Former Labour minister Frank Field who was asked by Tony Blair to ‘think the unthinkable’ has died
Frank Field, the former Labour MP and minister, has died at the age of 81.
A statement from his family said: “He will be mourned by admirers across politics but above all he will be greatly missed by those lucky enough to have enjoyed his laughter and friendship.”
Lord Field of Birkenhead was asked to “think the unthinkable” to reform welfare by Sir Tony Blair in 1997, but he only lasted a year in the role before clashes with other ministers – including Gordon Brown – saw him return to the backbenches.
Having left the Commons in 2019, Lord Field was later diagnosed with terminal cancer and briefly admitted to hospice care in 2021.
His health had continued to decline, and he swore his oath to the King last year in the House of Lords from a wheelchair.
Tributes poured in from across the political spectrum following his death.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said the late MP was a “great parliamentarian, crusader for social justice and source of wise counsel”. while former home secretary Priti Patel praised his “unwavering moral compass, commitment to working cross-party and unshakable principles”.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said Lord Field was “neither cowed by the establishment or whips – which made his campaigns against hunger and food poverty, for climate change and the Church, even more effective”.
“Suffice to say, he was one of a kind and he will be sorely missed.”
Early life and becoming an MP
Frank field in 1976, when he was a director of the Child Poverty Action Group
Lord Field was born on 16 July 1942.
He was first elected as the Labour MP for Birkenhead in Merseyside in 1979.
He grew up in London in a working class family, and was a supporter of the Conservative Party in his teenage years, but was thrown out after he opposed apartheid in South Africa.
Lord Field went on to join the Labour Party as a teenager.
After attending grammar school and Hull University, he returned to London and was a councillor in west London in the 1960s.
After losing his seat in 1968, he was director of the charity Child Poverty Action Group until 1979, when he entered parliament.
The Labour Party was in the political wilderness for his first years in parliament, and Margaret Thatcher maintained a firm grip on power. But oddly enough Lord Field still became a regular visitor to Downing Street.
Long before Sir Tony’s new dawn broke with his 1997 election win, the Labour MP was entering Number 10 as he and Mrs Thatcher struck up an unusual friendship.
Lord Field visited her in 1990 to tell her that she was finished and needed to stand down – and they stayed friends afterwards.
‘Think the unthinkable’
Lord Field (back row, fourth from left) with a cabinet committee in 1997
By the time New Labour swept to power, Lord Field was known for his campaigning on welfare and helping the poorest in society.
His Christian faith led him down the path of believing that humans need to be saved from base instincts – and the government should help them do this.
This included believing that too generous a benefits system would no doubt trap people who saw it as a simpler and more lucrative alternative to the labour market.
Ultimately, the rows with the then chancellor Mr Brown – and social security secretary Harriet Harman – saw Lord Field leave the government in 1998.
Return to the backbenches
Despite losing his role in government, Lord Field continued to intervene and voice his opinions on how he believed the welfare system should work.
By the tail end of Labour’s time in office he was dissatisfied with the leadership of Mr Brown, who had succeeded Sir Tony as PM in 2007.
Come 2015, he nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be the party’s leader as he believed there needed to be a plurality of voices heard. But he was not a natural ally of the Corbyn regime when it did take over.
Lord Field was a supporter of Brexit, as he believed freedom of movement was having a negative impact on the UK’s Labour market, among other reasons.
He voted against Labour on pieces of Brexit legislation, and lost a vote of confidence in his Birkenhead constituency party in 2018.
Just over a month later, he resigned the Labour whip and took a swipe at how the party dealt with antisemitism as he left.
He continued to support Brexit in the House of Commons, and in the 2019 election stood as an independent but lost to the Labour candidate.
Illness and death
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Baroness reads assisted dying statement for colleague
In 2021, Lord Field announced he was terminally ill and revealed he backed assisted dying.
He spent time in a hospice, and a speech in support of assisted dying was read out in the House of Lords on his behalf, having joined the upper chamber in 2020 as a crossbench peer.
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.
Related: Crypto hacks top $1.6B in Q1 2025 — PeckShield
Unique DeFi lending model
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.
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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.
Related: US lawmaker says TRUMP coin could risk national security
Conflicts of interest
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.
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.”
Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions
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.
Related: Trump fought the bond market, the bond market won: Saifedean Ammous
Bitcoin (BTC) staged a near 11% recovery during the past week, but its rally has previously been limited by Sunday liquidity dynamics.
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.
Related: US banks are ‘free to begin supporting Bitcoin’ — Michael Saylor
“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.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s odds of June highs, SOL’s $485M outflows, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 2 – 8
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