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We’ve been here before. Yvette Cooper is the third home secretary to promise to reform procedure for armed police officers after the shooting of Chris Kaba.

But then we have had three home secretaries in the past year: Tories Suella Braverman and James Cleverly and now Labour’s Ms Cooper.

It was when dozens of officers in London handed in their weapons after Metropolitan Police marksman Martyn Blake was charged, in September last year, that Ms Braverman launched a review.

Firearms officers “mustn’t fear ending up in the dock for carrying out their duties,” she declared. Her review would ensure they have the confidence to do their jobs, she said.

Yvette Cooper swerves budget questions – Politics latest

Then in March this year, Mr Cleverly announced that investigations into police officers suspected of committing offences in the line of duty would be “sped up”, to provide swifter clarity to both officers and victims.

“The government will amend the threshold for referring police officers for criminal prosecution, so that only cases that have a reasonable prospect of conviction should be referred,” the Home Office added.

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So what happened to speeding up the reforms? Were they stalled by the July general election? Apparently not. Ms Cooper said it was right to wait until the end of Mr Blake’s trial before announcing changes. Fair point.

What are the changes, then? In a rare cross-party consensus between the two front benches, the home secretary has accepted all Mr Cleverly’s proposals, for which he was gracious in expressing his gratitude.

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Retired firearms officer Tony Long, who shot dead Azelle Rodney in 2005, speaks to Sky News as a police officer is cleared of the murder of Chris Kaba.

But she’s gone much further. The one audible cheer from the surprisingly few MPs in the chamber – only around 25 or so on both sides – came when she proposed a “presumption of anonymity” for police on trial up to a conviction.

In his measured response, Mr Cleverly spoke of the fear of reprisals against Mr Blake and his family. A real concern. There are reports of criminals putting a £10,000 bounty on his head in revenge for the shooting of Mr Kaba.

The cross-party consensus didn’t extend to the back benches, however. From the Labour benches, there were concerns about confidence in police among black communities from left-wingers Diane Abbott, Bell Ribiero-Addy and Kim Johnson.

And from the Reform UK duo of Lee Anderson and Richard Tice there were demands for more government backing for the police. Mr Tice said confidence in the police disciplinary process and the Crown Prosecution Service was collapsing.

The home secretary said the anonymity proposal will be part of the government’s Crime and Policing Bill, a bill Sir Keir Starmer has claimed “will take back our streets”. But it’s an unwieldy piece of legislation.

It already includes measures on neighbourhood policing, improving the vetting of police officers and tackling anti-social behaviour, retail crime, knife crime and violence against women and girls.

It hasn’t yet been introduced in parliament, however. So despite all the talk by successive home secretaries about speeding up reforming trials of armed police officers, the wait goes on.

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Gensler separates Bitcoin from pack, calls most crypto ‘highly speculative’

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Gensler separates Bitcoin from pack, calls most crypto ‘highly speculative’

Former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler renewed his warning to investors about the risks of cryptocurrencies, calling most of the market “highly speculative” in a new Bloomberg interview on Tuesday.

He carved out Bitcoin (BTC) as comparatively closer to a commodity while stressing that most tokens don’t offer “a dividend” or “usual returns.”

Gensler framed the current market backdrop as a reckoning consistent with warnings he made while in office that the global public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies doesn’t equate to fundamentals.

“All the thousands of other tokens, not the stablecoins that are backed by US dollars, but all the thousands of other tokens, you have to ask yourself, what are the fundamentals? What’s underlying it… The investing public just needs to be aware of those risks,” he said.

Gensler’s record and industry backlash

Gensler led the SEC from April 17, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025, overseeing an aggressive enforcement agenda that included lawsuits against major crypto intermediaries and the view that many tokens are unregistered securities.

Related: House Republicans to probe Gary Gensler’s deleted texts

The industry winced at high‑profile actions against exchanges and staking programs, as well as the posture that most token issuers fell afoul of registration rules.

Gary Gensler labels crypto as “highly speculative.” Source: Bloomberg

Under Gensler’s tenure, Coinbase was sued by the SEC for operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency, and for offering an unregistered staking-as-a-service program. Kraken was also forced to shut its US staking program and pay a $30 million penalty.

The politicization of crypto

Pushed on the politicization of crypto, including references to the Trump family’s crypto involvement by the Bloomberg interviewer, the former chair rejected the framing.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said, arguing it’s more about capital markets fairness and “commonsense rules of the road,” than a “Democrat versus Republican thing.”

He added: “When you buy and sell a stock or a bond, you want to get various information,” and “the same treatment as the big investors.” That’s the fairness underpinning US capital markets.

Related: Coinbase files FOIA to see how much the SEC’s ‘war on crypto’ cost

ETFs and the drift to centralization

On ETFs, Gensler said finance “ever since antiquity… goes toward centralization,” so it’s unsurprising that an ecosystem born decentralized has become “more integrated and more centralized.”

He noted that investors can already express themselves in gold and silver through exchange‑traded funds, and that during his tenure, the first US Bitcoin futures ETFs were approved, tying parts of crypto’s plumbing more closely to traditional markets.

Gensler’s latest comments draw a familiar line: Bitcoin sits in a different bucket, while most other tokens remain, in his view, speculative and light on fundamentals.

Even out of office, his framing will echo through courts, compliance desks and allocation committees weighing BTC’s status against persistent regulatory caution of altcoins.

Magazine: Solana vs Ethereum ETFs, Facebook’s influence on Bitwise — Hunter Horsley