He was sentenced to 10 weeks behind bars after he pleaded guilty to the assault by beating of 45-year-old Paul Fellows in Frodsham, Cheshire, in the early hours of 26 October.
He announced his resignation as MP for Runcorn and Helsby in a social media post on Monday, describing the assault as a “deeply regrettable incident” for which he had “rightly been punished”.
“I am sincerely sorry to Paul Fellows, my family, colleagues and constituents,” he added.
A by-election will now be triggered in Runcorn and Helsby, where constituents will vote to elect a new MP.
Image: Mike Amesbury leaving Chester Crown Court in February. Pic: PA
By-election a ‘big test’ for PM
It will be the first by-election since Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister, in what Sky News’ political correspondent Liz Bates said would be a “big test” in a seat where Reform UK came second last year.
“Losing it would be an unmitigated disaster given the 14,000 majority achieved last time round,” said Bates.
Amesbury came first in Runcorn and Helsby with 22,358 votes at the 2024 general election – equating to 52.9% of the electorate.
Reform UK came in second with 7,662 votes (18.1%) and the Tories in third with 6,756 votes (16%).
Reform has yet to announce a candidate, but Karen Shore, the deputy leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council, will run for Labour.
The Conservatives have opted for Sean Houlston, a membership services manager for the National Federation of Builders.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer’s government has been polling very badly indeed. Pic: PA
When will the by-election be?
Under parliamentary procedure, an MP cannot simply resign but must be disqualified from holding their seat.
To do this, they must apply for a role in the paid office of the Crown, meaning they automatically lose their seat because working for the Crown is not seen as impartial.
Titles include the crown steward and bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds and the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
Rachel Reeves has now appointed Amesbury to be steward and bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, meaning the parliamentary seat is officially vacant.
Once he does, the chief whip will put forward a motion to Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, to officially begin the process of disqualifying the MP – known as “moving the writ”.
The Speaker then puts the motion to MPs for a vote. If they agree, the writ passes through the Commons and ends up with the returning officer in the local constituency who oversees the by-election.
The writ is typically issued within three months of the MP resigning from their seat and in doing so, the date of the by-election is fixed.
It could potentially coincide with the local elections in May.
The Libra token scandal is set to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of New York after a newly filed class-action lawsuit accused its creators of misleading investors and siphoning over $100 million from one-sided liquidity pools.
Burwick Law filed the suit on behalf of its clients against Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol and Meteora on March 17 for launching the Libra (LIBRA) token in a “deceptive, manipulative and fundamentally unfair” manner. The token was then promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei on X as an economic initiative to stimulate private-sector funding in the country.
The law firm slammed the two crypto infrastructure and launchpad firms behind LIBRA — KIP and Meteora — claiming that they used a “predatory” one-sided liquidity pool to artificially inflate the memecoin’s price, allowing insiders to profit while “everyday buyers bore the losses.”
Within hours, the insiders “rapidly siphoned approximately $107 million from the liquidity pools,” causing a 94% crash in LIBRA’s market value, Burwick Law said in a March 17 filing shared on X.
President Milei was mentioned in the lawsuit but wasn’t named a defendant.
Burwick accused the defendants of leveraging Milei’s influence to aggressively promote the token, deliberately creating a false sense of legitimacy and misleading investors about its economic potential.
Approximately 85% of LIBRA’s tokens were withheld at launch and the “predatory infrastructure techniques” allegedly used by the defendants weren’t disclosed to investors, Burwick said.
“These tactics, combined with omissions about the true liquidity structures, deprived investors of material information.”
Burwick is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, the disgorgement of “unjustly obtained” profits and injunctive relief to prevent further fraudulent token offerings.
Data from blockchain research firm Nansen found that of the 15,430 largest Libra wallets it examined, over 86% of those sold at a loss, combining for $251 million in losses.
Only 2,101 profitable wallets were able to take home a combined $180 million in profit, Nansen noted in a Feb. 19 report.
The venture capital firm behind the LIBRA token, Kelsier Ventures, and its CEO, Hayden Davis, were apparently two of the biggest winners from the token launch. They claim to have netted around $100 million.
Davis, who is now facing a potential Interpol red notice following an Argentine lawyer’s request, said on Feb. 17 that he didn’t directly own the tokens and wouldn’t sell them.
Meanwhile, Milei has distanced himself from the memecoin, arguing he didn’t “promote” the LIBRA token — as fraud lawsuits filed against him have alleged — and instead merely “spread the word” about it.
Argentina’s opposition party called for Milei’s impeachment but has had limited success thus far.
Paul Atkins could move one step closer to becoming the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s new crypto-friendly chair, with a Senate committee hearing reportedly in the works for March 27.
President Donald Trump nominated Atkins to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, but his marriage into a billionaire family has reportedly caused headaches with financial disclosures — delaying his potential start date.
While it isn’t clear whether the White House has produced those papers to the Senate, Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Chair Tim Scott is reportedly eyeing a March 27 hearing to review Atkins’ standing, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller said in a March 17 X post.
“No clarity yet on whether the committee has Atkins’ paperwork in hand, but either way, this is the most momentum we’ve seen so far.”
Atkins would, however, need to be voted in by the Senate at a later date.
Mueller also said the Senate banking committee is also planning to hold a bipartisan meeting on Atkins’ nomination on March 21.
It follows an earlier March 3 Semafor report, where Mueller said financial disclosures had held Atkins back from scheduling a Senate hearing to review his standing.
His wife’s family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC — a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that reportedly turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes said on Dec. 14, 2024.
“It’s a lot to go through,” one former Senate Banking Committee staffer reportedly told Mueller on March 3.
“But he got named so early on, so I think that’s why people are starting to be like, ‘What the hell’s taking so long?’”
Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008 and worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York before that. He is expected to regulate the crypto arena with a more collaborative approach than former SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
It’s been almost four months since Atkins was chosen by Trump to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, and over two months since Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20.
A late start for an SEC chair wouldn’t be too unusual, however.
The two most recent SEC chairs, Gary Gensler and Jay Clayton, started on April 17, 2021, and May 4, 2017 — months after presidential transitions occurred in those years.
Meanwhile, Mark Uyeda has been serving as the SEC’s acting chair since Gensler left on Jan. 20.
Since then, the Uyeda-led SEC has established a Crypto Task Force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and canceled a controversial rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets.
The SEC has dropped several investigations and lawsuits that the Gensler-led commission filed against the likes of Coinbase, Consensys, Robinhood, Gemini, Uniswap and OpenSea over the last month.
The SEC is also looking to abandon a rule requiring crypto firms to register as exchanges and may even axe the Biden administration’s proposed crypto custody rules, Uyeda said on March 17.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission could change or scrap a rule proposed under the Biden administration that would tighten crypto custody standards for investment advisers, according to the agency’s acting chair, Mark Uyeda.
In prepared remarks to an investment industry conference in San Diego on March 17, Uyeda said the rule proposed in February 2023 had seen commenters express “significant concern” over its “broad scope.”
“Given such concern, there may be significant challenges to proceeding with the original proposal. As such, I have asked the SEC staff to work closely with the crypto task force to consider appropriate alternatives, including its withdrawal,” Uyeda said.
The rule was floated under the Biden administration during Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the regulator. It aimed to expand custody rules for investment advisers to any and all assets held for a client, including crypto, and upped the requirements to protect them.
This meant that investment advisers would have to custody their clients’ crypto with a qualified custodian. Gensler said at the time that investment advisers “cannot rely on” crypto platforms as qualified custodians due to how they operate.
The proposal caused friction with Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, along with industry advocacy bodies who claimed the rule was unlawful and dangerous.
“How could an adviser seeking to comply with this rule possibly invest client funds in crypto assets after reading this release?” Uyeda remarked at the time. He did, however, support the proposal despite disagreeing “with a number of provisions.”
Peirce, who was the sole commissioner of the five to vote against the rule, said at the time that the proposed rule “would expand the reach of the custody requirements to crypto assets while likely shrinking the ranks of qualified crypto custodians.”
Uyeda’s latest remarks come days after he said on March 10 that he had asked SEC staff “for options on abandoning” part of a proposal pushing for some crypto firms to register with the regulator as exchanges.
The Trump-era SEC has also killed a rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets, called SAB 121.
In December, President Donald Trump picked former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to take over from Uyeda to chair the agency. This is now a step closer, with a Senate hearing reportedly slated for March 27.