Labour vow to ‘get Britain’s future back’ as conference kicks off in Liverpool
Labour are promising to “get Britain’s future back” as the party meets for its annual conference.
Proceedings get under way in Liverpool on Saturday with Labour’s women’s conference, before the full summit starts on Sunday.
It follows the Tory conference last week, which was beset by leaks about the scrapping of HS2 – as those hoping to succeed Rishi Sunak made a splash.
Politics latest: ‘We’re the party of change’ – Starmer
Labour will be hoping to capitalise on its recent win in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, which deputy leader Angela Rayner called a “seismic result”.
She told Sky News: “One of the challenges we face – because the Conservatives crashed the economy and the situation we’re going to inherit – is that we won’t be able to reverse everything that the Conservatives have done over the last 13 years.
“But we’re very determined to give Britain its future back.”
Asked about her own ambitions, Ms Rayner said: “I would have an absolute honour and a privilege if I was able to be the deputy prime minister of this country.
“That’s my ambition and my ambition is to get into government, not for me, but for the people out there who deserve that change.
“The Conservatives have delivered chaos for people.
“I want people to have the opportunities that the last Labour government delivered for me, and I’m determined to make sure that we get into government to deliver that for people.”
Ms Rayner is promising a government that will “deliver the biggest boost to affordable, social and council housing for a generation” and prevent developers “wriggling out of their responsibilities”.
Housing is one of many areas that party members will be hoping to hear more details on, with some accusing the party of being light on detail with its policies, including issues such as the cancellation of HS2.
Business and the economy are other areas where Labour want to show they are ready for government.
The party is keen to show it has companies such as Gatwick Airport, Scottish Renewables, Specsavers, Ikea and McVities hosting stands for the first time – with the likes of John Lewis and Mastercard speaking to a “sold-out” business forum.
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Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper will also announce a plan to require police to target the most dangerous abusers and sex offenders using counter-terror style tactics.
“Under Labour, the police will be asked to relentlessly pursue the perpetrators who pose the greatest risk to women, and use all the tools at their disposal to protect victims and get dangerous offenders off the streets,” she said.
“The police should be exhausting every opportunity for enforcement, prevention and protection – too often failure to do so has had devastating and fatal consequences.”
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Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting renewed his pledge to “modernise or die” in an interview with The Times, promising a Labour government would funnel £171m a year into a “fit for the future” fund for purchasing new equipment to cut NHS waiting times.
He said the money would be enough to double the number of CT and MRI scanners over a parliament so that patients can get diagnosed earlier.
After Ms Rayner’s speech on Sunday, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves will speak on Monday, with party leader Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday.
It’s during this speech he will “outline plans to get Britain’s future back” – a slogan he has used before.
Read more:
Ten conference moments that made headlines
Who is Angela Rayner?
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Starmer: ‘We are the party of change’
Another policy pledge expected to be announced by Ms Rayner is the “biggest-ever transfer of power out of Westminster”, a policy touted last year at an event with former prime minister Gordon Brown.
Speaking on Friday, Ms Rayner said: “Rishi Sunak and the Tories have time and time again taken a sledgehammer to the foundations a good life can be built upon. Decent jobs, secure homes and strong communities are being snatched away from people.
“With five prime ministers in seven years and constant chaos and instability, Britain’s future has been left to take a back seat. The Tories’ legacy is national decline – a nation levelled down and starved of hope.
“While the Tories have stolen Britain’s future, it’s Labour that will give it back with our plan to make working people better off by securing growth for all people and in all places.”
Anneliese Dodds, the chair of the Labour Party, said her party had “the plans to unlock growth, make our streets safe, secure the future of the NHS, break down barriers to opportunity and make the UK a green energy superpower”.
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.
“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.
Related: DATs bring crypto’s insider trading problem to TradFi: Shane Molidor
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.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
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.”
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.
The comments came as the Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity Act, a crypto market structure bill that includes provisions for self-custody, anti-money laundering(AML) regulations, and asset taxonomy, is delayed until 2026, according to Senator Tim Scott.
Related: SEC to hold privacy and financial surveillance roundtable in December
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) challenge Bitcoin’s self-custody ethos
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.
In February, notable Bitcoin analyst and investor PlanB, the developer of the BTC stock-to-flow model, announced that he transferred his Bitcoin to ETFs to alleviate the “hassle” of private key management.
PlanB’s announcement caused an outcry in the Bitcoin community, as many voiced concerns that handing over custody to a third party clashed with Bitcoin’s core values.
Magazine: When privacy and AML laws conflict: Crypto projects’ impossible choice
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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