In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! A note on Easter (long) weekend editions: you are, of course, reading the Good Friday edition, and your Party Line will arrive as usual tomorrow morning. But I, and The Early Line, will take Easter Monday off, returning to your inbox on Tuesday 7 April 2026. Happy Easter, all. - Neil Mc

📣 Artemis II astronauts have hailed the “most spectacular moment” when their craft completed a successful engine burn and left Earth’s orbit, headed for the moon. “Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of,” said Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. (AP)

📣 Storm Dave is the unprepossessing name given to the weather that’s going to hit Scotland over Easter, with 90mph winds and snow sparking weather alerts that blanket the entire country.

The public is being urged to be wary of large waves along the coasts, while travel - especially in northwest Scotland - may become difficult as blizzard conditions set in.

The worst of it will be on Saturday night into Easter Sunday, but it could also impact Sunday football fixtures. (STV)

📣 The US and Iran have continued to launch attacks as the war shows few signs of abating. President Donald Trump has warned that the US assault on infrastructure “hasn’t even started“ after a US strike demolished Iran’s largest bridge, still under construction. (AP)

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📣 BBC Verify delves into the Scottish NHS’s performance and attempts to answer the perennial social media debate - is it better or worse than its English equivalent? The frustrating answer: it’s tough to tell. (BBC)

📣 Business leaders have warned John Swinney of “tumbleweed areas” in town centres because of increases in business rates. (Scotsman)

📣 North Lanarkshire Council has voted to remove discretionary payments - for additional responsibilities - from all SNP group members, in the wake of the scandal over disgraced former council leader Jordan Linden. (Scotsman)

📣 Drivers are being urged not to panic-buy fuel after several petrol stations had to close because they ran out of fuel. There’s plenty to go around. (The Sun)

📣 Retailer Marks & Spencer has hit out at London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan for failing to get a grip on crime, in the wake of chaotic scenes in London as mobs of youths - organised via social media - have run riot. (Sky News)

📣 Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary says the UK - reliant on Kuwait for jet fuel - is the most vulnerable European country to jet fuel shortages. (Guardian)

📣 Donald Trump has sacked Pam Bondi, regarded as a loyalist and ally of the President, over her handling of the Epstein files and her failure to prosecute his political enemies. (Guardian)

⚽️ Rangers will go top of the Scottish Premiership for the first time this season if they beat Dundee United tomorrow afternoon. Hearts can reclaim the summit with a win over Livingston the following day… but it all highlights just how close the title race is. Meanwhile, Celtic - in third - can’t afford to slip against Dundee. (BBC)

⚽️ A firm called GotSport will support the SPFL in drawing up its post-split fixtures, with a number of conundrums to fix as the top flight splits into two, and a thrilling title race plays out. (The Sun)

🏉 Bulls head to Glasgow Warriors for a Champions Cup round of 16 clash tomorrow: visiting coach Johan Ackermann thinks they can break Glasgow’s long unbeaten run. (Scotsman)

🗣️ The Spectator has never been shy about its interest in religion. And its assistant editor, Madeline Grant, argues that religion is being resurrected more widely in British politics in a long essay about the return of religion through the British state.

“Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 was infamous as the start of ‘not doing God’,” she writes. “Yet as the political world Blair shaped is swept into the dustbin of history, two things are increasingly clear: our next national poll will be an existential Election, and religion will play a bigger role than it has for years. Britain’s politics is back ‘doing God’ again.”

So: in the Labour government, there’s a divide opening up between the old, secular party and those who understand faith. Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting “are open about faith as a motivation for their political engagement,” she writes.

Keir Starmer not so much: “The Prime Minister still essentially believes in the Blair-era playbook where ‘rational’ law-based principles are all and religion is a thing to be, at best, just a bit apologetic about, like having athlete’s foot or being into steam trains (unless, of course, there are sectarian votes to be won).” (The Spectator (£))

🗣️Trump is your fault, writes Gregory Maniatis. Or, at least, he’s your fault if you are of progressive persuasion.

He acknowledges this is an unpopular view. “A colleague once pulled me aside to say I was the only person in the room who thought this was a useful conversation,” he writes. “Not because I was wrong, but because self-critique, in a friendly setting, was triggering.”

But he does insist. And, he says, the US President’s ascent was down to “two decades of progressive retreat from democratic persuasion.

Polls show voters feel isolated, anxious and without purpose. “The political movement that credibly addresses belonging,” says Maniatis, “will have an enormous advantage and the centre barely exists on this terrain.

“The centre will not be built by better arguments. It will be built by becoming a place people want to belong to, and by institutions that are rigorous, not just righteous.” (The New World (£))

🗣️ The Economist repeats the old truth, attributed to Napoleon: “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,” when attempting to explain China’s silence over the US war with Iran. The newspaper has spoken with “diplomats, advisers, scholars, experts and current and former officials in China.

“Almost all of them see the war as a grave American error,” it says.

But, adds the magazine, “For all China’s hard-headed analysis, it has one strategic blind spot. Chinese thinkers are too reluctant to contemplate a scenario in which America acts as a rogue power, ripping up the world order it created. Although China likes to complain about Western values, it has thrived under rules that America has laboured to sustain.

“An unstable planet would be uncomfortable for China. Global disorder would undermine its export-fuelled growth, a worry for a party whose legitimacy rests on prosperity, iron-fisted order and Chinese exceptionalism.”

The future may still, just, belong to America. (Economist (£))

🗣️The future may not belong to Viktor Orban, Hungary’s “unscrupulous” leader, the newspaper says. There are elections on April 12: Hungarian voters may use them to oust the man who has become a model - and moral - leader to MAGA supporters in the US, but a symbol of repression and corruption at home.

“The election will not be fair,” warns the newspaper. But “if the opposition wins, liberals everywhere should study what it got right,” it says. (Economist (£))

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