United Kingdom prime minister (PM) Rishi Sunak, leader of the conservative party, announced on May 22 that general elections would take place on July 4.
The timing may come as a bit of a surprise to many, but the announcement appears to have received the unabated approval of the U.K.’s Labour Party, the conservatives’ chief rival for the PM’s seat, much to the reported chagrin of Sunak’s fellow conservatives.
There’s no secret why Labour’s keen to get the elections over with: as of current, local polling shows overwhelming support for Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.
While there are no guarantees in the world of politics, especially when it comes to free elections, the historical precedent indicates that Starmer has an outsized shot at winning a fair election compared to his rivals including Sunak.
This leaves the future of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and related verticals in the digital assets sector in flux as the Labour Party has been somewhat tight-lipped about how a Starmer-led U.K. government would approach regulation and growth in the industry.
As Cointelegraph reported back in 2022, Rishi Sunak made crypto a part of his platform and was elected with the promise that the U.K. would embrace the new technology to the benefit of the entire industry.
Now, just two years later, there are bills still up for debate that Sunak’s parliament promised to try and pass ahead of the general elections — which, at the time of their proposal, were expected to happen later in the year.
With the July 4 election looming and the prospect of a Labour Party victory seeming the most likely scenario, the crypto industry could be forced to reckon with a different future.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to go on. The Labour Party hasn’t made any party-line decrees concerning the future of crypto nor taken any hardline stances for or against related technology such as blockchain.
In January the Labour Party published a document pertaining to its finance platform. While it didn’t mention the words “cryptocurrency” or “blockchain,” it did say that “embracing securities tokenisation and a central bank digital currency” were part of the party’s “vision” for the United Kingdom.
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