Sir Keir Starmer is celebrating the third defection by a Tory to Labour in just over a month.
Mark Logan, who was elected Conservative MP for Bolton North East in 2019, has told Sky News he is quitting the Tories and is urging people to vote Labour in the general election on 4 July.
In recent months he has been a fierce critic of the government’s policy on Gaza and is now calling on the UK to recognise Palestine as a country.
Northern Ireland-born Mr Logan, 40, won his seat from Labour in the 2019 general election with a slender majority of just 378. It had been Labour since 1997 but was previously held by the Tories.
A former UK diplomat serving in China who is fluent in Mandarin and Japanese, his dramatic switch follows secret talks with Labour chief whip Sir Alan Campbell and members of Sir Keir’s inner circle.
Mr Logan had been due to defend the seat in the general election, but after his shock defection, he hopes to become a Labour candidate in another constituency.
Image: Natalie Elphicke defected to Labour earlier this month. Pic: PA
In a “personal statement” on Commons stationery written just before parliament dissolved on Thursday, Mr Logan referred to Labour’s 1997 election anthem Things Can Only Get Better.
He wrote: “Labour is back, and given how things have been, I believe things can only get better.
“After much soul-searching throughout my first term in parliament, brought to a head with the calling of a snap election last week, I have concluded that we need a new government and I believe the UK will be best served with that government being a Labour government.
“We need renewed enthusiasm and optimism in both tone and in policy, and I believe that we are already seeing this through Keir Starmer and the team.
“I am resigning from the Conservative Party with immediate effect. Regrettably, I will therefore not contest our constituency at the upcoming general election.”
And he concluded: “The first time I voted, I voted for Labour. The next time I vote it will be a vote for Labour.”
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Besides the obvious humiliation for Rishi Sunak, the latest defection is also embarrassing for the prime minister because Mr Logan is a junior member of the government, a parliamentary private secretary to ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions.
Image: Dr Dan Poulter also defected to Labour. Pic: PA
Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October last year, Mr Logan – whose constituency has a large Muslim population – has been increasingly critical of UK policy and the actions of the Israeli government during its response in Gaza.
In the controversial Commons debate in February on an SNP motion demanding an immediate ceasefire, he dramatically broke ranks with his own party and said Israel had “gone too far”.
In defiance of government policy, he told MPs: “I no longer in good conscience can continue backing in public the line that we have taken on this side of the House, regrettably.”
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In a TV interview in March, Mr Logan also accused Lee Anderson of Islamophobia and said he should apologise for claims he made about London mayor Sadiq Khan after defecting from the Tories to Reform UK.
And in his final Commons intervention on Gaza, two days before Mr Sunak’s shock general election announcement, Mr Logan angrily challenged Andrew Mitchell, the deputy foreign secretary.
“My constituents in Bolton are livid today,” he declared at the time, “because they have seen through the International Criminal Court that there is evidence that ‘acts were committed… to use starvation as a method of war’, along with violence.
“Evidence of the collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza and evidence that Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.
“Never mind being on the right side of history, will we ensure that we are on the right side of the present?”
Senator Tim Scott, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, recently said that he expects a crypto market bill to be passed into law by August 2025.
The chairman also noted the Senate Banking Committee’s advancement of the GENIUS Act, a comprehensive stablecoin regulatory bill, in March 2025, as evidence that the committee prioritizes crypto policy. In a statement to Fox News, Scott said:
“We must innovate before we regulate — allowing innovation in the digital asset space to happen here at home is critical to American economic dominance across the globe.”
Scott’s timeline for a crypto market structure bill lines up with expectations from Kristin Smith, CEO of the crypto industry advocacy group Blockchain Association, of market structure and stablecoin legislation being passed into law by August.
Support for comprehensive crypto regulations is bipartisan
US lawmakers and officials expect clear crypto policies to be established and signed into law sometime in 2025 with bipartisan support from Congress.
Speaking at the Digital Assets Summit in New York City, on March 18, Democrat Representative Ro Khanna said he expects both the market structure and stablecoin bills to pass this year.
The Democrat lawmaker added that there are about 70-80 other representatives in the party who understand the importance of passing clear digital asset regulations in the United States.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, pictured left, President Donald Trump in the center, and crypto czar David Sacks, pictured right, at the White House Crypto Summit. Source: The White House
Khanna emphasized that fellow Democrats support dollar-pegged stablecoins due to the role of dollar tokens in expanding demand for the US dollar worldwide through the internet.
Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, also spoke at the conference and predicted that stablecoin legislation would be passed into law within 60 days.
Hines highlighted that establishing US dominance in the digital asset space is a goal with widespread bipartisan support in Washington DC.
The US Social Security Administration (SSA) will move all public communications to the X social media platform amid sweeping workforce cuts recommended by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by X owner Elon Musk.
According to anonymous sources who spoke with WIRED, the government agency will no longer issue its customary letters and press releases to communicate changes to the public, instead relying on X as its primary form of public-facing communication.
The shift comes as the SSA downsizes its workforce from 57,000 employees to roughly 50,000 to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency. The agency issued this statement in February 2025:
“SSA has operated with a regional structure consisting of 10 offices, which is no longer sustainable. The agency will reduce the regional structure in all agency components down to four regions. The organizational structure at Headquarters also is outdated and inefficient.”
Elon Musk, the head of DOGE, has accused the Social Security system of distributing billions of dollars in wrongful payments, a claim echoed by the White House. Musk’s comments sparked intense debate about the future of the retirement program and sustainable government spending.
DOGE targets US government agencies in efficiency push
The Department of Government Efficiency is an unofficial government agency tasked with identifying and curbing allegedly wasteful public spending through budget and personnel cuts.
SEC officials signaled their cooperation with DOGE and said the regulatory agency would work closely with it to provide any relevant information requested.
Musk and Trump discuss curbing public spending and eliminating government waste. Source: The White house
DOGE also proposed slashing the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) workforce by 20%. The workforce reduction could impact up to 6,800 IRS employees and be implemented by May 15 — exactly one month after 2024 federal taxes are due.
Musk’s and the DOGE’s proposals for sweeping spending cuts are not limited to slashing budgets and reducing the size of the federal workforce.
DOGE is reportedly exploring blockchain to curb public spending by placing the entire government budget onchain to promote accountability and transparency.
United States President Donald Trump has exempted an array of tech products including, smartphones, chips, computers, and select electronics from tariffs, giving the tech industry a much-needed respite from trade pressures.
According to the US Customs and Border Protection, storage cards, modems, diodes, semiconductors, and other electronics were also excluded from the ongoing trade tariffs.
“Large-cap technology companies will ultimately come out ahead when this is all said and done,” The Kobeissi letter wrote in an April 12 X post.
The tariff relief will take the pressure off of tech stocks, which were one of the biggest casualties of the trade war. Crypto markets are correlated with tech stocks and could also rally as risk appetite increases on positive trade war headlines.
Following news of the tariff exemptions, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) broke past $85,000 on April 12, a signal that crypto markets are already responding to the latest macroeconomic development.
Markets hinge on Trump’s every word during macroeconomic uncertainty
President Trump walked back the sweeping tariff policies on April 9 by initiating a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs and lowering tariff rates to 10% for countries that did not respond with counter-tariffs on US goods.
Bitcoin surged by 9% and the S&P 500 surged by over 10% on the same day that Trump issued the tariff pause.
Macroeconomic trader Raoul Pal said the tariff policies were a negotiation tool to establish a US-China trade deal and characterized the US administration’s trade rhetoric as “posturing.”
Bitcoin advocate Max Keiser argued that exempting select tech products from import tariffs would not reduce bond yields or further the Trump administration’s goal of lowering interest rates.
Yield on the 10-year US government bond spikes following sweeping trade policies from the Trump administration. Source: TradingView
The yield on the 10-year US Treasury Bond shot up to a local high of approximately 4.5% on April 11 as bond investors reacted to the macroeconomic uncertainty of a protracted trade war.
“The concession just given to China for tech exports won’t reverse the trend of rates going higher. Confidence in US bonds and the US Dollar has been eroding for years and won’t stop now,” Keiser wrote on April 12.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.