Two Tory leadership hopeful frontrunners have made their pitch to members and MPs ahead of candidates being whittled down this week.
Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly launched their campaigns today before the first round of voting on Wednesday, when six candidates will become four.
Ms Badenoch took aim at the Conservative government she was part of as she said it “talked right but governed left”, while presenting herself as the only person who could be brutally honest.
Mr Cleverly focused on his experience in government – as home and foreign secretary – as he promised to bring back the Rwanda policy and raise defence spending to 3% of GDP.
Former business secretary Ms Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Rishi Sunak, said “a government that tried to do everything will likely end up achieving nothing”.
“This was one of our mistakes,” she said.
“We talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour.
“Government should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance.”
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Image: Kemi Badenoch said the Conservatives had ‘talked right but governed left’
She said Labour are only in government because people no longer believed in the Conservatives, and “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public” about the UK’s finances.
“The British people are yearning for something better, and this Labour government is not it,” she said.
“They are already making worse mistakes than we did.”
Ms Badenoch said her principles included personal responsibility, truth, the family, equality under the law and citizenship.
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She also said as a former engineer she knows how to “get things done” and can “accept reality” while politicians “pretend we can have everything, they make promises we cannot keep”.
And she sought to dispel criticism she was only concerned with culture wars, saying as equalities minister she had to look after “very, very tricky issues like race and gender”.
“I didn’t run away. And not only did I not run away, I defended people who needed help, and I dragged Labour onto our turf,” she said.
Image: Kemi Badenoch leaves after speaking at a Conservative Party leadership campaign event. Pic: PA
Mr Cleverly’s pitch to MPs and members lay firmly on his experience as he pledged to “resurrect” the Rwanda scheme for illegal migrants – scrapped by Labour – if he becomes prime minister.
Avoiding criticising the government he helped lead, he said for the Conservative Party to get back on track people need to see it “focused on them, not just focused on ourselves”.
“The parliamentary party needs to lead by example,” he said.
“We must be unified, we must be disciplined – and unity is not the easy option, it is the harder option.”
Image: Shadow home secretary James Cleverly is hugged by former defence secretary Grant Shapps at the launch event. Pic: PA
To much applause, he announced he would commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence.
“You cannot penny-pinch your way to peace,” the former minister said.
The shadow home secretary concluded: “I know that our best years can be ahead of us, but only if we replace this useless Labour government.”
The six Conservative leader candidates are:
James Cleverly
Robert Jenrick
Tom Tugendhat
Mel Stride
Kemi Badenoch
Priti Patel
A new leader is expected to be selected in November.
Watch Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge – a weeknight political show at 7pm on Sky News.
A group of investors with cryptocurrency custody and trading firm Bakkt Holdings filed a class-action lawsuit alleging false or misleading statements and a failure to disclose certain information.
Lead plaintiff Guy Serge A. Franklin called for a jury trial as part of a complaint against Bakkt, senior adviser and former CEO Gavin Michael, CEO and president Andrew Main, and interim chief financial officer Karen Alexander, according to an April 2 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The group of investors allege damages as the result of violations of US securites laws and a lack of transparency surrounding its agreement with clients: Webull and Bank of America (BoA).
April 2 complaint against Bakkt and its executives. Source: PACER
The loss of Bank of America and Webull will result “in a 73% loss in top line revenue” due to the two firms making up a significant percentage of its services revenue, the investor group alleges in the lawsuit. The filing stated Webull made up 74% of Bakkt’s crypto services revenue through most of 2023 and 2024, and Bank of America made up 17% of its loyalty services revenue from January to September 2024.
Bakkt disclosed on March 17 that Bank of America and Webull did not intend to renew their agreements with the firm ending in 2025. The announcement likely contributed to the company’s share price falling more than 27% in the following 24 hours. The investors allege Bakkt “misrepresented the stability and/or diversity of its crypto services revenue” and failed to disclose that this revenue was “substantially dependent” on Webull’s contract.
“As a result of Defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s securities, Plaintiff and other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” said the suit.
Other law offices said they were investigating Bakkt for securities law violations, suggesting additional class-action lawsuits may be in the works. Cointelegraph contacted Bakkt for a comment on the lawsuit but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.