Starmer facing growing backbench rebellion over planned disability benefit cuts
A senior Labour MP has said the government needs to take “corrective action” over planned disability benefit cuts – as Sir Keir Starmer faces a growing backbench rebellion.
Tan Dhesi, chair of the influential Commons defence committee, told the Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge the “disappointing” local election results show the government must listen and learn, particularly over welfare reforms.
The government has proposed tightening the eligibility requirements for the personal independent payment, known as PIP.
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A claimant must score a minimum of four points on one PIP daily living activity, such as preparing food, washing and bathing, using the toilet or reading, to receive the daily living element of the benefit.
Mr Dhesi, the MP for Slough, said “corrective action” needs to be taken but insisted if the government changed tact, it would not be a U-turn as the disability cuts were only proposals.
Tan Dhesi spoke to Sky’s Sophy Ridge
“A government which is in listening mode should be looking at what the electorate is saying,” he said.
“And we need to make sure that it’s our moral duty, responsibility, to look after the most vulnerable within our community, whether that’s in Slough, whether that’s elsewhere across the country.
“So, I hope that the government will be taking on board that feedback and many of us as MPs are giving that feedback in various meetings happening here in Westminster and then we need to take corrective action.”
Alex Davies-Jones said the government was seeking to ‘protect the vulnerable’
Minister Alex Davies-Jones told the Politics Hub a Labour government “will always seek to protect the most vulnerable” and it wants to “listen to people who have got real lived experience”.
She added she has the “utmost respect for Tan, he’s a great constituency MP and he’s doing exactly what he should be doing, is representing his constituency”.
Sir Keir is facing a rebellion from Labour MPs, with about 40 in the Red Wall – Labour’s traditional heartlands in the north of England – reposting a statement on social media in which they said the leadership’s response to the local elections had “fallen on deaf ears”.
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Several backbench Labour MPs also spoke out against the plans during a debate on PIP and disabled people in parliament on Wednesday.
Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, said he would “swim through vomit to vote against” the proposed changes and said: “This is not what the Labour Party was formed to do.”
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, said she feared tightening PIP eligibility would cause deaths, adding: “Lest we forget that study that attributed 330,000 excess deaths in Britain between 2012 and 2019 to the last round of austerity cuts [under the Conservative government].”
Diane Abbott, the longest-serving female MP, accused the government of putting forward “contradictory arguments”.
“On the one hand, they insist they are helping the disabled by putting them back to work,” she said.
“But on the other hand, they say this cut will save £9bn. Well, you can’t do both.”
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‘I’ll struggle if I lose disability support’
However, fellow Labour MP David Pinto-Duschinsky, said MPs cannot “ignore this issue” of health-related benefit claimant figures rising at “twice the rate of underlying health conditions”.
Responding for the government, social security minister Sir Stephen Timms said PIP claims were set to “more than double, from two million to over 4.3 million this decade”.
“It would certainly not be in the interests of people currently claiming the benefits for the government to bury its head in the sand over that rate of increase,” he added.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering rule changes to let companies more freely issue tokenized securities, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a speech published on May 8.
The regulator is “considering a potential exemptive order” for firms using blockchain technology to “issue, trade, and settle securities” that would release them from certain registration requirements, Peirce said in the speech.
For example, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) may no longer need to register “as a broker-dealer, clearing agency, or an exchange,” Peirce said. The SEC has previously brought numerous charges against DEXs such as Uniswap for failing to register as securities exchanges.
Firms should “not have to comply with inapt regulations, which, in many cases, were developed well before the technologies being tested existed and may be obviated by attributes of that technology,” Peirce said.
Under such an exemption, companies would still be expected to comply with rules designed to prevent fraud and market manipulation, the commissioner said. They may also need to meet certain disclosure and recordkeeping requirements.
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Sharp policy pivot
The SEC has dramatically pivoted its stance on cryptocurrency oversight since US President Donald Trump took office in January.
Under the leadership of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the agency brought upward of 100 lawsuits against crypto firms for alleged securities law violations.
However, under Trump nominee Paul Atkins, who was sworn in as chair on April 21, the agency has claimed jurisdiction over a narrower segment of cryptocurrencies.
In February, the SEC issued guidance stating that memecoins — if clearly identified as purely speculative assets with no intrinsic value — do not qualify as investment contracts under US law.
In April, the regulator said that stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to the US dollar — similarly do not qualify as securities if they are marketed solely as a means of making payments.
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Missouri House Bill 594, a bill that would eliminate capital gains tax in the US state, has passed a vote in the state House of Representatives and now heads to Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe’s desk for signature.
According to attorney Aaron Brogan, the bill stipulates a 100% income tax deduction for any capital gains income because the Missouri tax code does not explicitly distinguish between capital gains and income tax.
Brogan told Cointelegraph that the specific mechanism to exempt capital gains taxes outlined in HB 594 is unique and compared it to a similar income tax deduction in the federal tax code. The attorney explained:
“The most natural comparison is the state and local tax (SALT) deduction that the federal government offers — where the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) permits individuals to deduct a certain amount of tax paid in state and local taxes. This is the inverse, which I have never seen before.”
The bill’s timing is significant in that it follows proposals from US President Donald Trump to overhaul the country’s income tax system through comprehensive reform.
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Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax in the United States
Trump has proposed offsetting federal income taxes or eliminating the income tax and replacing the federal tax revenue with money raised through import tariffs.
“When Tariffs cut in, many people’s income taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. The focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year,” the president wrote in an April 27 Truth Social post.
Trump added the plan will create more jobs in the United States as factories return to avoid import duties on their finished products.
Despite this, the market reaction to the tariffs has been overwhelmingly negative, with the stock market recording trillions of dollars in losses in response to tariff headlines and crypto markets shedding hundreds of billions in value.
Additionally, bond yields spiked following the tariff announcements — a sign that investors were rejecting US bonds, which are traditionally seen as a flight to safety.
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Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky will probably be allowed to travel for his daughter’s wedding regardless of the outcome of his May 8 sentencing hearing.
In a May 8 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge John Koeltl approved an application for Mashinsky to travel from New York to Memphis, Tennessee, between May 26 and May 29 for his daughter’s wedding. The approval was available on the public docket as of May 8, but appeared to have been removed at the time of publication.
Judge Koeltl will determine in a May 8 hearing whether Mashinsky serves prison time following a plea deal with prosecutors.
The former Celsius CEO appeared ready to go to trial in 2024 until his lawyers lost a motion to have his charges dismissed. In December, He pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of the platform’s native token, CEL.
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Mashinsky has been free on a $40-million bond since July 2023, with travel outside certain areas requiring court approval, such as the roughly 900-mile (1,500-kilometer) distance between New York and Memphis. At the time of publication, it was unclear if he will be expected to surrender to authorities.
Potentially facing decades in prison
Prosecutors have asked the judge to impose a 20-year sentence on the former Celsius CEO, while Mashinsky’s lawyers requested that he serve one year and one day in prison. The hearing could be a bellwether for how criminal cases involving cryptocurrency could change under the Trump administration, which appointed the interim US Attorney for the court district.
On April 17, Mashinsky’s lawyers submitted a letter from his oldest daughter in support of her father ahead of sentencing. The letter claims that Mashinsky does not deserve a “severe punishment,” writing that he “never set out to steal from anyone.” Other members of his family penned similar letters.
The same court district oversaw the sentencing of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving 25 years in prison.
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