Is Starmer’s voice coach his Carole Caplin?
Is history repeating itself in the row over Sir Keir Starmer’s voice coach Leonie Mellinger?
After all, she is not the first person who has coached a prime minister to be caught in political controversy.
After the Tories demanded a police probe, are there echoes of the row over Tony and Cherie Blair’s “lifestyle coach” Carole Caplin?
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir defended meeting Ms Mellinger during lockdown in 2020, claiming “I was working” while the Tories were “partying”.
Leonie Mellinger. Pic: Alan Davidson/Shutterstock
The Conservatives then stepped up their attacks, announcing that leader Kemi Badenoch wants a police investigation into whether laws were broken.
That is not going to happen, however. The Metropolitan Police said that because the alleged offence was more than three years ago, no action will be taken.
But have we been here before with a political row about a Labour prime minister receiving specialist coaching?
In the 1990s, before and after he became PM, Ms Caplin coached Sir Tony and wife Cherie, advising him on fitness and his wife on style.
And so, as the Tories continue attempting to embarrass Sir Keir over “Voice Coach Gate”, are there similarities between his voice coach and Ms Caplin?
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Earlier on Wednesday – PMQs
It has been suggested, for instance, that both have a racy past. Now 65, Ms Mellinger, an actress, was once married to the star of the “Confessions…” movies, Robin Asquith.
In her acting career, she appeared in Channel 4’s political comedy The New Statesman as the leather-clad wife of a Conservative MP.
She also appeared in the 1981 film of the bleak Doris Lessing novel Memoirs Of A Survivor, which also starred Nigel Hawthorne, later star of TV’s Yes Minister.
Carole Caplin, a former dancer who once dated Gary Numan and Adam Ant, hit the headlines in 1994 when The Sun published topless photos of her under the headline “Secrets of Blairs’ Girl Friday”.
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To make matters worse, it happened at the very moment the then Labour leader, elected earlier in 1994, was celebrating a successful party conference speech.
But much worse was to follow. In 2002 it emerged that Ms Caplin’s boyfriend, Australian Peter Foster, was a conman with a conviction for conspiring to supply a weight-loss drink that turned out to be tea.
The problem was that Foster had helped Cherie Blair buy two flats in Bristol when their eldest son Euan was at university there. The result was one of the biggest controversies of Sir Tony’s premiership.
Kemi Badenoch questioned whether a voice coach was a key worker
More than 20 years later, it is now Sir Keir’s turn to face questions about his own coaching.
In the Commons, Tory MP Gagan Mohindra challenged the PM: “Can he repeat his assurances that all rules were followed while the country was in tier 4 lockdown in December 2020, not just by him but his team as well, but also his voice coach Leonie Mellinger?”
Though he did not repeat the claim he made in Brussels on Monday that no rules were broken, a furious Sir Keir hit back: “In December 2020, I was in my office working on the expected Brexit deal.
“With my team we had to analyse the deal as it came in at speed, prepare and deliver a live statement at speed on one of the most important issues for our country in recent years. That’s what I was doing.
“What were they doing? Suitcases of food into Downing Street, partying and fighting, vomiting up the walls, leaving the cleaner to remove red wine stains. That’s the difference: I was working, they were partying.”
But a spokesman for the Tory leader responded: “The key question here is: is a voice coach a key worker who can travel from Tier 4 to Tier 3 during lockdown?
“It doesn’t matter if you’re part of a core team, that is the question. Now, Keir Starmer said that lawmakers can’t be lawbreakers. It is almost unimaginable to disagree that that was a clear breach of the COVID rules.”
And asked if Mrs Badenoch thought police should investigate, he said: “Yes, she does.”
Some years after the Carole Caplin controversy, Sir Tony wrote in his memoirs that she was “a good friend and reliable confidant” for his wife, but he should have acknowledged at the beginning that she was working for them.
And as for Sir Keir, the threat of a police investigation into allegations of breaking lockdown rules did not last long.
“We can confirm we have received a report,” said a Met Police spokesperson. “The specific legislation that would be used by police forces dealing with offences during COVID has a three-year deadline for initiating proceedings.
“As this alleged incident falls outside of this timeframe, no action will be taken.”
Update (April 3, 5:43 am UTC): This article has been updated to add information on the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act.
The US House Financial Services Committee has passed a Republican-backed stablecoin framework bill, which will now head to the House floor for a full vote.
The Committee passed the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy, or STABLE Act, with a 32-17 vote on April 2, with six Democrats voting in favor.
The bill was introduced on Feb. 6 by committee Chair French Hill and the chair of its Digital Assets Subcommittee, Bryan Steil — reportedly drafted with the help of the world’s largest stablecoin issue, Tether.
Source: Financial Services GOP
The bill would provide rules around payment stablecoins, a crypto token tied to a currency such as the US dollar, and aims to ensure issuers give information about their business and how they back their tokens.
During an earlier markup session, the committee’s leading Democrat, Maxine Waters, who later voted against the bill, criticized her Republican peers for “setting an unacceptable and dangerous precedent” with the STABLE Act.
She said President Donald Trump could use the bill to allow his family’s stablecoin to be used in government payments, and argued the bill validates Trump “and his insiders’ efforts to write rules of the road that will enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
In late March, the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture launched a stablecoin, World Liberty Financial USD (USD1). Meanwhile, the US Housing Department, which oversees social housing, was reportedly looking to experiment with using stablecoins for some of its functions.
Stablecoin GENIUS Act also weaves through Congress
Other stablecoin-related bills are also working their way through Congress, including the Republican-led Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, which lays out oversight and reserve rules for issuers.
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The US Senate Banking Committee voted through the GENIUS Act in an 18-6 vote on March 13, after Senator Bill Hagerty, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, updated it following consultation with the Committee’s Democrats.
Before the vote, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said the updated GENIUS Act made “significant improvements to a number of important provisions” in areas such as consumer protections and authorized stablecoin issuers.
Both the STABLE Act and GENIUS Act will now wait until debate time on the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, before they head for a floor vote.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett reported on X that two unnamed crypto lobbyists said there is likely to be “a coordinated push behind the scenes over the next few weeks to get the two bills to mirror each other, as there are still some differences between them.”
Doing so would “avoid having to set up a so-called conference committee which is formed so members from both chambers can negotiate to create a final version of the bill everyone agrees on,” she added.
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Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
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Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
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After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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