Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are set to begin a frantic final few days of campaigning as polling day rapidly approaches.
Both men will today reiterate their core messages as they try to motivate their backers to get out to the polling booths on Thursday.
The Labour leader will impress on the nation that if they want change they “have to vote for it” – while the Conservative leader will warn there are “four days to save Britain from a Labour government”.
Mr Sunak has suggested that Labour are on track for a “supermajority”, with the opposition having managed to maintain a roughly 20-point lead in the opinion polls, according to the Sky News Poll Tracker – something Sir Keir will do everything to ensure does not change.
The Liberal Democrats are set to continue their push to replace the Tories in seats that have traditionally been considered their heartlands – while the SNP will try to convince Scots to back them as polls show Labour could become the largest Scottish parliamentary contingent once again.
Mr Sunak is set to campaign in the Midlands today, where he will warn against giving “Keir Starmer and Labour a blank cheque”.
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Speaking at a rally later, the prime minister will say of Labour: “If they get the kind of majority, the supermajority that the polls suggest, they will set about entrenching themselves in power.
“They will rewrite the rules to make it easier for them to stay in office and harder for anyone to replace them. So, don’t surrender your voice to Labour on Thursday.”
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Seemingly in a bid to limit the scale of the defeat, rather than emerge victorious, the Tory leader will say that “an unchecked Labour government would be a disaster from which it would take decades to recover”.
“We Conservatives will stand up for you and make sure your voice is heard, your values represented.”
The Conservative Party is also claiming today that Labour’s immigration plans will result in a “deluge” of asylum seekers, leading to tax hikes of £635 per family each year – something a Labour spokesperson has branded a “ludicrous lie from an increasingly desperate Tory party”.
The opposition claimed the Tories have “completely lost control of the asylum system or border security” and if they are re-elected “the chaos will continue and costs will soar further”.
Labour win ‘not inevitable’ – Starmer
Labour will also vow to ensure petty theft is punished by scrapping a rule allowing people stealing goods worth under £200 to escape punishment, it is understood.
More broadly, the party will continue to make the wider case for change, with national campaign coordinator Pat McFadden saying: “If people don’t want to wake up on 5 July to five more years of economic chaos, to wake up knowing that all the future offers is the same as the recent Tory past, then they have to vote Labour and vote for change on Thursday.”
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12:24
Leader interviews: Labour Party
Sir Keir Starmer also hammered home that message in an interview with The Guardian, saying: “People talk about the inevitable outcome. It isn’t inevitable. I think there’s a yearning for change. But, you know, what we always say, if you want change, you have to vote for it.”
He also told the paper “hope has been kicked out of many people” because of the Tories’ failure to deliver, adding: “There’s a near universal view that almost everything is broken, and we’re going backwards as a country. That’s very demoralising.
“They’ve also had to witness the politics of self-entitlement and self-enhancement from Westminster… I’m not surprised that people feel disaffected by politics. But we do have to restore it.”
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Sir Keir expressed concern about the rise in support for the populist right across Europe, and for Reform in the UK.
“You have to understand why that’s happening,” he said. “It’s based in this disaffection, this sense that politics cannot be a force for good, and you can’t trust politicians.”
He argued that progressive parties and governments could restore faith, however, saying: “That goes back to credible hope, deliverable hope, making the change that will be material for people’s lives.”
Lib Dems on bereavement payment cuts
First minister John Swinney will also be out on the campaign trail today, reiterating his core message that Scots need an “alternative” to Labour in Westminster to “represent Scotland’s values”.
The SNP leader said in a statement that the general election in England is a “foregone conclusion”, with a Labour win on the cards, and claimed Sir Keir Starmer would “carry on with the same broken politics and right-wing policies as the Tories”.
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1:30
Swinney pledges to continue push for indyref
He is arguing that the result in Scotland is on a “knife edge” – despite polls showing Labour in the lead – and that Sir Keir “simply represents more of the same broken Brexit Britain that does not reflect Scotland’s values”.
“The SNP is offering an alternative – a vision of hope with an end to austerity, rejoining the EU, eradicating child poverty and a future made in Scotland, for Scotland where Scotland’s interests are always put first,” said Mr Swinney.
“The only way to deliver that and put an end to the failure of Brexit which has caused so much damage to Scotland is to vote SNP on Thursday.
“Only the SNP offers Scotland the hope of a better future back in the EU – but we have to vote for it.”
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18:32
Leader interviews: Liberal Democrats
Sir Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats will be continuing their bid to take seats off the Tories – and are promoting a pledge they launched yesterday to reverse “heartless Tory cuts” to bereavement payments.
On the latter as it stands, a bereaved family where a spouse or partner has died receives a lump sum of up to £3,500, followed by a monthly payment of up to £350 for 18 months.
The party is calling for this period to be extended, and is pledging to inject an additional £440m a year into the system by 2028-29 to fund it.
‘Labour could take Wales for granted’
Plaid Cymru will be making their case to voters in Wales, arguing that the Welsh people will be “voiceless” if they do not have a “strong cohort” of MPs in Westminster.
The party’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said Wales “simply doesn’t feature” in Tory and Labour electoral plans, while his party would push for “fair funding deal for Wales”.
“When people vote on Thursday, they expect their MP to speak up for them and their community, not to follow the Westminster whip at any cost,” a statement said.
“We know that the Tories are finished and the contempt they show Wales is nothing new – but with Labour set to enter Downing Street on Friday, there is a real danger that they will simply take Wales for granted.”
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10:03
Leader interviews: Plaid Cymru
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He added: “For a member of parliament who will always give Wales a voice in Westminster, who will always champion fairness and stand up against more cuts which have already devastated our public services, vote Plaid Cymru on 4 July.”
Reform UK will also be on the campaign trail as the party tries to stabilise its campaign following racism allegations.
Image: Farage’s Reform party will be trying to steady the ship after racism claims. Pic: Reuters
Yesterday, one of the party’s candidates disowned them and backed the Tories, saying he had become “increasingly disillusioned” with the behaviour of the party and accused leader Nigel Farage of not taking it seriously.
It followed the controversy over a Reform canvasser who was caught making a racial slur about the prime minister in an undercover investigation.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent warning letters to several exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers, halting applications for leveraged ETFs that offer more than 200% exposure to the underlying asset.
ETF issuers Direxion, ProShares, and Tidal received letters from the SEC citing legal provisions under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The law caps exposure of investment funds at 200% of their value-at-risk, defined by a “reference portfolio” of unleveraged, underlying assets or benchmark indexes. The SEC said:
“The fund’s designated reference portfolio provides the unleveraged baseline against which to compare the fund’s leveraged portfolio for purposes of identifying the fund’s leverage risk under the rule.”
The SEC directed issuers to reduce the amount of leverage in accordance with the existing regulations before the applications would be considered, putting a damper on 3-5x crypto leveraged ETFs in the US.
SEC regulators posted the warning letters the same day they were sent to the issuer, in an “unusually speedy move” that signals officials are keen on communicating their concerns about leveraged products to the investing public, according to Bloomberg.
The crypto market took a nosedive in October after a flash crash caused $20 billion in leveraged liquidations, the most severe single-day liquidation event in crypto history, sparking discussions among analysts and investors over the dangers of leverage and its effect on the crypto market.
24-hour liquidations in the crypto derivatives market. Source: Coinglass
Liquidations in the crypto futures market during the last cycle averaged about $28 million in long positions and $15 million in shorts per day.
The current cycle is clocking about $68 million in long liquidations and $45 million in short liquidations daily, according to Glassnode.
Demand for leveraged crypto ETFs surged following the 2024 presidential election in the United States, in anticipation of a better regulatory climate for crypto in the US.
Leveraged ETFs are not subject to margin calls and automated liquidations like leveraged crypto derivatives, but can still deal a serious blow to investor capital in a bear market or even a sideways market, as losses compound more quickly than gains.
Taiwan could see its first stablecoin launched as early as the second half of 2026 as lawmakers advance new rules for digital assets, according to one of the country’s financial regulators.
According to a Focus Taiwan report on Wednesday, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chair Peng Jin-lon said that, based on the timeline for passing related legislation, a Taiwan-issued stablecoin could enter the market in the second half of 2026.
Should the Virtual Assets Service Act pass in the country’s next legislative session, and accounting for a six-month buffer period for the law to take effect, it would lay the groundwork for the launch of a Taiwanese stablecoin.
Peng said the draft legislation was derived from Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) and would eventually allow non-financial institutions to issue stablecoins. Initially, however, Taiwan’s central bank and the FSC would restrict issuance to regulated entities.
Last year, Taiwan’s policymakers began enforcing Anti-Money Laundering regulations in response to alleged violations by crypto companies MaiCoin and BitoPro. As of December, however, regulated entities in the country have yet to launch a stablecoin pegged to either the US dollar or the Taiwan dollar.
In addition to the FSC’s advancement of stablecoin regulations, Taiwan’s policymakers are reportedly assessing the total amount of Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by authorities. The move signaled that the nation could be preparing to launch its own strategic crypto stockpile.
Ju-Chun, a Taiwanese lawmaker, called on the government to add BTC to its national reserves in May as a hedge against economic uncertainty.
The country’s reserves include US Treasury bonds and gold, but no cryptocurrencies. Other countries, such as the US, have adopted policies that promote Bitcoin and crypto reserves.
Former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler renewed his warning to investors about the risks of cryptocurrencies, calling most of the market “highly speculative” in a new Bloomberg interview on Tuesday.
He carved out Bitcoin (BTC) as comparatively closer to a commodity while stressing that most tokens don’t offer “a dividend” or “usual returns.”
Gensler framed the current market backdrop as a reckoning consistent with warnings he made while in office that the global public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies doesn’t equate to fundamentals.
“All the thousands of other tokens, not the stablecoins that are backed by US dollars, but all the thousands of other tokens, you have to ask yourself, what are the fundamentals? What’s underlying it… The investing public just needs to be aware of those risks,” he said.
Gensler’s record and industry backlash
Gensler led the SEC from April 17, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025, overseeing an aggressive enforcement agenda that included lawsuits against major crypto intermediaries and the view that many tokens are unregistered securities.
The industry winced at high‑profile actions against exchanges and staking programs, as well as the posture that most token issuers fell afoul of registration rules.
Gary Gensler labels crypto as “highly speculative.” Source: Bloomberg
Under Gensler’s tenure, Coinbase was sued by the SEC for operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency, and for offering an unregistered staking-as-a-service program. Kraken was also forced to shut its US staking program and pay a $30 million penalty.
The politicization of crypto
Pushed on the politicization of crypto, including references to the Trump family’s crypto involvement by the Bloomberg interviewer, the former chair rejected the framing.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, arguing it’s more about capital markets fairness and “commonsense rules of the road,” than a “Democrat versus Republican thing.”
He added: “When you buy and sell a stock or a bond, you want to get various information,” and “the same treatment as the big investors.” That’s the fairness underpinning US capital markets.
On ETFs, Gensler said finance “ever since antiquity… goes toward centralization,” so it’s unsurprising that an ecosystem born decentralized has become “more integrated and more centralized.”
He noted that investors can already express themselves in gold and silver through exchange‑traded funds, and that during his tenure, the first US Bitcoin futures ETFs were approved, tying parts of crypto’s plumbing more closely to traditional markets.
Gensler’s latest comments draw a familiar line: Bitcoin sits in a different bucket, while most other tokens remain, in his view, speculative and light on fundamentals.
Even out of office, his framing will echo through courts, compliance desks and allocation committees weighing BTC’s status against persistent regulatory caution of altcoins.