Sunak ally Stride does his boss no favours in response to question about PM’s future
It was a question you don’t expect to hear being asked of a senior cabinet minister during an election campaign.
In fact, the last time doubts were raised mid-campaign about whether a beleaguered party leader would make it to polling day was more than 40 years ago.
This time, discussing Rishi Sunak’s D-Day fiasco on Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked Mel Stride: “Is he going to lead you into this election?”
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At least the work and pensions secretary – one of the PM’s closest allies – answered in the affirmative.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “And there should be no question of anything other than that.”
But the question has been raised. And by answering it as if it was a fair question rather than brushing it aside, the hapless Mr Stride has done his close friend the PM no favours at all.
In their exchange, Trevor put it to Mr Stride: “Whatever Mr Sunak’s virtues as an administrator, I think lots of people will have looked at that and said, this is the wrong man at the wrong time.
“Would it not be a courageous and moral act for him to announce that he knows he’s leading his party to defeat, partly because of his own actions and his own shortcomings and that he will now step aside to save seats which won’t be saved if he stays for the next four weeks?”
Why has the question been raised? It followed a tweet by Nadine Dorries, who speculated: “I have always said that Cameron was popped into the Lords and into a senior ministerial post for a reason. I thought maybe it was to replace Sunak at an earlier stage.”
And then she added mischievously: “Rumours around tonight that Sunak’s about to fall on his sword. There are no MPs – only ministers. If Sunak does resign, any replacement would have to come from within ministerial ranks.”
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Rishi Sunak is ‘deeply patriotic’
Fall on his sword? No prime minister in modern times has ever quit or been forced out during an election campaign. And unless Mr Sunak went voluntarily – extremely unlikely – it’s obviously too late to change leader now parliament is dissolved.
For instance, there are no officers of the 1922 committee to oversee a change, even if a successor was unopposed, as Mr Sunak was when Liz Truss self-destructed. The committee’s inscrutable and famously discreet chairman Sir Graham Brady is not contesting the election.
The remaining members of the ’22 exec, traditionally known as “the men in grey suits” who according to political folklore had the power to hand a failing party leader “a glass of whisky and a pearl-handled revolver in a darkened room”, are in their constituencies fighting to hold their own seats.
But the fact that a change of leader is even being suggested – albeit by the maverick Boris Johnson cheerleader Ms Dorries – reveals two things about the current election campaign.
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One, it confirms just how serious Mr Sunak’s D-Day blunder was. It’s being described as potentially the defining mistake of this election campaign.
And two, it means that even if he limps towards 4 July as Tory leader, he’s on borrowed time.
As for Labour, its rulebook, updated after the death of John Smith in 1994, is clearer. If the leader is “incapacitated” for whatever reason, the deputy leader – currently Angela Rayner – takes over until an election can be held.
The last time doubt was cast during an election campaign about whether a party leader would continue until polling day was in 1983 when Michael Foot was leading Labour to a massive defeat by Margaret Thatcher.
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At an early morning news conference at Transport House, then home to the Labour Party and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, Labour’s general secretary Jim Mortimer astonished political journalists.
“The unanimous view of the campaign committee is that Michael Foot is the leader of the Labour Party and speaks for the party,” he said, unprompted. Really? The journalists in the room sat in stunned silence, scarcely believing what they’d heard.
It was the TV broadcaster Clive James, then writing for The Observer, who was the quickest to react. “Oh,” he said. “So there was some debate about it, was there?”
I remember it vividly, because I was there. I recall Mr Mortimer saying: “We’ve had a meeting and we’re all agreed: Michael’s the leader.”
In that election, Margaret Thatcher won a majority of 144 seats. The Tories will hope that after the D-Day catastrophe, Mr Sunak isn’t leading the Conservatives to a defeat as big as that in 2024.
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.
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