitcoin Reserve.

The platform started accepting crypto payments in October when it enabled stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) deposits.

Kalshi relies on ZeroHash — a crypto payments infrastructure provider — for off-ramping BTC and USDC and converting the deposits to US dollars. The exchange accepts BTC deposits only from the Bitcoin network.

More accurate than polls

Launched in 2021, Kalshi rose to prominence ahead of the US’s November elections.

It became a top venue for trading on 2024 political events after winning a lawsuit against the CFTC, which tried to block Kalshi from listing contracts tied to elections.

The regulator argued that political prediction markets threaten the integrity of elections, but industry analysts say they often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls.

For instance, prediction markets, including Kalshi, accurately predicted Trump’s presidential election win even as polls indicated a tossup.

“Event contract markets are a valuable public good for which there is no evidence of significant manipulation or widespread use for any nefarious purposes that the Commission alleges,” Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, said in an August comment letter filed with the CFTC.

As of April 9, Kalshi traders peg the odds of the US entering a recession at 68%, according to its website.

In March, Kalshi partnered with Robinhood to bring prediction markets to the popular online brokerage platform. Robinhood’s stock rose some 8% on the news.

Kalshi competes with Polymarket, a Web3-based prediction platform. Polymarket processed more than $3 billion in trading volumes tied to the US presidential election despite being off-limits for US traders.

Magazine: Bitcoin heading to $70K soon? Crypto baller funds SpaceX flight: Hodler’s Digest, March 30 – April 5

Politics

No crypto project has registered with the SEC and ‘lived to tell the tale’ — House committee hearing

Published

4 hours ago

April 9, 2025

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No crypto project has registered with the SEC and ‘lived to tell the tale’ — House committee hearing

United States securities laws are not flexible enough to account for digital assets, as evidenced by the parade of crypto-native companies that have tried and failed to get into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) good graces, Rodrigo Seira, special counsel to Cooley LLP, told a House Committee hearing on April 9.

The hearing, titled American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets Aligning the U.S. Securities Laws for the Digital Age, featured Seira, WilmerHale partner Tiffany J. Smith, Polygon chief legal officer Jake Werrett and Alexandra Thorn, a senior director at the Center for American Progress.

“It is clear that the current securities regulatory framework is not a viable option to regulate crypto. It fails to achieve its stated policy goals,” Seira said in his opening remarks. “[T]he idea that crypto projects can come in and register with the SEC is demonstrably false.”

Seira acknowledged that crypto promoters who raise capital for a new enterprise should be subject to federal securities laws.

“In practice, however, virtually no crypto projects have successfully registered their tokens under federal securities laws and lived to tell the tale,” he said, adding:

Projects that tried to comply with [the] SEC’s current regulatory requirements expended significant resources and effort only to fail or survive in a state of regulatory uncertainty. Moreover, registration is not a simple one-time process. Registering a token in the same manner as a stock triggers an obligation to operate as a publicly reporting company […].”

Righting the ship

In introducing the witnesses, Representative Bryan Steil, who heads the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, acknowledged regulatory roadblocks, which he said were put in place by the previous administration.

Under President Donald Trump, lawmakers are attempting to right the ship by passing sensible legislation, said Steil.

One of the first steps occurred last week when the House Financial Services Committee advanced the STABLE Act, which is designed to regulate payment stablecoins tied to the US dollar and other fiat currencies.

A month earlier, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the GENIUS Act, which aims to regulate stablecoin issuers by establishing reserve requirements and requiring full compliance with Anti-Money Laundering laws.

The next step is “advancing the second half of this agenda: comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation,” said Steil.

Representative Ro Khanna told a digital asset conference last month that a market structure bill will cross the finish line this year.

The purpose of such legislation is to establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets, including their legal categories and the enforcement jurisdiction of agencies such as the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom