Union leaders have urged Sir Keir Starmer to be bolder with his vision for the country if he wants to win the next election and lead Britain out of decline.
In a message to the potential future incumbent of Downing Street, union chiefs said the Labour leader needed to offer a more positive message than simply being “better than the Conservatives”.
The choice words were delivered at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference in Liverpool, where issues like workers’ rights, the state of public services and the cost of living crisis are being hotly debated.
Paul Novak, the new general secretary of the TUC, delivered a rousing speech on Monday, claiming the Conservatives have “broken Britain”and calling for change in the form of a Labour government.
But while Labour traditionally enjoys the support of unions, the party’s perceived move to the centre, with a focus on fiscal Conservatism, has attracted anger among the movement.
Despite winning three elections,she told Sky News that Sir Keir’s leadership needs to be more radical than then because there is less money in the public coffers to spend – and options such as wealth taxes and nationalising energy should be considered to raise capital.
In a reference to the post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee, which founded the NHS, she said: “Britain is in crisis. And what we need to do now is not to look back to 1997.
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“What we need to do is be more like in 1945. The country needs a reboot and Labour needs to put policies forward that give it that reboot.”
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Sharon Graham calls on Labour to be ‘like 1945’
That sentiment was echoed by the leader of the PCS union that represents civil servants.
Mark Serwotka, a Labour member, said Sir Keir needs to offer a vision for people to vote for Labour “that is more than just ‘we’re better than the Conservatives'”.
He told Sky News: “Britain is in crisis. We’ve got people waiting for 15 hours in ambulances, schools being shut through crumbling concrete, a 180,000 backlog of asylum cases because of lack of staff and incredibly £45bn in uncollected tax because we don’t have enough staff in tax offices. A crisis needs urgent and radical action.”
Mr Serwotka called on Labour to offer things like free school meals, a record investment in public services and a clamp down on tax evasion.
He denied “singing from a different hymn sheet” to Mr Nowak, who urged the trade union movement to unite behind Labour “to kick this rotten government out”.
Mr Serwotka insisted: “I want to see a Labour government, but I don’t want to see a Labour government that comes in and tells people that they’ve ‘still got to live in poverty, there’s nothing much we can do about it’.
“The point of a Labour government is to offer hope to those currently in despair. And the way to do that is to say ‘we will be bold, we will invest in our communities’.”
Image: Paul Nowak accused the Tories of having ‘broken Britain’
In a direct challenge to the Labour leader, he added: “If I had the chance to talk to Keir Starmer, I would say to him, enthuse those voters who didn’t vote Labour last time. Tell them why you would make a difference to their lives and you can win an election. But if you only rely on not being a Conservative, you risk winning the election. So be bold.”
Starmer: Labour ‘absolutely focused on future’
After more than a decade out of power, Sir Keir is hoping to become the first Labour prime minister to win at the ballot box since Mr Blair – who secured two more terms after his landslide victory in 1997.
He has sought to rebuild the party focusing on a more centrist style than his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and has stressed the need for fiscal Conservatism amid bleak warnings about the state of the UK economy.
However, he insisted there is still “a lot of common ground” with trade unions when asked about the criticism.
Speaking ahead of a dinner with union leaders in Liverpool tonight, Sir Keir said: “The Labour Party is absolutely focused on the future, not the past, and the challenges that we will inherit if we’re privileged enough to go into government.
“The central challenge will be growing the economy. Within that is dignity and respect for working people in their working environment.”
Asked how he plans to keep unions on side, he added: “The Labour Party and the trade unions have had a long relationship together and we had a big session at the beginning of the summer where we agreed policy going forward.
“So what you’ll see here is a lot of common ground as we go towards what we know will be really huge challenges.”
The US Nasdaq stock exchange is making SEC approval of its proposal to offer tokenized versions of stocks listed on the exchange a top priority, according to the exchange’s crypto chief.
“We’ll just move as fast as we can,” Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said during an interview with CNBC on Thursday, when asked whether the SEC could approve the proposal this year.
“I think what we have to really evaluate where the public comments come back in and then answer and respond to the SEC questions as they come through,” Savarese said. “We hope to kind of work with them as quickly as possible,” Savarese said.
Savarese says Nasdaq isn’t “upending the system”
The proposal, submitted by Nasdaq on Sept. 8, is requesting to allow investors to buy and sell stock tokens — digital representations of shares in publicly traded companies — on the exchange.
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is not trying to overhaul the way stocks are invested in when asked whether he expects other major exchanges to follow suit.
Nasdaq’s head of digital assets, Matt Savarese, spoke to CNBC on Thursday. Source: CNBC
“We’re not looking at upending the system; we want everyone to come along for that ride and bring tokenization more into the mainstream,” he said.
“We want to do it in that responsible investor-led way first, under the SEC rules themselves,” he added.
It was only in October that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that tokenization will “eventually eat the whole financial system.”
The crypto industry is divided on tokenized equities
Savarese emphasized that Nasdaq is aiming to be an innovator in the ecosystem, noting that the exchange was the first to transition markets from paper-based trading to electronic systems.
Tokenizing stocks has been one of the most significant talking points in the crypto industry this year.
On Sept. 3, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the company became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its equity on a major blockchain following its launch on the Solana network.
The conversation around tokenized equities has also drawn skepticism from the crypto industry.
On Oct. 1, Rob Hadick, general partner at crypto venture firm Dragonfly, told Cointelegraph that tokenized equities will be a significant benefit to traditional markets, but may not be a boon to the crypto industry as others have predicted.
Hadick said that if tokenized stocks use layer-2 networks, it creates “leakage” as value and may not flow back to Ethereum or the broader crypto ecosystem as much as hoped.
Hester Peirce, a commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and head of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, reaffirmed the right to crypto self-custody and privacy in financial transactions.
“I’m a freedom maximalist,” Peirce told The Rollup podcast on Friday, while saying that self-custody of assets is a fundamental human right. She added:
“Why should I have to be forced to go through someone else to hold my assets? It baffles me that in this country, which is so premised on freedom, that would even be an issue — of course, people can hold their own assets.”
SEC commissioner Hester Peirce discusses the right to self-custody and financial privacy. Source: The Rollup
Peirce added that online financial privacy should be the standard. “It has become the presumption that if you want to keep your transactions private, you’re doing something wrong, but it should be exactly the opposite presumption,” she said.
Many large Bitcoin (BTC) whales and long-term holders are pivoting from self-custody to ETFs to reap the tax benefits and hassle-free management of owning crypto in an investment vehicle.
“We are witnessing the first decline in self-custodied Bitcoin in 15 years,” Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, the head of research at crypto exchange Uphold, said.
Hiesboeck attributed the shift to the SEC approving in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETFs in July, which allowed authorized holders to exchange crypto for ETF shares and vice versa without triggering a taxable event, unlike cash-settled ETFs.
“A move away from the self-custody mantra of ‘not your keys, not your coins’ is another nail in the coffin of the original crypto spirit,” Hiesboeck added.
Jeremy Corbyn has declined to say his Your Party co-founder Zarah Sultana is a friend as supporters of the new grouping gather in Liverpool.
Speaking to Sky News on the eve of the conference, Mr Corbyn acknowledged “stresses and strains” in the set-up of the party but said it had become “a lot better in the last few days and weeks and we’re going to get through this weekend”.
The former Labour leader has publicly clashed with Ms Sultana, the MP for Coventry South, over the launch and structure of the new party.
Asked if they were friends, Mr Corbyn said they were “colleagues in parliament, and we obviously communicate and so on”.
The pair appeared at separate events on the eve of the party’s inaugural gathering.
Ms Sultana had previously claimed she was being “sidelined” by a “sexist boys’ club” within the fledgling party.
Mr Corbyn said her comments were an “unfortunate choice of words” but added that he had been more involved in the organisation of the conference than she had.
Image: The co-founders have had a strained relationship since setting up the party. Pic: Your Party
The Islington North MP also said that Your Party was still waiting for Ms Sultana to transfer all of the funds she had raised from supporters.
“Obviously having money up front for a conference is a big help,” he said.
Ms Sultana has insisted she is transferring the donations in stages.
The weekend gathering in Liverpool will see supporters choose between four options for a permanent party name: Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance, For the Many.
The preferred choice of Ms Sultana – The Left – did not make the ballot.
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Similarly, the Coventry MP had said she favoured a co-leader approach, but members will only be able to pick between single leadership or collective leadership models.
Speaking at her own pre-conference rally, Ms Sultana blamed a “nameless, faceless bureaucrat” for restricting the choices.
The meeting also risked being disrupted by a series of member expulsions. One of those ejected, Lewis Nielsen, accused a “clique” of trying to “take over”.
Your Party sources said expulsions related to members of the Socialist Workers Party and that holding another national party membership was not allowed.
Ms Sultana blamed a “culture of paranoia at the top” and said she believed the same people who had been briefing against her were now also expelling members.
Mr Corbyn will open the conference on Saturday, while the results of the main decision-making votes will be announced on Sunday.