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In your briefing today:

• Banning Israeli fans from watching their side in Birmingham is wrong, says Keir Starmer

• Britain’s spy problem, Brits at the heart of Trump’s court, and how governments go broke: the big stories from this week’s news magazines

• Rangers finally get their man: Muscat agrees terms… although there’s no announcement, yet.

📣 Banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from watching their football team in Birmingham next month is “the wrong decision”, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said.

Police were concerned they could not deal with protests at the game between Aston Villa and Tel Aviv, and the Safety Advisory Group issued the ban.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also called the decision a "national disgrace". (BBC) (Guardian)

• The decision raises a “serious question about one of Britain’s biggest cities” and Britain’s ability to protect the Jewish community. (Sky News)

📣 Ministers should do more to ensure Scottish train travellers are safe amid “soaring” levels of anti-social behaviour, the Scottish Conservatives say. There are nearly nine anti-social behaviour incidents on ScotRail every day, according to new figures. (Scotsman)

• The shocking moment a teen gang sprays a man with a fire extinguisher during an attack on a ScotRail train (The Sun)

• Bus driver attacked by racist yobs outside Scottish shopping centre (Daily Record)

📣 Sam Fender has won the 2025 Mercury Music Prize for his third album, People Watching. Judges called the record "melody-rich and expansive, marrying heartland rock with the realities of everyday life and the importance of community."

“I didn’t think that was going to happen at all,” said a surprised Fender after receiving the award. (BBC) (Independent)

• Review (from February 2025): Sam Fender’s People Watching “reaffirms that Fender is a very good songwriter indeed: strong on melodies […] handy with a roaring, emotive, arena-friendly chorus, and exceptionally gifted with words.” (Guardian)

• Hear the album (Spotify)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Another Scottish island community is cut off from the internet after Storm Amy earlier this month: people on Tiree are without proper internet after a cable snapped in the storm, and are having to rely on a temporary setup to get any connection at all. They fear it could remain unrepaired all winter. (BBC) (Herald)

• Shetland Islanders also remain without broadband after the storm, with their parliamentarians organsing a summit on telecoms resilience to talk about the problems of keeping connections running. (Shetland News)

📣 An “evil” teacher who subjected children to a torrent of emotional and physical abuse was found guilty in a trial at the High Court in Glasgow earlier this week. One of Patricia Robertson’s victims has now welcomed the verdict, saying she was battered “black and blue” by Robertson. (Daily Record)

📣 David Barrel, the Scottish former CEO of insurance company Aviva, has died in a car crash. His Aston Martin left the road on the A58 in Yorkshire, and hit a tree. (The Sun)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Venezuela has mobilised its army and militias as the US military looms offshore. Donald Trump has authorised covert CIA operations inside the South American country and tensions between the two countries rise. The US has conducted “at least five strikes” on suspected drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean in recent weeks. (BBC) (WSJ - gift link)

📣 Donald Trump will meet Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House today, after announcing a meeting with Vladimir Putin as he attempts to stop the war in Ukraine. Zelenskyy is expected to make the case for more missiles. (Guardian) (Sky News)

📣 Another Trump critic has found himself in legal bother: John Bolton, his former national security advisor, has been charged with storing top secret records at home and sharing classified information with members of his family. Bolton denies wrongdoing. (AP)

📣 The couple who ran Britain’s biggest timeshare scam had a lavish lifestyle of luxury properties, private jets and JS Lowry artwork. But, behind all that, they were running a network of ruthless fraudsters who were ripping off 3,500 pensioners to the tune of £28 million. (Mail)

📣 Property developers in London are to be allowed to reduce the number of affordable homes they include in developments. (Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ Rangers have got a manager… sort of. Kevin Muscat has agreed a deal to take over at Ibrox, but not until next month: he has a championship in China to win first. Neil McCann may take temporary charge until Muscat arrives, and then become his assistant. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

• Barry Ferguson: Muscat is a natural-born winner (Daily Record)

• Youth team coach Stevie Smith will take charge for Rangers’ game against Dundee United on Saturday - but doesn’t have the badges to manage the side in Europe next week. (The Sun)

⚽️ Celtic are set to sign former Liverpool midfielder Bobby Clark, now playing for Derby County on loan from RB Salzburg, in the January transfer window. (The Times (£) has the exclusive)

🏉 Edinburgh’s Ben Muncaster is facing a race to be fit for Scotland’s autumn test series as he continues to recover from an ankle injury. (The Scotsman)

📣 Club football is back this weekend: paid subscribers will get a full guide to all the TV games in tomorrow’s Party Line email, sent out around 8am. Upgrade now to get yours - and support the Early Line Monday to Friday too!

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines: Britain’s spy problem, Brits at the heart of Trump’s court, and how governments go broke

🗣️If you’ve been wondering about the Chinese spy case, and that collapsed trial, The Spectator’s deep dive on the subject this week will be of interest.

The magazine notes that in the US, more than 150 people have been convicted, jailed or indicted as Chinese spies. In Britain, not so much: Whitehall tends “to cover up the gory details of foreign spying in the UK,” writes Tim Shipman.

“One said: ‘There were two very serious cases, one involving China and one Russia, which were swept under the carpet. There was a serious loss of technical data.’ The case involving Russia was suppressed, the source claimed, to avoid embarrassing a former prime minister,” writes Shipman.

“The most catastrophic breach came when the Chinese purchased a company that controlled a data hub used by Whitehall departments to exchange information (including on highly classified projects),” he reports, “enabling Beijing to steal a goldmine of secret information. A fourth source said: ‘Extremely sensitive data was transferred between the most sensitive parts of Whitehall through it.’”

This, says Shipman, is what Dominic Cummings - Johnson’s former aide - was referring to this week when he said he watched the then PM and Rishi Sunak both mouth “what the f**k” when, in 2020, they heard the cabinet secretary explain “a truly amazing penetration of critical infrastructure.’” (The Spectator £)

🗣️ There were two Brits at the heart of the Gaza deal: Jonathan Powell and Tony Blair, writes Freddie Hayward in a fascinating long read about the deal, and the way of power in Washington and international diplomacy in this age of Trump II.

Both men are admired in Washington: Blair with the “gravitas, contacts and clout to operate” in a new empire, described as a “diplomat’s diplomat – [able to] see the green shoots of potential amid all the death and destruction”.

Powell is “known to some Maga Americans as the ‘dean of NSAs’” [National Security Advisors], “trusted by the Trump administration in part because of his record, but also – crucially – because of his connection to Blair and, therefore, to [Jared] Kushner.”

Both operate smoothly in a world “in which Trump rules like an emperor […] where leaders court the president’s favour to receive his patronage and avoid his wrath.

“Today, Trump gets annoyed at a Fox News segment and picks up the phone, or Kushner sends a WhatsApp to Blair, who in turn speaks to Witkoff or Powell. No one I spoke to for this piece mentioned Britain’s actual Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.” (The New Statesman £)

🗣️The Economist runs a special report on Governments going broke. It’s about as cheering as you’d expect: across the rich world, argues Henry Curt, governments across the developed world have fallen into a “dangerous pattern” of borrowing more and more. “Debts have reached vertiginous highs and bond markets are showing resistance,” he says.

What happens next? Investors are already demanding higher rates of interest because they can sense danger: there just isn’t the political will to rein in spending. But it’s not just that: inflation can hurt them over the long term, and that may start to look a more attractive option for policymakers as they try to figure out how to get their debt mountains down. If they don’t, they may be faced with “excruciating choices” on spending amid a crisis, as the markets simply refuse to lend any more money.

The way to fix it all would be to get budgets to balance, today. “Unfortunately even modest budget targets are hard to hit if you start far away from them,” writes Curt.

Not for the first time, you end up asking: who’d be Chancellor? (The Economist £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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