Rishi Sunak delivers ‘kitchen sink’ manifesto – but he was unable to promise biggest thing Conservative MPs want

Published

11 months ago

June 11, 2024

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As Rishi Sunak was winding up his manifesto launch at metaphor-heavy Silverstone race track, the scale of the prime minister’s task in the remainder of the election campaign was becoming clear.

According to the exclusive Sky News-YouGov poll, Sunak needs to go through the gears at once or he’s in danger of dropping to the bottom step of the podium.

He was speaking hours before it emerged voting intention for the Conservatives had dropped to the joint lowest in this parliament – 18% – now putting Sunak’s party just one point ahead of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on 17%, tantalisingly close to a crossover.

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A full third of 2019 Tory voters – the cohort that endorsed Boris Johnson last time – now say they will switch to Reform UK, while the proportion who think Sunak will be a good prime minister is down two points – to 22% – in the last fortnight. That last figure is possibly a casualty of the PM’s decision to leave D-Day commemorations early – and could conceivably have been worse.

The notable drop in Labour’s vote – three points to 38% – will do little to cheer a Tory party in the doldrums, consumed with their own existential angst. This is because the switch seems to match the Lib Dems jumping up four point to 15%. Much of the YouGov fieldwork was done when the Lib Dem manifesto was receiving peak coverage.

The question is whether the Tory manifesto launch could possibly have provided anything new with which to turn things around, from a position as dire as any Conservative can remember in living memory.

Sunak has thrown everything at this manifesto: it’s 72 pages long, with nearly £20bn worth of tax and spending announcements.

There are pledges designed to appease and appeal to just about every demographic, from 2p off national insurance for working families, to accelerated national insurance abolition for the self-employed, to tax cuts for pensions, to help for first-time buyers and tax breaks for wealthier parents. This is to be paid for, Sunak said, in large part by yet more promises to pare back welfare, squeeze the public sector and more anti-avoidance measures.

It is a “kitchen sink” manifesto for the Tories. But it is not the first “kitchen sink” manifesto in recent memory.

Sir Keir Starmer boldly compared Sunak’s offering with that of Jeremy Corbyn – stuffed with policies that seem, and poll as, popular but are not sustainably affordable as an overall package.

The Labour leader was, of course, displaying the chutzpah of a man 20 points ahead in the polls by casually disowning a manifesto he himself stood on five years ago.

Nevertheless, his political purpose by making this point is two-fold: firstly, he is attempting to needle away further at the Conservatives’ claim of economic credibility, while also reminding people that manifestos stacked with popular policies do not automatically win elections.

But despite having individually popular ideas, the prime minister was unable to deliver perhaps the biggest thing Tory MPs might have wanted – a promise to reduce the overall tax burden in the next parliament.

It is the tax burden that hangs around the neck of a party proud of its low tax heritage, at an event at which Sunak had the audacity to invoke Nigel Lawson, the 1980s tax-cutting chancellor.

Sunak cannot bring it down. Yet he is unwilling to be completely automatically transparent over this point.

Examine carefully this painful exchange in the questions from the media afterwards, when Sunak’s sleight of hand was noticeable.

He was asked by the Daily Mail: “Can you today guarantee that if you get in, overall taxes will be lower by the time you finish?”

To this, Sunak replied: “Because of the measures that are announced in the manifesto and you can see that document afterwards, the tax burden will be about one percentage point lower in every single year compared to the forecast that you saw at the spring budget a few months ago that Jeremy (Hunt, the chancellor) outlined.”

This answer is deliberately elliptical, because the truth is hard: more people are dragged into higher tax bands because of frozen thresholds, designed to pay back some of the debt incurred in COVID.

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As my colleague Ed Conway, Sky’s economics editor, says, even after the tax cuts in this manifesto, everyone will still be paying higher taxes in 2028-29 than we are today.

So the answer to the Daily Mail is yes – the tax burden will be higher, albeit not as high as previously planned.

Sunak’s answer, while true, made it sound like the picture is better than it is when it comes to tax – and it’s a complication for a Tory leader trying to make tax the key dividing line with his Labour opposition in this election.

As Beth Rigby pointed out, a recent poll shows that only one in six voters believe Sunak won’t raise their taxes, or raise major taxes, compared with one in four for Labour – and she asked him whether this means he has “blown it”.

“I’m not afraid to do things that are difficult,” he pleaded in response. It’s not clear many on his own side believe this argument will wash with the public at this late stage in the political cycle.

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will face questions from Beth Rigby and members of the public during Sky News’ special leaders’ event on Wednesday.

The programme airs live from Grimsby from 7pm on Sky News – Freeview channel 233, Sky 501, Virgin 603, BT 313 – and streaming on the Sky News website, app and across social channels. It is also available to watch on Sky Showcase.

Politics

Stablecoin bill won’t target Trump as Senate aims to pass it next week

Published

3 hours ago

May 15, 2025

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Stablecoin bill won’t target Trump as Senate aims to pass it next week

The US Senate could pass a key bipartisan stablecoin bill as soon as next week after removing language targeting President Donald Trump and his family’s sprawling crypto interests.

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said onstage at an event by Coinbase’s lobbying arm, Stand With Crypto, that she thinks it’s a “fair target” to have the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, passed by May 26 — Memorial Day in the US.

Joining her onstage was Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who hinted that the bill’s language was changed to scrap provisions that targeted Trump’s various crypto projects, which include memecoins, a crypto platform, a stablecoin, and a crypto mining company that plans to go public, among others.

“When this language comes out, people will see really good refinement, a lot of progress, on things like consumer protection, and bankruptcy protection, and ethics,” Gillibrand said. “Things beyond just ‘what’s the structure?’ and ‘what’s required for an issuer?’”

Congress, Stablecoin — *Source:* *Brian Armstrong*

Senate Democrats pulled support for the bill on May 8 and stalled its momentum, airing concerns that it wouldn’t help address multiple crypto-tied deals that will personally enrich Trump.

“A lot of what President Trump is engaged in is already illegal,” Gillibrand said. “I also think his issuance of a memecoin is illegal based on current law.”

“It’s literally offering anyone who wants to curry favor with the administration to just send him money — that’s about as illegal as it gets.”

“I’m not so worried about this bill having to deal with all President Trump’s ethics problems. What this bill is really intended to do is regulate the entire space of stablecoins,” she added.

Gillibrand said the revised bill includes “some ethics requirements,” but it was “not an ethics bill.”

“If we were dealing with all President Trump’s ethics problems, it would be a very long and detailed bill,” she added.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, also on stage, was hopeful the Senate would vote on the stablecoin bill “early next week.”

Armstrong, whose company cozied up to Trump by donating $1 million to his inauguration fund, declined to comment when asked if the President’s memecoin could impact the passage of bipartisan crypto bills.

“It’s not my place to really comment on President Trump’s activity,” he said. “What I do think is important is that this bill remains focused on stablecoins.”

Crypto bills “absolutely critical” to pass before midterms

The crypto industry is pushing for Congress to pass the GENIUS Act and a Republican-drafted crypto market structure bill before the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026, where all 435 House seats and a third of the 100 Senate seats are up for election.

“We have a very narrow window to get legislation through between now and the midterms,” Marta Belcher, the president of the crypto lobby group the Blockchain Association, told Cointelegraph at the Consensus conference in Toronto.

“I strongly suspect that window is going to close very quickly. I don’t know if we’re going to get another window like this to get legislation through,” she added.

“It’s absolutely critical that we get it through now, especially because there really is a real possibility that in the future we end up with an administration that is hostile to crypto.”

The Association’s communications director, Chris Jonas, added that it’s critical the bills pass before Congress takes a recess for the month of August.

“Once you get into the calendar year of the midterms, historically not a lot of legislation moves, so that’s why it’s so critical,” he explained.

Trump should be on track to sign both crypto bills before the August break, according to Bo Hines, the executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.

Hines noted on stage at Consensus on May 13 that negotiations on both bills are still ongoing, but it was “the President’s desire” to sign both “stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess.”

Legal Panel: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Politics

Dems seek suspicious activity reports linked to Trump crypto ventures

Published

6 hours ago

May 15, 2025

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Dems seek suspicious activity reports linked to Trump crypto ventures

US Democrat lawmakers have sent a letter to the US Treasury demanding access to suspicious activity reports (SARs) on several Trump-backed crypto projects as part of the latest probe into the president’s digital ventures.

Penned by representatives Gerald Connolly, Joseph Morelle, and Jamie Raskin, the May 14 letter asks Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for all SARS filed since 2023 related to World Liberty Financial (WLF) and the Official Trump (TRUMP) token.

Financial institutions in the US must file SARs with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the Department of the Treasury, when they detect suspicious activity, including potential money laundering or fraud.

The sweeping probe asks for any SARs mentioning WinRed, America PAC, Elon Musk, political action committee, PAC, Trump, World Liberty Financial, WLF, TRUMP, MELANIA and Justin Sun, no later than May 30.

The Democratic lawmakers say their probe is to “determine whether legislation is necessary to prevent violations of campaign finance, consumer protection, bribery, securities fraud, and other anti-corruption laws” and to guard against “financial misconduct connected to prospective or current federal officials.”

Democrats argue WLF and Trump coin could be misused

As part of the letter, the lawmakers argue WLF could be misused as a “vehicle for foreign influence peddling” because it served part of its token sale for foreign investors, who are “generally subject to less stringent regulation than US investors.”

Justin Sun’s investment in WLF and the subsequent pause of the SEC’s lawsuit that alleged the crypto entrepreneur broke securities laws has also been flagged as a concern.

Trump’s token has come under fire as well because the lawmakers argue in their letter that the identities of the coin purchasers are not publicly disclosed, which could open the door for bad actors to “curry favor with Trump” by purchasing the coin.

At the same time, SARS related to Republican digital fundraising WinRed, Elon Musk’s super PAC, which poured $250 million into Trump’s election campaign, and two other PACs are being sought.

This effort is the latest Democrat-led salvo against Trump’s crypto ventures.

A group of Democratic senators reportedly sent a letter to leadership at the US Department of Justice and the Treasury Department expressing concerns about Trump’s ties to crypto exchange Binance and potential conflicts of interest in regulating the industry, according to a May 9 Bloomberg report.

US Democratic lawmakers also launched a multi-angle attack on May 6, targeting Trump’s ability to profit from his crypto initiatives with two bills and a subcommittee inquiry.

Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions

Politics

Top Tory caught admitting Brexit drawback in leaked clip

Published

11 hours ago

May 14, 2025

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Leaked recording reveals top Tory knew of flaws in post-Brexit plan to return illegal migrants

One of Kemi Badenoch’s top team has admitted there were flaws in the plan to return illegal migrants after Brexit, Sky News can reveal.

Boris Johnson repeatedly told the public that Brexit would mean taking back control of Britain’s borders and migration system.

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But in a leaked recording obtained by Sky News, Chris Philp, now shadow home secretary, said Britain’s exit from the EU – and end of UK participation in the Dublin agreement which governs EU-wide asylum claims – meant they realised they “can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”.

Mr Philp appeared to suggest the scale of the problem surprised those in the Johnson government.

“When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.”

In response tonight, the Tories insisted that Mr Philp was not saying the Tories did not have a plan for how to handle asylum seekers post Brexit.

Mr Philp’s comments from last month are a very different tone to 2020 when as immigration minister he seemed to be suggesting EU membership and the Dublin rules hampered asylum removals.

In August that year, he said: “The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like. Of course, come the 1st of January, we’ll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach.”

Mr Philp was also immigration minister in Mr Johnson’s government so would have been following the debate closely.

In public, members of the Johnson administration were claiming this would not be an issue since asylum claims would be “inadmissible”, but gave no details on how they would actually deal with people physically arriving in the country.

A Home Office source told journalists once the UK is “no longer bound by Dublin after the transition”, then “we will be able to negotiate our own bilateral returns agreement from the end of this year”.

This did not happen immediately.

In the summer of 2020, Mr Johnson’s spokesman criticised the “inflexible and rigid” Dublin regulations, suggesting the exit from this agreement would be a welcome post-Brexit freedom. Mr Philp’s comments suggest a different view in private.

The remarks were made in a Zoom call, part of a regular series with all the shadow cabinet on 28 April, just before the local election.

Mr Philp was asked by a member why countries like France continued to allow migrants to come to the UK.

He replied: “The migrants should claim asylum in the first safe place and that under European Union regulations, which is called the Dublin 3 regulation, the first country where they are playing asylum is the one that should process their application.

“Now, because we’re out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin 3 regulations, and so we can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum. When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements on December the 31st, 2020, we did run some checks and found that about half the people crossing the channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.

“In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, somewhere like that, and therefore could have been returned. But now we’re out of Dublin, we can’t do that, and that’s why we need to have somewhere like Rwanda that we can send these people to as a deterrent.”

Mr Johnson announced the Rwanda plan in April 2022 – which Mr Philp casts as the successor plan – 16 months after Britain left the legal and regulatory regime of the EU, but the plan was blocked by the European Court of Human Rights.

Successive Tory prime ministers failed to get any mandatory removals to Rwanda, and Sir Keir Starmer cancelled the programme on entering Downing Street last year, leaving the issue of asylum seekers from France unresolved.

Speaking on Sky News last weekend, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said there has been a 20% increase in migrant returns since Labour came to power, along with a 40% increase in illegal working raids and a 40% increase in arrests for illegal working.

Britain’s membership of the EU did not stop all asylum arrivals. Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, under which people should be processed for asylum in the country at which they first entered the bloc.

However, many EU countries where people first arrive, such as Italy, do not apply the Dublin rules.

The UK is not going to be able to participate again in the Dublin agreement since that is only open to full members of the EU.

Ministers have confirmed the Labour government is discussing a returns agreement with the French that would involve both countries exchanging people seeking asylum.

Asked on Sky News about how returns might work in future, the transport minister Lilian Greenwood said on Wednesday there were “discussions ongoing with the French government”, but did not say what a future deal could look like.

She told Sky News: “It’s not a short-term issue. This is going to take really hard work to tackle those organised gangs that are preying on people, putting their lives in danger as they try to cross the Channel to the UK.

“Of course, that’s going to involve conversations with our counterparts on the European continent.”

Pressed on the returns agreement, Ms Greenwood said: “I can confirm that there are discussions ongoing with the French government about how we stop this appalling and dangerous trade in people that’s happening across the English Channel.”

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A Conservative Party spokesman said: “The Conservative Party delivered on the democratic will of this country, and left the European Union.

“The last government did have a plan and no one – including Chris – has ever suggested otherwise.

“We created new deals with France to intercept migrants, signed returns agreements with many countries across Europe, including a landmark agreement with Albania that led to small boat crossings falling by a third in 2023, and developed the Rwanda deterrent – a deterrent that Labour scrapped, leading to 2025 so far being the worst year ever for illegal channel crossings.

“However, Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp have been clear that the Conservatives must do a lot more to tackle illegal migration.

“It is why, under new leadership, we are developing g new policies that will put an end to this problem – including disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration matters, establishing a removals deterrent and deporting all foreign criminals.”