‘Miscalculation’ over government’s handling of assisted dying issue
It’s a mess, they know it, some regret it and it’s Sir Keir Starmer’s fault.
That’s the view of some at the top of government watching, dismayed, as the red-on-red conflict drags on over the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, aggravating a sore which crosses party lines, dominates the airwaves for the foreseeable and creates problems which bear some of the characteristics of the Brexit days.
Whatever way you look at it, there’s a feeling there’s been a miscalculation over their handling of the assisted dying issue, and some at the top of government are quite open about this to me.
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As some now acknowledge, the politics were always going to be fraught but they failed to spot this early enough, with the consequence the issue is now taking up more bandwidth than was assumed.
It has become a distraction from the main priorities of the Labour government – improving people’s living standards and securing the borders.
As a result, there will be few tears shed in influential parts of Downing Street, including by chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, if a week on Friday the assisted dying bill fails its first Commons test and ends its journey there.
If MPs do not kill it then, the issue will hang over the government for at least the whole first half of next year, and quite possibly to the point of implementation in early 2026.
The sheer amount of parliamentary time it will take up has unnerved the whips’ office. The public don’t distinguish between government and parliamentary priorities.
The Labour leader’s ‘mistake’
The mistake was made in March. Sir Keir promised broadcaster and campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen to “make time” “…early in the next parliament”.
At that point they thought they were being smart – not to commit a possible future Labour government on the issue one way or another ahead of an election and leave it to MPs’ consciences – and inside Labour HQ this must have sounded like a pain-free promise ahead of polling day by a party not wanting to annoy any section of the electorate.
But they appear not to have gamed the consequences.
Social liberals v Blue Labour social conservatives
This issue pits social liberals against Blue Labour social conservatives, with each side digging in and Sir Keir (previously on record in favour) now set to vote in the opposite side of the chamber to his deputy Angela Rayner.
Wes Streeting will be set against his own fellow health ministers, and symbolically – a Labour prime minister against a Tory leader of the opposition.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting
That there are two sides to this isn’t a surprise, even if the volume of complaining is now unnerving them.
Ministers can’t sidestep debate
A bigger issue for the government is they underestimated how ministers are being dragged into the centre of the debate, even though they are meant to be remaining neutral.
Ministers are finding they cannot simply sidestep this debate, as happened in previous votes of conscience such as gay marriage and abortion.
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This is because of the active and complex involvement of the government legal and health systems if the legislation passes and assisted dying is permitted in law.
This may be a private members’ bill, but it will be for the government to determine which doctors perform the assessments, and who carries out the end-of-life service for those that qualify.
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What is assisted dying?
Take one question that has been left hanging: whether a newly formed part of the NHS provides the end of life drugs, or whether it is something that can be done by the private sector.
According to allies of Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP fronting the legislation, it is up to the secretary of state for health to decide whether this is done publicly or privately.
I’m told there’s a presumption this is done in the public sector, yet other countries have private services like Dignitas carrying out the procedure for a fee, and in an era of constrained resources, could this be an option?
Read more:
Assisted dying opponents believe they have the momentum
Cabinet minister reveals she will vote against assisted dying
This part of the debate seems largely to have been passed over – yet there are huge cost benefits should the government allow the private, not public sector, to carry out the service.
Overall I’m told there will be no impact assessment – which sets out the costs of assisted dying legislation – until and unless the legislation passes second reading.
At that point it will be done by government, not parliament. This means MPs will be engaging in one of their most totemic votes of this parliament without access to all the facts – and being asked to commit on partial information. This has left some unhappy, unsurprisingly.
This was an easy promise – but it’s proving much harder to deliver than expected.
Braden John Karony, the CEO of crypto firm SafeMoon, has cited the US Department of Justice’s directive to no longer pursue some crypto charges in an effort to get the case against him and his firm dismissed.
In an April 9 letter to New York federal court judge Eric Komitee, Karony’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, said the court should consider an April 7 memo from US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that disbanded the DOJ’s crypto unit.
“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Blanche said in the memo, which added the DOJ “will no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.”
Blanche also directed prosecutors not to charge violations of securities and commodities laws when the case would require the DOJ to determine if a digital asset is a security or commodity when charges such as wire fraud are available.
An excerpt of the letter Karony sent to Judge Komitee. Source: PACER
In the footnote of the letter, Karony’s counsel wrote an exemption to the DOJ’s new directive would be if the parties have an interest in defending that a crypto asset is a security, but added that “Karony does not have such an interest.”
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission filed simultaneous charges of securities violations, wire fraud, and money laundering against Karony and other SafeMoon executives in November 2023.
The government alleged Karony, SafeMoon creator Kyle Nagy and chief technology officer Thomas Smith withdrew assets worth $200 million from the project and misappropriated investor funds.
Another attempt to nix the case
The letter is Karony’s latest attempt to get the case thrown out. In February, he asked that his trial, scheduled to begin on March 31, be delayed as he argued President Donald Trump’s proposed crypto policies could potentially affect the case.
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Later in February, Smith changed his plea to guilty and said he took part in the alleged $200 million crypto fraud scheme. Nagy is at large and is believed to be in Russia.
SafeMoon filed for bankruptcy in December 2023, a month after it was hit with twin cases from the SEC and DOJ. It was also hacked in March 2023, with the hacker agreeing to return 80% of the funds.
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Ukraine’s financial regulator has proposed taxing certain crypto transactions as personal income at a rate of up to 23% but excluding crypto-to-crypto transactions and stablecoins.
Crypto transactions would be taxed at 18% with a 5% military levy on top as part of the proposed framework, released on April 8 by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission.
NSSMC Chairman Ruslan Magomedov said in an April 8 statement that “the issue of crypto taxes is not a hypothesis, but a reality that is fast approaching.”
He added that the agency created the framework to help lawmakers make an “informed resolution” by considering each suggestion’s advantages and disadvantages because “these aspects can have a critical impact on the market and tax liability.”
Under the NSSMC’s proposed crypto framework, a tax will be applied when crypto is cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services.
Crypto-to-crypto transactions wouldn’t be taxed, bringing Ukraine in line with other European countries, including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, the NSSMC said.
The regulator says it “makes sense” to exclude stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or only apply a 5% or 9% tax because Ukraine’s tax code already excludes income from transactions in “foreign exchange values.”
A translated excerpt of the NSSMC’s report said stablecoins backed by foreign currencies could be exempt from taxation. Source: NSSMC
Mining, staking, hard forks and airdrops
Other crypto-related activities, such as mining, staking and airdrops, are also addressed in the framework which floated a few options for taxation.
The NSSMC said crypto mining is generally considered a business activity, but there might be a general tax-free limit for certain crypto transactions, including mining.
Under the framework, staking could be considered as “business captive income” or only taxed if the crypto is cashed out for fiat currencies. While hard forks and airdrops could be taxed either as ordinary income or when the tokens are cashed.
Related: Ukraine officials get training on crypto and virtual assets investigation
The regulator suggests a tax-free threshold could help “relieve the burden on small investors” and is common in other jurisdictions.
Exemptions for donations, transfers between family members, and holders who keep their crypto for a set amount of time are also flagged as possibilities. However, the NSSMC says the exemption might not apply to non-custodial crypto wallets.
Last December, Daniil Getmantsev, head of the tax committee of Ukraine’s parliament, said a draft bill to legalize cryptocurrencies was under review and expected to be finalized early this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first signed a law establishing a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market in March 2022.
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Digital asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund, following similar filings from rivals Bitwise and Grayscale.
The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF would seek to track the price of the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), according to the firm’s April 9 Form S-1 registration statement. The Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm, House of Doge, plans to assist 21Shares with marketing the fund.
21Shares said Coinbase Custody would be the proposed custodian of its Dogecoin ETF but did not specify a fee, ticker or what stock exchange it would list on.
Source: James Seyffart
21Shares must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund.
DOGE currently has a $24.2 billion market cap and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by value. It was created in 2013 as a joke and is a fork of Lucky Coin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin.
21Shares’ proposed Dogecoin ETF is the company’s latest effort to expand its spot crypto ETF offerings, which currently includes only a spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fund.
The issuer also filed with the SEC in February to launch a spot Polkadot (DOT) ETF and last year, it filed to create a spot XRP (XRP) ETF.
Related: Dogecoin millionaires are buying dips as DOGE price eyes 30% rally
The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.
“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.
Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in February that there is a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot Dogecoin ETF this year, while the betting platform Polymarket currently gives approval odds of 64%.
21Shares and House of Doge partner for DOGE funds in Switzerland
21Shares also said on April 9 that it partnered with House of Doge to launch a fully backed Dogecoin exchange-traded product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange.
The 21Shares Dogecoin product will trade under the ticker “DOGE” with a 2.5% fee.
21Shares president Duncan Moir said that Dogecoin “has become more than a cryptocurrency: it represents a cultural and financial movement that continues to drive mainstream adoption, and DOGE offers investors a regulated avenue to be part of this exciting project.”
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