Nigel Farage rejects Tommy Robinson after support from Elon Musk
Nigel Farage has said Tommy Robinson “won’t be” joining Reform UK after Elon Musk showed support for the jailed far-right activist on social media.
The billionaire owner of X, who has spoken positively about Reform UK and is reportedly considering making a donation to the party, has been critical of the government’s handling of child sexual exploitation across a number of towns and cities more than a decade ago.
While the Reform UK leader described the billionaire owner of X as “an absolute hero figure, particularly to young people in this country”, he distanced himself and his party from Robinson, who is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for contempt of court.
Mr Musk endorsed the far-right activist and claimed Robinson was “telling the truth” about grooming gangs, writing on X: “Free Tommy Robinson”.
Speaking to broadcasters ahead of the start of Reform UK’s East Midlands Conference tonight, party leader Mr Farage did not directly address Mr Musk’s comments, but said: “He has a whole range of opinions, some of which I agree with very strongly, and others of which I’m more reticent about.”
He went on to say that having Mr Musk’s support is “very helpful to our cause”, describing him as “an absolute hero figure, particularly to young people in this country”.
He continued: “Everyone says, well, what about his comments on Tommy Robinson? Look, my position is perfectly clear on that. I never wanted Tommy Robinson to join UKIP, I don’t want him to join Reform UK, and he won’t be.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said that Tommy Robinson will not be joining the party
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Later on GB News, Mr Farage added that Mr Musk “sees Robinson as one of these people that fought against the grooming gangs”.
“But of course the truth is Tommy Robinson’s in prison not for that, but for contempt of court,” he said.
Mr Farage added: “We’re a political party aiming to win the next general election. He’s not what we need.”
How did Elon Musk become involved?
The online campaign from Mr Musk began after it emerged that Home Office minister Jess Phillips had denied requests from Oldham Council to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the borough, as the Conservatives had done in 2022.
In a letter to the authority in Greater Manchester, Ms Phillips said she believes it is “for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene”.
An Oldham Council spokesman previously said: “Survivors sit at the heart of our work to end child sexual exploitation. Whatever happens in terms of future inquiries, we have promised them that their wishes will be paramount, and we will not renege on that pledge.”
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Mr Musk posted on X multiple times about the scandal, and claimed Sir Keir Starmer had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he led the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). In 2013, Sir Keir introduced new guidelines for how child sexual abuse victims should be treated and how a case should be built and presented in court.
The SpaceX and Tesla boss also endorsed posts about Robinson.
Robinson, who is 42 years old and whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, admitted at Woolwich Crown Court in October to breaching an injunction banning him from repeating libellous allegations against a Syrian refugee schoolboy, after he was successfully sued for libel in 2021.
Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.
Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.
The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.
“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.
Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill
Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.
Coinbase holds a license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which it secured in June.
“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.
Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation
Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.
Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.
Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.
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“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.
Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Trading and Markets Division on Wednesday laid out how broker-dealers can custody tokenized stocks and bonds under existing customer protection rules, signaling that blockchain-based crypto asset securities will be slotted into traditional securities safeguards rather than treated as a new category.
The division said it would not object to broker-dealers deeming themselves in possession of crypto asset securities under existing customer protection rules, as long as they meet a set of operational, security and governance conditions. This applies only to crypto securities, including tokenized stocks or bonds.
While the statement is not a rule, it provides clarity on how US regulators expect tokenized securities to fit within traditional market safeguards.
The guidance suggests that tokenized securities are not treated as a new asset class with unique rules. Instead, they are being placed into existing broker-dealer frameworks, even if they settle within blockchain networks.
TradFi on a blockchain: Tokenized securities’ custody rules
At the core of the statement is Rule 15c3-3, the regulator’s consumer protection rule. This requires broker-dealers to maintain control or physical possession of fully paid customer securities.
The division said that crypto asset securities recorded in blockchains may satisfy the “physical possession” requirements under certain circumstances. This means broker-dealers must retain exclusive control over the private keys used to access and transfer the assets.
Despite being on a blockchain, customers and third parties, including affiliates, should not have the ability to move the security without the authorization of the broker.
The statement draws a clear boundary between tokenized securities and crypto-native self-custody models. It prioritizes customer protection over crypto’s permissionless ethos.
Broker-dealers are expected to prepare for scenarios like 51% attacks, hard forks, airdrops and other disruptions. They must also maintain plans that account for seizure, freezing or transfer restrictions under lawful orders.
The guidance reinforces that, regardless of the technologies used to issue or settle tokenized stocks or bonds, they are expected to behave like securities first.
Trading tokenized securities inside regulated market rails
In a separate statement issued the same day, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce highlighted the trading-side challenges that remain for crypto asset securities.
Peirce raised questions focusing on national securities exchanges and alternative trading systems that facilitate trading crypto asset securities, including pairs where one asset is a security and the other is not.
The questions reflect growing pressure to settle blockchain-based assets with market-structure rules originally designed for traditional equities.
Peirce’s request raises whether existing frameworks and related disclosures and reporting requirements impose costs that outweigh their benefits when applied to crypto trading platforms.
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Platforms jumping into tokenized equities
The statements come as crypto platforms and trading institutions have increasingly begun to tokenize securities.
On Nov. 30, Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said the exchange plans to move fast on tokenized stocks. He said the exchange plans to work with the SEC as quickly as possible to make the feature available in the trading platform.
On Tuesday, Securitize, which focuses on tokenizing securities, announced that it plans to launch compliant, onchain trading for tokenized stocks. The company said that it will be presented in a swap-style interface familiar to decentralized finance (DeFi) users.
On Thursday, crypto exchange Coinbase launched a stock trading feature as part of its push to become an “everything exchange.”
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Teachers will be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys and steer them away from it as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG).
Sir Keir Starmer warned “too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged”, with more than 40% of young men said to hold a positive view of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.
He has been challenged about his ideology in the past and called the concerns “garbage”.
Sir Keir’s government will formally unveil a £20m package of measures today, with £16m coming from the taxpayer and £4m from philanthropists and partners.
Teachers will also get specialist training on how to talk to pupils about issues like consent and the dangers of sharing intimate images – and all secondary school pupils in England will be taught about healthy relationships.
Such lessons will be mandatory by the end of this parliament in 2029, with schools to be chosen for a pilot scheme in 2026, which experts will be brought in to deliver.
And an online helpline will be set up for teenagers with concerns about their own behaviour in relationships.
The measures are part of the government’s strategy to halve VAWG in a decade, and the prime minister said it’s a “responsibility we owe to the next generation”.
“Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships,” he said.
“This government is stepping in sooner – backing teachers, calling out misogyny, and intervening when warning signs appear – to stop harm before it starts.”
The PM says ‘toxic’ attitudes are going unchallenged in schools. Pic: Reuters
Department for Education-commissioned research found 70% of secondary school teachers surveyed said their school had actively dealt with sexual violence and/or harassment between children.
VAWG minister Jess Phillips told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby she had spoken to her own children about what’s normal sexual behaviour and what isn’t because she knows “what they might be exposed to”.
She said if the government does nothing to intervene, VAWG could double rather than be halved.
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The government has already announced several other measures to tackle VAWG this week, including introducing specialist rape and sexual offences investigators to every police force, better support for survivors in the NHS, and a £19m funding boost for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.
Investment ‘falls short’
But Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the commitments “do not go far enough” and schools are overburdened already.
“Today’s strategy rightly recognises the scale of this challenge and the need to address the misogynistic attitudes that underpin it, but the level of investment to achieve this falls seriously short,” she said.
Claire Waxman, the incoming victims commissioner, added: “Victim services are not an optional extra to this strategy – they must be the backbone of it.
“Without clear, sustainable investment and cross-government leadership, I am concerned we run the risk of the strategy amounting to less than the sum of its parts; a wish list of tactical measures rather than a bold, unifying strategic framework.”
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