Rishi Sunak: ‘I am not blind to the fact people are frustrated with me’

Published

11 months ago

June 11, 2024

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Rishi Sunak said he is not “blind to the fact people are frustrated with me” as he unveiled a £17bn package of tax cuts in the Conservative manifesto.

The prime minister admitted he has “not got everything right” as he set out “big ideas” to turn around his faltering campaign.

Having called the election amid a 20-point poll deficit, things became worse for Mr Sunak when he left an international D-day event early last week – sparking such a furore he was forced quash rumours he considered resigning.

Election latest: Tory manifesto launch

Mr Sunak’s headline offering to voters includes a further 2p cut to national insurance (NI) and the so-called “triple lock plus” for pensioners – which will create a new “age-related” tax-free allowance.

He also wants to cut taxes to support the self-employed by abolishing the main rate of self-employed national insurance entirely by the end of the next parliament.

In a bid to boost home ownership, he has also set a new target of building 1.6 million new homes, promised to abolish stamp duty on properties up to a value of £425,000 for first-time buyers, capital gains tax relief for landlords who sell to their existing tenants and a new Help to Buy scheme.

For young people, the manifesto includes previously announced plans for mandatory national service, banning the use of mobile phones during the school day and scrapping A-Levels in place of a new system, the Advanced British Standard.

“Now is the time for bold action, not the uncertain Keir Starmer as prime minister”, Mr Sunak said.

In a nod to polls suggesting the Tories are heading for an electoral wipeout, the prime minister said he is not “blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me”.

He admitted “we have not got everything right” but claimed the Conservatives are the only party “with the big ideas to make our country a better place to live”.

“We will keep cutting taxes in the coming years meaning by 2027 we will have halved national insurance to 6%, that is a tax cut my friends of £1300 to the average worker,” Mr Sunak said.

Migration caps and tougher sentencing

In his launch speech, he also committed to “halve migration as we have halved inflation and then reduce it every single year”.

The plans on how to achieve this were thin on detail, but Mr Sunak said he will introduce a cap that means MPs will be able to vote every year on how many people can come into the country.

On law and order, pledges include a 25-year prison term for domestic murders, a review of homicide sentencing and a ban on protests outside schools.

Other policies in the manifesto include:

• Moving the threshold to pay high income child benefit charge for single-earner families to £120,000, up from £60,000 currently
• A guarantee not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT
• A workplace pension guarantee to not introduce any new taxes on pensions or increase existing ones for the whole of the next parliament
• A commitment not to change the number of council tax bands, undertake a council tax revaluation or cut council tax discounts
• An ambition to abolish national insurance when financially responsible to do so
• A “binding, legal cap” on work and family visas which would “fall every year of the next parliament and cannot be breached”
• A requirement for migrants to undergo a health check in advance of coming to the UK – with the prospect of paying a higher rate of the immigration health surcharge or forcing them to purchase insurance if they are “likely to be a burden on the NHS”

PM denies manifesto ‘last chance saloon’

In total, the package of giveaways would amount to a £17.2bn annual cost to the Exchequer by 2029-30.

The Tories say they will pay for the measures by reforming the welfare system to make savings of about £12bn.

The other £5bn will come from cutting the civil service and saving on consultancy.

The 2p cut to NI is the third reduction promised by the Tories as part of a drive to eliminate the tax altogether.

The party reduced employees’ national insurance from 10% to 8% at the March budget, following a similar cut in autumn 2023, at an annual cost of almost £10bn by 2028/29.

But critics have pointed out that this followed the tax burden reaching the highest level since the Second World War under the Conservatives’ watch, with frozen income tax thresholds previously announced by Mr Sunak dragging people into higher tax bands.

Pressed on why anyone should believe his promise to cut taxes, the prime minister said he previously had to make difficult decisions because of the COVID pandemic and energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine.

He denied the manifesto was a “last chance saloon”, claiming he took the job as prime minister under challenging circumstances but the country had “turned a corner” and “it is right to talk about the future”.

Asked by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby if he had blown it no matter what he says, he said: “The only poll that matters is the poll on July 4th.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the money was not there to pay for the prime minister’s pledges, warning it was a “recipe for five more years of chaos” under the Conservatives.

Politics

Solana’s Loopscale pauses lending after $5.8M hack

Published

6 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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<div>Solana's Loopscale pauses lending after .8M hack</div>

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.

Solana's Loopscale pauses lending after $5.8M hack — *Loopscale’s ‘Genesis’ lending vaults. Source: Loopscale*

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.

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.

Magazine: Ripple says SEC lawsuit ‘over,’ Trump at DAS, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 16 – 22

Politics

US Senator calls for Trump impeachment, cites memecoin dinner

Published

9 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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US Senator calls for Trump impeachment, cites memecoin dinner

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.

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.

Law, Politics, Senate, Donald Trump, trumpcoin, Memecoin — *The TRUMP token jumped on news of the private dinner plans. Source:* *CoinMarketCap*

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

Politics

Crypto sentiment recovers, but weekend liquidity risks remain

Published

12 hours ago

April 26, 2025

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Crypto sentiment recovers, but weekend liquidity risks remain

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.

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.

“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.