General election: Starmer and Sunak clash over Conservatives’ national service plan

Published

2 years ago

May 27, 2024

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Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have come to blows over the Conservatives’ plan to introduce national service for teenagers.

Labour leader Sir Keir said the Conservatives’ first major policy announcement of the election campaign would amount to a “teenage Dad’s Army”, in reference to the popular 70s sitcom about a hapless group of men who were ineligible for military service.

But the prime minister defended his plan for 18-year-olds to serve in the military for a year or do mandatory volunteering, saying it is “absolutely the right policy at the right time”.

Sir Keir called the policy “desperate”.

“All this spinning round and round, it’s symbolic of the chaos and the instability,” the Labour leader added.

“You’ve seen that again over the past few days, the desperation of this national service policy, a sort of teenage Dad’s Army, paid for, I kid you not, by cancelling levelling up funding and money from tax avoidance that we would use to invest in our NHS.

“I think they are rummaging around in the toy box to try and find any plan that they can throw on the table. I don’t think it’ll work.”

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Mr Sunak insisted the plan would “give young people skills and opportunities for life”.

He added: “It’s going to foster a culture of service that will make our society more cohesive. And it’s going to strengthen our country’s resilience and security.

“So I think it’s absolutely the right policy at the right time.”

He dismissed suggestions mandatory national service was an un-conservative policy, and said: “I believe this is the right thing to do because this is how we’ll deliver a secure future for everyone and our country.”

Sir Keir, in his first major speech of the campaign, said the Conservatives were planning to take money from the levelling up fund to pay for the national service policy, which shows “they’ve completely abandoned the project they put before the electorate in 2019”.

He accused Mr Sunak of governing to appease sections of the Tory party, not for the whole country, and said the government’s Rwanda policy was evidence of that.

Placing security at the heart of his speech, Sir Keir said the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was part of Mr Sunak’s “gimmicks and gestures”.

“He never believed in it. He knew it wouldn’t work. He said that they tried to stop it when he was chancellor, but he was too weak to stand up to his party,” he said.

“He caved in, and now he’s gone through and it’s cost £600m. And now has called an election before it can be tested. Weakness upon weakness.”

The Labour leader admitted he was “not against third country processing” and it has been successful in places such as Afghanistan but said there was a difference in processing people in a different country and “simply deporting people to Rwanda”.

During his speech on Monday, Sir Keir went over the policies Labour is offering up to voters as he tried to persuade them he has turned the Labour Party around from its Jeremy Corbyn era.

Labour’s six ‘core tests’

Economic stability – keep inflation, taxes and mortages low
NHS – cut waiting times, 4,000 extra appointments a week, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms
Border security – new Border Security Command with more resources and new powers to stop criminal gangs bringing people over in small boats
Energy – new company called Great British Energy harnessing clean power and making the UK energy independent, paid for by a windfall tax on energy companies
Anti-social behaviour crackdown – 13,000 new police and community support officers paid for by
Education – 6,500 new teachers paid for by introducing VAT and business tax on private schools

But Mr Sunak accused the Labour leader of having “no plan, no ideas”.

“We’ve had another speech from Keir Starmer, another half hour speech. Not a single new idea. He’s taking the British public for granted,” he said.

“I’m the one that’s putting bold ideas on the table. I’m the one that’s got a plan, and that’s how we’re going to deliver a secure future for everyone.

“And as I said his approach is to take people for granted. He’s got nothing to say, no plan, no ideas.”

Politics

Russia mulls relaxing crypto rules to blunt impact of Western sanctions

Published

3 hours ago

December 2, 2025

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Russia mulls relaxing crypto rules to blunt impact of Western sanctions

An official from the Bank of Russia suggested easing restrictions on cryptocurrencies in response to the sweeping sanctions imposed on the country.

According to a Monday report by local news outlet Kommersant, Bank of Russia First Deputy Governor Vladimir Chistyukhin said the regulator is discussing easing regulations for cryptocurrencies. He explicitly linked the rationale for this effort to the sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Chistyukhin said that easing the crypto rules is particularly relevant when Russia and Russians are subject to restrictions “on the use of normal currencies for making payments abroad.”

Russia banned the use of cryptocurrencies for payments in the summer of 2020.

Chistyukhin said he expects Russia’s central bank to reach an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on this issue by the end of this month. The central issue being discussed is the removal of the requirement to meet the “super-qualified investor” criteria for buying and selling crypto with actual delivery. The requirement was introduced in late April when Russia’s finance ministry and central bank were launching a crypto exchange.

*The Bank of Russia, Moscow. Source:* *Wikimedia*

What is a super-qualified investor?

The super-qualified investor classification, created earlier this year, is defined by wealth and income thresholds of over 100 million rubles ($1.3 million) or an annual income of at least 50 million rubles.

This limits access to cryptocurrencies for transactions or investment to only the wealthiest few in Russian society. “We are discussing the feasibility of using ‘superquals’ in the new regulation of crypto assets,” Chistyukhin said, in an apparent shifting approach to the restrictive regulation.

Russia’s fight against sanctions

Russia has been hit with sweeping Western sanctions for years, and regulators in the United States and Europe have increasingly targeted crypto-based efforts to evade those measures.

In late October, the European Union adopted its 19th sanctions package against Russia, including restrictions on cryptocurrency platforms. This also included sanctions against the A7A5 ruble-backed stablecoin, which EU authorities described as “a prominent tool for financing activities supporting the war of aggression.”

Earlier in October, reports indicated that A7A5 — backed by the Russian ruble but issued in Kyrgyzstan — had become the world’s largest non-US-dollar stablecoin. In August, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also redesignated cryptocurrency exchange Garantex Europe to its list of sanctioned entities for a second time.

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