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A former Labour minister has said she wants Rachel Reeves to consider the “evidence” behind introducing a wealth tax in the UK.

Anneliese Dodds, who quit as international development minister in February over Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the overseas aid budget, said she believed it was “important” that the government considers “who has the broadest shoulders”.

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Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Ms Dodds, the MP for Oxford East, said there had been a “lot of discussion” about a wealth tax – a direct levy on all, or most of, an individual’s, household’s or business’s total net wealth, rather than their income.

Ms Dodds, who also served as shadow chancellor when Labour was in opposition, said she had been “a bit sceptical about some of those claims for a long time because, of course, wealth is taxed in the UK”.

However, she said work carried out by the Wealth Tax Commission in 2020 had looked at various types of international wealth taxes and how it would be possible to deliver one in a UK context.

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‘Rachel Reeves would hate what you just said’

She added: “I would hope the Treasury is considering that kind of evidence, as well as other changes that have been put forward.”

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The former cabinet minister also said that tax proposals outlined by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to Rachel Reeves should be “considered”.

In a memo that was leaked to the Daily Telegraph in May, Ms Rayner suggested to the chancellor that she increase taxes, including reinstating the pensions lifetime allowance and a higher corporation tax level for banks.

“We’ve seen the deputy leader of the Labour Party, for example, put forward suggestions as I understand it,” Ms Dodds said.

“I think it’s important for all of those to be considered now.”

Ministers have signalled they will not bring in a wealth tax to balance the books, with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds branding the suggestion “daft”.

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Speaking to GB News last week, Mr Reynolds said: “This Labour government has increased taxes on wealth as opposed to income – the taxes on private jets, private schools, changes through inheritance tax, capital gains tax.

“But the idea there’s a magic wealth tax, some sort of levy…that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.

“Switzerland has a levy, but they don’t have capital gains or inheritance tax. There’s no kind of magic. We’re not going to do anything daft like that.

“And I say to people: ‘Be serious about this.’ The idea you can just levy everyone. What if your wealth was not in your bank account, what if it was in fine wine or art? How would we tax that? This is why this doesn’t exist.

“There’s a lot of populism out about this, and I’m frustrated. I see colleagues sometimes say this in parliament and I say: ‘Come on, get serious.'”

Ms Dodds said that while she had not spoken directly with Ms Reeves about a wealth tax, she believed the “trade-off we have to consider in a world of lots of difficult trade-offs is potentially making some big and significant changes early, or having to make many tactical changes through the parliament and potentially being forced into some of those difficult decisions anyway later on”.

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Make ‘significant adjustments’ to Online Safety Act, X urges govt

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X criticises Online Safety Act - and warns it's putting free speech in the UK at risk

The Online Safety Act is putting free speech at risk and needs significant adjustments, Elon Musk’s social network X has warned.

New rules that came into force last week require platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X – as well as sites hosting pornography – to bring in measures to prove that someone using them is over the age of 18.

The Online Safety Act requires sites to protect children and to remove illegal content, but critics have said that the rules have been implemented too broadly, resulting in the censorship of legal content.

X has warned the act’s laudable intentions were “at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach”.

It said: “When lawmakers approved these measures, they made a conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety’.

“It is fair to ask if UK citizens were equally aware of the trade-off being made.”

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X claims the timetable for platforms to meet mandatory measures had been unnecessarily tight – and despite complying, sites still faced threats of enforcement and fines, “encouraging over-censorship”.

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“A balanced approach is the only way to protect individual liberties, encourage innovation and safeguard children. It’s safe to say that significant changes must take place to achieve these objectives in the UK,” it said.

A UK government spokesperson said it is “demonstrably false” that the Online Safety Act compromises free speech.

“As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression,” they added.

Users have complained about age checks that require personal data to be uploaded to access sites that show pornography, and 468,000 people have already signed a petition asking for the new law to be repealed.

In response to the petition, the government said it had “no plans” to reverse the Online Safety Act.

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Why do people want to repeal the Online Safety Act?

Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage likened the new rules to “state suppression of genuine free speech” and said his party would ditch the regulations.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said on Tuesday that those who wanted to overturn the act were “on the side of predators” – to which Mr Farage demanded an apology, calling Mr Kyle’s comments “absolutely disgusting”.

Regulator Ofcom said on Thursday it had launched an investigation into how four companies – that collectively run 34 pornography sites – are complying with new age-check requirements.

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These companies – 8579 LLC, AVS Group Ltd, Kick Online Entertainment S.A. and Trendio Ltd – run dozens of sites, and collectively have more than nine million unique monthly UK visitors, the internet watchdog said.

The regulator said it prioritised the companies based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operated and their user numbers.

It adds to the 11 investigations already in progress into 4chan, as well as an unnamed online suicide forum, seven file-sharing services, and two adult websites.

Ofcom said it expects to make further enforcement announcements in the coming months.

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Inside Jeremy Corbyn’s new party and the battle for leadership

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Inside Jeremy Corbyn's new party and the battle for leadership

Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn may be the figureheads of a new left-wing party, but already there is a battle over leadership.

The confusion behind the initial launch speaks to a wider debate happening behind closed doors as to who should steer the party – now and in the future.

Already, in the true spirit of Mr Corbyn’s politics, there is talk of an open leadership contest and grassroots participation.

Some supporters of the new party – which is being temporarily called “Your Party” while a formal name is decided by members – believe that allowing a leadership contest to take place honours Mr Corbyn’s commitment to open democracy.

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Jeremy Corbyn open to ideas on new party name

They point out that under Mr Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, members famously backed plans to make it easier for local constituency parties to deselect sitting MPs – a concept he strongly believed in.

His allies now say the former Labour leader, who is 76, is open to there being a leadership contest for the new party, possibly at its inaugural conference in the autumn, where names lesser known than himself can throw their hat into the ring.

“Jeremy would rather die than not have an open leadership contest,” one source familiar with the internal politics told Sky News.

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However, there have been suggestions that Ms Sultana appears to be less keen on the idea of a leadership contest, and that she is more committed to the co-leadership model than her political partner.

Those who have been opposed to the co-leadership model believe it could give Ms Sultana an unfair advantage and exclude other potential candidates from standing in the future.

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Corbyn’s new political party isn’t ‘real deal’

One source told Sky News they believed Mr Corbyn should lead the party for two years, to get it established, before others are allowed to stand as leader.

They said Ms Sultana, who became an independent MP after she was suspended from Labour for opposing the two-child benefit cap, was “highly ambitious but completely untested as leader” and “had a lot of growing into the role to do”.

“It’s not about her – it’s about taking a democratic approach, which is what we’re supposed to be doing,” they said.

“There are so many people who have done amazing things locally and they need to have a chance to emerge as leaders.

“We are not only fishing from a pool of two people.

“It needs to be an open contest. Nobody needs to be crowned.”

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Corbyn’s new party shakes the left

While Mr Corbyn and Ms Sultana undoubtedly have the biggest profiles out of would-be leaders, advocates for a grassroots approach to the leadership point to the success some independent candidates have enjoyed at a local level – for example, 24-year-old British Palestinian Leah Mohammed, who came within 528 votes of unseating Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North.

Fiona Lali of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who stood in last year’s general election for the Stratford and Bow constituency, has also been mentioned in some circles as someone with potential leadership credentials.

However, sources close to Mr Corbyn and Ms Sultana downplayed suggestions of any divide over the leadership model, pointing out that their joint statement acknowledged that members would “decide the party’s direction” at the inaugural conference in the autumn, including the model of leadership and the policies that are needed to transform society.

A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn told Sky News: “Jeremy will be working with Zarah, his independent colleagues, and people from trade unions and social movements up and down the country to make an autumn conference a reality.

“This will be the moment where people come together to launch a new democratic party that belongs to the members.”

Sky News has approached Ms Sultana for comment.

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DeFi Education Fund urges Senate to strengthen crypto dev protections in draft bill

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DeFi Education Fund urges Senate to strengthen crypto dev protections in draft bill

DeFi Education Fund urges Senate to strengthen crypto dev protections in draft bill

DeFi Education Fund called on the Senate Banking Committee to frame a key crypto market bill in a more tech-neutral way and strengthen crypto developer protections in a recent letter.

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