Crypto News: The small boasts problem

Hi, I'm Joe Mayes, a UK politics reporter in London.

Welcome to another year of the Readout. And an election year, no less — one in which Rishi Sunak will seek victory on the back of his governing record, while Labour slams said record in its bid to seize power for the first time since 2010.

Indeed, on the first day back after New Year, that's exactly what's happened. Sunak kicked off 2024 by declaring in big red letters on X that the asylum backlog is "cleared." This has been a touchpoint issue for the electorate, given the expense — as much as £8 million a day — of housing people in hotels, detention centers, and even on a barge.

But as my colleagues Reed Landberg and Alex Wickham point out, Sunak's target has only been hit via some creative counting. Sunak says all so-called "legacy" asylum claims made before June 2022 have been processed — yet this is only true if you exclude 4,500 complex cases and the 98,000 applications still awaiting a decision. It also ignores the 17,000 cases where asylum seekers have gone missing.

Sunak's claim unsurprisingly provoked a backlash, with his tweet receiving a community note pointing out that an asylum backlog still exists. Labour said the prime minister should "stop the boasts," a play on the government's own pledge to "stop the boats." We've been here before — Sunak has been pulled up in the past over a misleading claim to have cut Britain's debt.

To be sure, Sunak's government has made some progress, speeding up the rate of processing claims and overseeing a drop in small boat arrivals, from a record 45,700 people in 2022 to 29,400 last year. Home Secretary James Cleverly was today talking up that record, saying the government has also increased deportations.

But Sunak also presided over net migration soaring to a record of 745,000 last year, which prompted anger from his own backbenchers and undermined his ability to claim to be curbing immigration. He's also got a tough job selling victory on the "stop the boats" pledge — given that any time a single boat crosses the Channel, his political opponents can say he's failed.

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The stories you need to know about this evening

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The last general election was in December 2019. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

And as we head towards the general election, due by next January and anticipated this year, you can expect intense scrutiny of Sunak's record — including on small boats. It's one of the reasons why some Tory MPs worry about delaying the vote until the autumn: it risks the typical spate of boat arrivals in the summer, which would make a mockery of the idea that they have been stopped.

Sunak's other widely discussed option is to go the polls on May 2 in tandem with local elections, potentially riding a wave of positivity after possible tax cuts in the March budget. But the risk there is that the Tories could still be far behind Labour in the polls, and Sunak may want to stick it out in office for as long as he can.

Finally, speaking of the election, we're due to get major speeches from Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer this month, when they'll set out their stalls for the year — and election — ahead. The race for Downing Street is truly on.

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9.97C

The provisional average temperature in the UK last year, making it the second warmest on record, according to the Met Office.

One key story, every weekday

If the consensus on Wall Street is often wrong — and evidence from 2023 does little to dispel that notion — then in the year ahead investors are facing either the mother of all rallies or a selloff for the ages.

Those aren't the only outcomes laid out in the more-than 650 calls assembled here by Bloomberg News, but it is the predominant view. Amundi, JPMorgan Asset Management and Vanguard are among those predicting "mild" recessions. To BNY Mellon Wealth Management it will be "a healthy and welcome slowdown." Barclays calls it a "soft-ish" landing.

Read The Big Take.

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