Kemi Badenoch breaks her silence on Ukraine – finally

Published

9 months ago

February 20, 2025

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After a former Tory prime minister and the current Liberal Democrat leader made the running on the Trump-Zelenskyy war of words, Kemi Badenoch finally broke her silence.

Amid warnings of a Trump-Putin stitch-up that betrays President Zelenskyy, the Tory leader had been missing in action, even neglecting to mention Ukraine in a conference speech this week.

Now she has spoken out, finally. But in a contradictory statement, she said President Trump was wrong to claim that Zelenskyy is a dictator but right that Europe needs to pull its weight.

Politics latest – Lammy urged to call out Trump attack on Zelenskyy

Then she said that under successive prime ministers the Conservatives had, and always would, stand with Ukraine, whereas Starmer should boost defence spending and “show some leadership”.

Perhaps she was goaded into breaking her silence by the typically flamboyant words of one of those successive Tory prime ministers, Boris Johnson, and attacks by the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.

Mr Johnson, a cheerleader for both President Zelenskyy and President Trump since he was PM, tried to have it both ways too, criticising the US president’s wild claims but backing his motives.

“Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action,” he said in a pithy statement on Trump buddy Elon Musk’s X.

But at least Mr Johnson came up with a sensible suggestion: unfreeze the hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets being blocked by Belgium, France and other counties.

Quite why Ms Badenoch urged Sir Keir Starmer to “get on a plane to Washington”, when the whole world knows he’s getting on a plane to Washington next week, is anybody’s guess.

Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader and self-appointed chief Trump basher in UK politics, has accused both the Conservatives and Reform UK of being “Trump boot-lickers”.

Strong words, no doubt partly motivated by political point-scoring against political opponents. Yet he later said he hoped “the whole political spectrum in the UK would speak “with one voice”.

Good luck with that. To be fair to Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, there has until now been a political consensus in the UK in support of President Zelenskyy and Ukraine.

But with Kemi Badenoch playing catch-up, criticising the PM’s leadership, and James Cleverly now claiming David Lammy’s “silence is deafening”, that consensus is in danger of fraying.

Politics

Prediction markets bet on Coinbase-linked Hassett as top Fed pick

Published

2 hours ago

December 1, 2025

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Prediction markets bet on Coinbase-linked Hassett as top Fed pick

Prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi view Kevin Hassett, US President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council director, as the favorite to replace Jerome Powell as the next Federal Reserve chair.

The odds of Hassett filling the seat have spiked to 66% on Polymarket and 74% on Kalshi at the time of writing. Hassett is widely viewed as crypto‑friendly thanks to his past role on Coinbase’s advisory council, a disclosed seven‑figure stake in the exchange and his leadership of the White House digital asset working group.

Founder and CEO of Wyoming-based Custodia Bank, and a prominent advocate for crypto-friendly regulations, Caitlin Long, commented on X:

“If this comes true & Hassett does become Fed chairman, anti-#crypto people at the Fed who still hold positions of power will finally be out (well, most of them anyway). BIG changes will be coming to the Fed.”

Kevin Hassett’s crypto credentials

Hassett is a long-time Republican policy economist who returned to Washington as Trump’s top economic adviser and has now emerged as the market-implied frontrunner to lead the Fed.

His financial disclosure reveals at least a seven‑figure Coinbase stake and compensation for serving on the exchange’s Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council, placing him unusually close to the crypto industry for a potential Fed chair.

Still, crypto has been burned before by reading too much into “crypto‑literate” resumes. Gary Gensler arrived at the Securities and Exchange Commission with MIT blockchain courses under his belt, but went on to preside over a wave of high‑profile enforcement actions, some of which critics branded as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”

A Hassett-led Fed might be more open to experimentation and less reflexively hostile to bank‑crypto activity. Still, the institution’s mandate on financial stability means markets should not assume a one‑way bet on deregulation.

Supervision pushback inside the Fed

The Hassett odds have jumped just as the Fed’s own approach to bank supervision has received pushback from veterans like Fed Governor Michael Barr, who earned his reputation as one of Operation Chokepoint 2.0’s key architects.

According to Caitlin Long, while he Barr “was Vice Chairman of Supervision & Regulation he did Warren’s bidding,” and he “has made it clear he will oppose changes made by Trump & his appointees.”

On Nov. 18, the Fed released new Supervisory Operating Principles that shift examiners toward a “risk‑first” framework, directing staff to focus on material safety‑and‑soundness risks rather than procedural or documentation issues.

In a speech the same day, Barr warned that narrowing oversight, weakening ratings frameworks and making it harder to issue enforcement actions or matters requiring attention could leave supervisors slower to act on emerging risks, arguing that gutting those tools may repeat pre‑crisis mistakes.

Days later, in Consumer Affairs Letter 25‑1, the Fed clarified that the new Supervisory Operating Principles do not apply to its Consumer Affairs supervision program (an area under Barr’s committee as a governor).

If prediction markets are right and a crypto‑friendly Hassett inherits this landscape, his Fed would not be writing on a blank slate but stepping into an institution already mid‑pivot on how hard (and where) it leans on banks.