General election: Starmer and Sunak clash over Conservatives’ national service plan
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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National service policy ‘a sort of teenage Dad’s Army’
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”.
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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.
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.”
Cryptocurrency-based yield products still lag far behind their traditional finance (TradFi) counterparts, but new blockchain sectors such as liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and real-world assets (RWAs) are steadily closing the gap, according to a new report co-authored by RedStone Oracles, Gauntlet, Stablewatch and the Tokenized Asset Coalition, shared with Cointelegraph.
Only 8% to 11% of cryptocurrencies offer passive yield-generating models, indicating a significant gap compared to 55% to 65% of TradFi assets, roughly a fivefold disparity, the report found. However, stablecoins, RWAs and “blue-chip” yield tokens are rapidly closing decentralized finance’s (DeFi) passive income gap.
Emerging regulations, such as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, passed in July, are helping the industry catch up, resulting in a rising demand for both yield-bearing stablecoins and RWAs, the report says. The GENIUS Act established clear rules for stablecoin collateralization and mandates compliance with Anti-Money Laundering laws.
“As clarity emerges, yield-bearing stablecoins are exploding: market capitalization is up 300% YoY, with new protocols launching monthly to capture the opportunity.”
RWAs, which are tokenized versions of traditional assets such as bonds or funds, are also introducing new sources of passive income as major institutions recognize the efficiency of onchain settlement.
Related: Sonic Labs pivots from speed to survival with business-first strategy
Ether and Solana LSTs gain traction
Blue-chip yield tokens, such as Ether (ETH) LSTs and Solana (SOL) LSTs, are also gaining traction by creating more capital efficiency for cryptocurrency stakers.
ETH LSTs rose from six million to 16 million in the two years leading up to November, gaining $34 billion in notional value based on today’s prices.
LSTs, such as Lido’s stETH (STETH), offer crypto stakers an equivalent of the staked token, which can be traded or deployed in other DeFi protocols, thereby creating more capital efficiency.
Related: Bitcoin ETFs roar back with $524M inflows in best day since market crash
Crypto yield-bearing assets poised for “exponential growth” in the next months
Crypto yield-bearing assets are poised for “exponential growth” in the coming months and are set to benefit from the gap between DeFi and TradFi, according to the report, which called it “crypto’s greatest opportunity.”
“As the ‘Crypto-as-infrastructure’ thesis gains traction and onchain finance proves its superior capital efficiency, yield-generating crypto assets are positioned for exponential growth,” as institutional capital will seek more “efficiency,” it said.
Yield-generating tokens, such as Solana LSTs, are also gaining traction among institutions, as they can earn a passive yield of approximately 4% on top of their holdings.
Much like Ether, Solana LSTs doubled in supply, from 20 million in January 2024 to about 40 million at the time of writing, with a total of 67% of the Solana token supply now locked in staking smart contracts.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will reincorporate to Texas from Delaware, a move highlighting the respective states’ legal and regulatory environments.
In a Wednesday X post, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the crypto exchange would move its incorporation to Texas. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Grewal wrote that the climate in Delaware’s courts had become “rife with unpredictable outcomes,” while Texas offered “efficiency and predictability.”
“This decision was not made lightly, but we’ll always do what’s best for our customers, our employees, and our shareholders,” said Grewal.
Coinbase announced in 2021, as COVID-19 restrictions lessened in the United States, that it would close its physical headquarters in San Francisco as part of the company’s “remote-first” policy.
Although the crypto exchange has since opened another location in the city and maintains offices in New York, it was incorporated in the state of Delaware.
Related: Coinbase to hire 130+ staff as it expands into Charlotte’s fintech hub
Grewal’s announcement followed Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong saying that the company would “hire about 1,000 people” in the US as a result of the country’s regulatory environment for digital assets.
Armstrong has been a regular visitor to Washington, D.C., since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, lobbying for a market structure bill and attending a White House crypto summit.
Texas as a US crypto and blockchain hub
Several cryptocurrency and blockchain companies have offices or operations in the Lone Star State, notably miners like Riot Platforms, MARA Holdings and Bitdeer. The city of Austin, the state’s capital, is also home to local offices of Big Tech companies like Meta and Google.
Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase for comment on the Texas move, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Magazine: If the crypto bull run is ending… it’s time to buy a Ferrari: Crypto Kid
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
Thousands of job cuts at the NHS will go ahead after the £1bn needed to fund the redundancies was approved by the Treasury.
The government had already announced its intention to slash the headcount across both NHS England and the Department of Health by around 18,000 administrative staff and managers, including on local health boards.
The move is designed to remove “unnecessary bureaucracy” and raise £1bn a year by the end of the parliament to improve services for patients by freeing up more cash for operations.
NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Treasury had been in talks over how to pay for the £1bn one-off bill for redundancies.
It is understood the Treasury has not granted additional funding for the departures over and above the NHS’s current cash settlement, but the NHS will be permitted to overspend its budget this year to pay for redundancies, recouping the costs further down the line.
‘Every penny will be spent wisely’
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is set to make further announcements regarding the health service in the budget on 26 November.
And addressing the NHS providers’ annual conference in Manchester today, Mr Streeting is expected to say the government will be “protecting investment in the NHS”.
He will add: “I want to reassure taxpayers that every penny they are being asked to pay will be spent wisely.
“Our investment to offer more services at evenings and weekends, arm staff with modern technology, and improving staff retention is working.
“At the same time, cuts to wasteful spending on things like recruitment agencies saw productivity grow by 2.4% in the most recent figures – we are getting better bang for our buck.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting during a visit to the NHS National Operations Centre in London earlier this year. Pic: PA
Mr Streeting’s speech is due to be given just hours after he became entrenched in rumours of a possible coup attempt against Sir Keir Starmer, whose poll ratings have plummeted ahead of what’s set to be a tough budget.
Mr Streeting’s spokesperson was forced to deny he was doing anything other than concentrating on the health service.
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He is also expected on Wednesday to give NHS leaders the go-ahead for a 50% cut to headcounts in Integrated Care Boards, which plan health services for specific regions.
They have been tasked with transforming the NHS into a neighbourhood health service – as set down in the government’s long-term plans for the NHS.
Those include abolishing NHS England, which will be brought back into the health department within two years.
Watch Wes Streeting on Mornings With Ridge And Frost from 7am on Sky News.
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