TODAY’S WEATHER

🌦️ Some rain this morning in Glasgow is the only fly in the ointment: Edinburgh, Aberdeen and London will all enjoy a dry, sunny and mild day. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Angela Rayner waits on ethics veridct | Swinney’s new indy plan | Library u-turns on gender-critical book

📣 Angela Rayner’s political fate could be sealed today as a report into her underpayment of tax is delivered by ministerial ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer refused to say yesterday if he would sack his deputy should she be found to have breached guidelines. (BBC: Live coverage)

• The firm used by Angela Rayner to buy her flat said it did not offer her tax advice and have been made “scapegoats” (The Telegraph has the exclusive)

• Starmer is “prepared to sack Angela Rayner” (Mail)

• Ros Wynne-Jones: Rayner is Labour’s most powerful weapon (Mirror)

📣 First Minister John Swinney has set out the SNP’s latest plan for independence, calling on the UK government to agree to another referendum if the SNP wins a majority of MSPs at next year’s Scottish elections. Responding to opponents who say it is too soon for another ballot, he said: "By 2030, there will be one million young Scots eligible to vote who were too young in 2014. Some of them will not even have been born then. That seems like a generation to me." (Sky News)

• Swinney was criticised for prioritising independence over the NHS and other issues. (Holyrood)

📣 The National Library of Scotland has confirmed it will readmit The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a book of gender critical essays, to a landmark exhibition. The move marks a U-turn after it excluded the book over complaints raised by staff. Library bosses also confirmed they had sent an apology to the book’s editors for not consulting them. (The Scotsman) (The Times £)

IDEAS FROM THE WEEKLY MAGAZINES
The left and migration, the right on migration, the search for a challenge to Trump, and going nuclear

🗣️“Something, surely, has to give,” worries Andrew Marr in The New Statesman in a perceptive essay on the challenge posed to liberal Britain by immigration, race and Englishness. Rarely have we seen so many people so angry, he writes, “in so many flag-decorated streets around the country”. Rarely have ministers had to scramble to change policy so fast in response. Rarely has a new government become so unpopular so fast.

So are we headed for an English revolution, as Marr asks? There are some powerful propellants: the “opportunitistic political grifters” in the middle of it all, peddling their “London is dead, Britain is over” schtick. And the American tech titans offering those voices their distribution: “keen to use anti-foreigner feeling to deflect resentment away from… oh, I don’t know, global tech companies making massive profits that are largely untaxed.”

“Britain in 2025 is still miles away from the powdery imperial facades that collapsed in 1789 or 1917,” says Marr. But…

“That is all the reassurance I can offer. Because if it fails to resolve the migration crisis, Labour will lose the next election to Reform, or some Reform-Tory combination. And for liberal Britain, that might feel like a revolution.” (The New Statesman)

🗣️If you want to understand that “London is dead, Britain is over” schtick, then its leading exponent, Douglas Murray, has written The Spectator’s most-read article of the moment: an essay asking: “Can anyone save Britain from self-destruction?”.

“I doubt whether this country can survive another four years of the kind of self-destruction that is now our daily news,” he writes of “millions of foreigners [arriving] in recent years, with a further ten million projected to arrive this decade”.

“The strain this puts on the welfare state is obvious, although it is denied by almost everybody in a position of power or influence. But walk into any British hospital or emergency ward and you can see for yourself how well our welfare state is coping with providing free services to the world.”

Murray is critical even of Reform, where “it is hard to find anyone who has the kind of plan and personnel in place to correct any of this”. Even Donald Trump ran up against “a whole bureaucracy, “which either couldn’t do what he wanted to or actively worked against him”.

“Are Reform, the Conservatives, Labour or any other political institution in Britain remotely capable of replaying that policy here?”

It’s a question Murray leaves hanging, unanswered. (The Spectator)

🗣️ Donald Trump is really unpopular, notes The Economist, so why is he not being challenged? A few reasons, it finds: first, he’s fleet-of-foot - he simply moves faster than the opposition, or, indeed, the forces of law and order.

Secondly, his own party is servile - while he might not be popular in the country, Trump commands 90% approval among Republicans.

Third, powerful institutions that could band together to fight him choose not to. After all, if he blacklists a law firm you, as a rival firm, might pick up the business. Those institutions choose to act in their own self-interest.

How to overcome him? Democrats, fatally confused about how to approach him, need to at least stop falling into his traps. “The question Democrats need to keep asking themselves is this: why do voters think they are the extremists, rather than the guy trying to establish one-man rule?” (The Economist £)

🗣️Nuclear power is ready to have a moment once more. “Growing nuclear optimism reflects three developments,” says The Economist. “First, governments in many Western countries increasingly desire a secure and independent source of electricity. Second, big tech’s thirst for reliable power and concern for emissions has brought aboard a rich green uncle. Third, novel operational and financial models may improve nuclear’s risky economics. (The Economist)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The Scottish Parliament has been accused of failing to act after an MSP sent sexual pictures of himself to a young assistant working in the Holyrood building.

The worker reported the images, sent on a dating app, to the Parliament’s HR department, but the married MSP was allowed to continue with day-to-day duties, and the complainer was unaware of any action being taken. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Rosyth shipyard is expected to win a £1 billion contract to build four frigates for the Danish Navy, and is also in the running to build seven of the ships for the Swedish Navy. The deals would continue a boom in Scottish shipbuilding, which has included a £10 billion deal to build warships for Norway. (BBC)

📣 A man and a woman have been charged in connection with an incident in Dundee involving a girl allegedly wielding a knife and an axe. (STV)

📣 A survivor of abuse at Celtic Boys Club has warned there may be “hundreds” more victims, and said he was made to feel “crazy” during psychological tests which helped decide the size of his compensation payments. A combined “seven figure sum” was secured this week for 24 traumatised former players. (The Sun has the exclusive)

📣 A court date has been set for a former Labour MSP charged with posessing indecent images of children. Colin Smyth will appear at Dumfries Sheriff Court on 24 September. He is also facing a separate criminal charge over hiding a secret camera in a Scottish Parliament toilet, which he denies. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Nigel Farage is using a private company to reduce his tax bill on GB News media appearances and other outside employment, in an arrangement that has become frowned on by major broadcasters. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 Former Tory minister Nadine Dorries has quit the Conservatives and joined Reform, declaring: “The Tory party is dead”. (The Daily Mail has the exclusive)

📣 The White House is to rebrand the US Department of Defense as the Department of War, in a move that may cost billions for new stationary, emblems, plaques and signage. (Politico)

📣 A 102-year-old man has become the oldest person to summit Mount Fuji. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Steve Clarke “begins his last dance” as Scotland manager tonight as his team kicks off its World Cup qualification campaign against Denmark in Copenhagen, writes Michael Grant. It’s “a harum-scarum World Cup qualifying campaign which will be all over in just six games and 74 days. The 62-year-old is being rushed through a quickstep.” (The Times £) (BBC preview)

• Over the summer, Scotland star Andy Robertson had already decided he needed Liverpool. “After the tragic death of his Anfield team-mate Diogo Jota, he then knew Liverpool needed him too”. (Daily Record)

• Denmark v Scotland (7.45pm, BBC Scotland / BBC 2 / iPlayer)

🏉 Scotland’s women take on Canada tomorrow in the Rugby World Cup: coach Bryan Easson has made two changes to his starting line-up for the Pool B decider in Exeter. (The Offside Line)

• Canada v Scotland (12 midday, BBC Two / iPlayer)