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In your briefing today:

• Scotland’s auditor general has taken aim at the Scottish government’s stewardship of the economy, saying the higher rates of taxes here aren’t delivering the benefits they should.

• US lawmakers have released a tranche of emails written by Jeffrey Epstein: they mention Donald Trump and former Prince Andrew

• Hampden is to host six matches at Euro 2028

📣 Scotland’s auditor general has offered a withering verdict on the Scottish government’s stewardship of the economy, accusing it of hiding the truth over tax receipts from the public and using vast amounts of devolved taxes to mask Scotland’s poor economic performance.

A report released this morning says more than a billion pounds of income tax raised by Scotland’s higher rates of tax is not available to fund public services because of the country’s lower earnings and employment growth, compared with the rest of the UK.

"The Scottish Government needs to be more transparent with the public and Parliament about the net impact of its tax choices on the Scottish budget,” said Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland.

The Scottish Conservatives have accused the SNP of “trapping” the Scottish economy in “a depressing doom loop” - “the slower it grows, the more they tax, and the more they tax, the slower it grows,” said Craig Hoy, the party’s finance spokesman. (Times £) (Herald) (Read the auditor general’s full report)

📣 US lawmakers have released more than 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, some of which mention President Trump and another which confirms the infamous image of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor with Virginia Giuffre is real.

• The documents mentioning Trump show Epstein remained keenly interested in his former friend for years after their relationship came to an apparent end in the mid-2000s. In emails and other messages, the disgraced financier tracked Trump’s movements and hinted he had damaging information on him. Trump “knew about the girls”, he wrote. (New York Times - gift link) (AP) (Guardian)

• The mentions of the former Duke of York shoot down attempts by his allies to suggest that picture of him with his arm around Giuffre’s shoulders is a fake: “Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have,” he wrote. (Mail)

• “I can’t take any more of this,” wrote Andrew to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell when he was first told, 14 years ago, that the Mail on Sunday was about to run a report on the trio. (BBC)

• Meanwhile, Trump’s press chief Caroline Leavitt “defied the laws of moral physics” to insist the real wrongdoers here were Joe Biden and the Democrats. “What President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a paedophile and he was a creep,” she told reporters. (Guardian)

📣 We could be living through the largest solar storm in more than two decades, with agencies on both sides of the Atlantic warning an ongoing solar storm is disrupting communications and GPS satellite accuracy. One space launch has been delayed because of the storm, which has achieved the maximum level of G5 on the NOAA storm scale.

• UK braced for what could be largest solar storm in two decades (British Geological Survey)

• See the severe geomagnetic storm spark northern lights across North America and as far south as Mexico (Space.com)

• NASA cancels space launch as “cannibal storm” hits (Sky News)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The SNP has “bottled it” on nuclear energy, Keir Starmer has said, as he announced the UK’s first small modular reactor in Wales. Starmer criticised John Swinney’s government for blocking new projects in Scotland. (Scotsman)

📣 A victim of an alleged grooming gang in Glasgow has written to John Swinney pleading with him to back a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Midwives are warning that they are “at breaking point” as pressures mount across maternity services. The Royal College of Midwives is also cautioning that a planned national review into maternity care could delay improvements to services. (Herald)

📣 TV and radio star Kaye Adams says she’s had “the most wretched five weeks” since being removed from her BBC Scotland show and accused of bullying junior staff members. (Mail)

📣 Douglas Alexander will call for a “new crusade for devolution” in Scotland today, in a speech to Cosla later today. Alexander is expected to argue along similar lines to Scottish Labour’s Muscatelli Report, released earlier this week, which calls for power to be “pushed out” of Holyrood and into communities around Scotland. (Holyrood)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Cabinet ministers have demanded Keir Starmer sack his chief of staff, after a day of vicious briefing against health secretary Wes Streeting.

Morgan McSweeney is the prime minister’s most senior aide, and has been credited for propelling Labour to government. But he has also been at the centre of many of Downing Street’s mishaps since Labour came to power last year.

He is now being blamed for delivering the briefings to journalists which lit the firestorm surrounding Starmer’s future in recent days. (The Times £) (Guardian)

• “Morgan has lost the plot,” one Labour moderate told Ailbhe Rea. “‘It’s really sad because Morgan is so talented but he’s bloody built the bunker, locked the doors and poor Keir doesn’t even realise he’s in the bunker.’ Others echoed that sentiment.” (New Statesman)

• “It’s time for the Labour party to act like adults if it is to stop Nigel Farage marching into Number 10” (Independent)

📣 Donald Trump has signed legislation that ended the longest government shutdown in US history. “We can never let this happen again,” Trump said during a late-night signing ceremony. “This is no way to run a country.” (Reuters)

📣 Israel’s president and high-ranking military officials have said that “shocking” violence by settlers against Palestinians must end. President Isaac Herzog described the attacks as “shocking and serious,” adding a powerful voice to what has been muted criticism of the settler violence. (AP)

📣 High blood pressure in children around the world has nearly doubled in 20 years, sparked by bad diets, inactivity and obesity, a review has found. (Guardian)

📣 Another day, another piece of budget speculation: Rachel Reeves is to cut tax benefits for workers who use salary sacrifice schemes to buy bikes, introducing limits so fancier models aren’t included. (Guardian)

📣 DNA evidence shows that Adolf Hitler had Kallmann syndrome, which hinders puberty and the development of sexual organs, a Channel 4 documentary will reveal. (Mail)

SPORT

⚽️ The performance levels haven’t been there for Scotland… but the results have, with Steve Clarke’s men now only two games away from qualification for next year’s World Cup. Nick McPheat asks: how does he rouse his team, and the Tartan army, for these two tenure-defining games? He starts, in Greece, on Saturday evening. (BBC)

⚽️ Hampden’s in line to host six matches at Euro 2028, which should bring a £270 million economic boost to Scotland. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Celtic star Daizen Maeda is heading for the exit in the January transfer window: he was frustrated at not being allowed to leave in the summer. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

⚽️ The world, his dog and a VAR review committee may have agreed that Auston Trusty should have been sent off for kicking Jack Butland in the head in that contentious league cup semi final between Celtic and Rangers the other week, but not Scottish referees’ chief WIllie Collum. (The Sun)

⚽️ Celtic are holding interviews with managerial candidates in London: Columbus Crew boss Wilfried Nancy is considered frontrunner, but others are prepping their Powerpoints too. (Sun)

📣 With so many significant news events today, the Ideas section takes a break for reasons of brevity. It’ll return in full effect in tomorrow’s edition.

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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