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Every major political party in the UK ignored crypto in this year’s election campaign. Former Tory member of parliament (MP) and Crypto Parliamentary Group Chair, Dr. Lisa Cameron, has said if this happens again the parties will have failed voters.
“I think for all parties, it’s something that is going to become more vital in this next election,” Cameron told Decrypt at Zebu Live. “I think any party that doesn’t have any mention of that in the next election will be doing local constituencies a disservice.”
Over the past three years, Cameron has engaged with the crypto community in Britain and has noticed that the scene has more than doubled in size—from 2 million to more than 6 million UK crypto holders. She does not see this trend slowing down.
“Any party that doesn’t engage, I think, is making a mistake,” she added.
According to the former Conservative MP, the governments’ failures with crypto likely comes from a lack of education and the dominance of older generations in power.
The UK Parliament is made up of two houses: the House of Commons, consisting of 650 elected MPs, and the House of Lords, with more than 800 appointed members who tend to be older than their elected counterparts.
Cameron recounted a time when the Youth Parliament, made up of people aged 11 to 18, asked the two houses to raise their hands if they understood the term “Web3.” A small number of MPs raised their hands and not a single Lord raised theirs. But the entire Youth Parliament did.
This, Cameron believes, is emblematic of the generational divide when it comes to crypto. “Wow, young people in our country are digitally native and this is important to them,” Cameron said, telling the story on the main stage at Zebu Live.
Equally, crypto’s innate complexities are preventing politicians from understanding the industry.
This is why Cameron said she’s a proponent of using “common language” to describe the power of cryptocurrencies. Rather than industry leaders confusing people in government with complex terms, like zero knowledge proofs or decentralized physical infrastructure networks, they should simply explain why the technology is important.
“The industry [should talk about] the use cases and how communities can benefit from the development of technology,” Cameron told Decrypt. “[Explain] the jobs of the future and how it’s giving people opportunities in this new technological world. That’s important to all MPs.”
The UK is behind when it comes to crypto, both in terms of investment and regulation—despite the last government stating it would make the country a ‘hub’ for crypto.
By contrast the European Union (EU), which the UK left as a result of Brexit, has introduced its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation. Cameron believes that Brexit offers the UK an opportunity to move ahead of Europe by improving on MiCA.
“The UK is not so far behind that it can’t catch up rapidly,” Cameron told Decrypt. “[MiCA] is not perfect. Therefore, we can look at post-Brexit as a way of maximizing opportunities here. With a system that takes the best of [MiCA] and then makes it just that little bit better.”
Cameron stepped down before the most recent election in which the Conservative party lost to Keir Starmer’s Labour. Since the change of power, a bill has been introduced to classify crypto assets as personal property, providing much needed clarity around its legal recognition.
That said, the UK is uniquely bi-partisan when it comes to crypto with neither party fully rejecting or embracing the technology. Cameron said she hopes that by the time the next election rolls around, every party will be proposing ideas for crypto policy.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.