Lord Alli: Labour donor at centre of Starmer freebies row under Lords investigation
The Labour peer at the centre of a row over donations to Sir Keir Starmer is under investigation by the Lords’ standards watchdog.
Lord Waheed Alli is facing a probe over “alleged non-registration of interests”, leading to a possible breach of the members’ code of conduct.
Follow latest: Starmer pays back £6,000 worth of gifts
The UK parliament website notes that the British businessman, who is one of the Labour Party’s biggest donors and the largest personal donor to the prime minister since December 2019, is being investigated for potential breaches to codes 14(a) and 17.
These are rules requiring members to make clear what their interests are that might be reasonably thought to influence their parliamentary actions, and ensuring entries are up to date.
It is understood that the investigation doesn’t relate to donations but rather a clerical element of already declared interests.
The Lords’ Commissioner declined to give further comment.
A Labour spokesperson said: “Lord Alli will cooperate fully with the Lords’ Commissioner and he is confident all interests have been registered. We cannot comment further while this is ongoing.”
Who is Lord Alli?
Lord Alli has found himself in the headlines in recent weeks, after scrutiny over the tens of thousands of pounds he has given to his party’s MPs to cover clothes, holidays and work events.
According to data unveiled by Sky News’ Westminster Accounts project, he gave Sir Keir over £39,000 in gifts and hospitality over the course of the last parliament.
This year alone, the prime minister has received nearly £19,000 worth of work clothes and several pairs of glasses from Lord Alli as well as £20,000 worth of accommodation.
Sir Keir said this was to allow his son to study for his GCSEs in peace at the former TV executive’s central London flat while the family home was surrounded by media during the general election.
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‘I wasn’t going to let my son fail or not do well in his GCSEs,’ says Keir Starmer.
He has argued Lord Alli was motivated to help financially because he wanted Labour to win the campaign.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves have also received donations used for purchasing clothes by the long-standing Labour peer, while Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson accepted £14,000 for work events around her 40th birthday.
While these donations had been declared by those involved, Conservatives have accused ministers of being part of a “government of self-service”.
Labour has also faced accusations of hypocrisy, having accused the Tories of “sleaze” and vowing to clean up politics if they got into government.
Sir Keir, Ms Reeves and Ms Rayner announced they are no longer going to accept donations to pay for clothes following the backlash.
The controversy overshadowed the party’s first annual conference since taking power and was cited by Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield as one of the reasons she resigned the whip on Saturday in protest against the leadership.
‘We need answers’
Lord Alli is the former chairman of online fashion retailer ASOS who worked as the party’s chief fundraiser for the general election.
He has donated to Labour for 20 years, and was ennobled by Tony Blair in 1998.
The SNP welcomed the investigation, saying the “scandal has wrecked public confidence in Keir Starmer, his government and the Westminster system, and there must be full transparency and accountability”.
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Lord Alli avoids gift row questions
But they called for further enquiries into all the donations made by Lord Alli and the granting of a Downing Street security pass, which the government has said was temporary so he could attend political meetings.
The SNP’s Cabinet Office spokesman Brendan O’Hara said: “Voters are appalled that Labour ministers have been lining their pockets with more than £800,000 of luxury designer clothes, holidays, hospitality and donations, while imposing painful austerity cuts on the rest of us, and they want to know what donors were getting in exchange.
“We need answers – including why these gifts were taken, whether there have been breaches of the MPs’ and ministerial code, and why Lord Alli was handed a security pass to the halls of power.”
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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