In partnership with

In your briefing today:

• The BBC is in crisis after its director general and head of news resigned

• Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar is launching a new economic paper

• In a busy sporting weekend, both Old Firm teams managed to win… but league leaders Hearts stumbled

📣 The BBC is in crisis after Tim Davie, its Director General, and Deborah Turness, its head of news, announced their resignations. The resignations were a surprise, although they came amid accusations of “serious and systematic” bias in the BBC’s news coverage, and a misleading edit of a speech by Donald Trump which appeared in its flagship Panorama programme.

BBC insiders quoted by the Guardian this morning say “it feels like a coup”, with the resignations coming after a week of revelations in the Telegraph about a damning report from a consultant employed by the corporation.

Senior politicians, mostly on the right, have called for wholesale change at the Corporation, while some commentators say the very existence of the broadcaster should now be in question. The crisis - the most significant since the Jimmy Savile scandal - comes as the BBC looks to negotiate a renewal of its royal charter.

• BBC in crisis as Tim Davie resigns (🎁Telegraph - gift link)

• Tim Stanley: The future of the BBC is now in doubt. (🎁Telegraph - gift link)

• Katie Razzall: A seismic moment that shows rift at top of BBC (BBC)

• Timeline: How a week of hostile headlines from rightwing media led to resignations (Guardian)

• Profile: Tim Davie - the marketing man who became director general (Guardian)

• Trump slams “dishonest” BBC after duo quit (Independent)

📣 Anas Sarwar will promise “new era of regional economic growth” if his party is elected as he unveils a new economic paper today.

The Scottish Labour leader’s claim will come as he launches the Muscatelli Report, commissioned by his party to look into regional economic growth, and written by economist and former University of Glasgow principal Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli.

Sir Anton’s report offers a series of recommendations to drive regional economic growth. In the report he says Scotland risks deterring workers and investment if income tax rates continue to diverge too far from the rest of the UK.

Sarwar has been critical of Scottish politics for being an “economics-free zone”, also taking aim at the SNP’s approach to economic policy, which he said was “Edinburgh-centric”. (STV) (Herald) (Scotsman)

• Sarwar: Muscatelli report will stop Scottish politics being an ‘economics-free zone’ (Holyrood)

• Scotsman: Can Labour’s plan counter income tax offer the party a way forward? (Scotsman)

📣 The world’s richest countries have lost enthusiasm for fighting the climate crisis, the president of the UN climate talks has said.

China is surging ahead in producing and using clean energy equipment, said André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat in charge of the Cop30 conference, which begins today. He urged more countries to follow China’s lead, rather than complain about being outcompeted. (Guardian)

• With many top politicians not attending, does COP30 still have a point? (BBC)

Read newsletters, not spam

Tired of newsletters vanishing into Gmail’s promotion tab — or worse, being buried under ad spam?

Proton Mail keeps your subscriptions organized without tracking or filtering tricks. No hidden tabs. No data profiling. Just the content you signed up for, delivered where you can actually read it.

Built for privacy and clarity, Proton Mail is a better inbox for newsletter lovers and information seekers alike.

Newsletters without the noise

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The ex-chair of a drug deaths task force in Scotland says the £250 million plan was doomed from the start. (Daily Record)

📣 A man who was accused of sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy at a campsite in the Highlands has died in prison. (BBC)

📣 Amy Macdonald, Lewis Capaldi and Hue and Cry were among the big winners at this year’s Scottish Music Awards. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Donald Trump has issued pardons for Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell and others involved in 2020 fake elector scheme. (Independent)

📣 The US could be edging towards an end of its longest-ever government shutdown - although a new deal needs to be voted through and put before Donald Trump, a process that could take days more. (Guardian)

• Flights in US could “reduce to a trickle” if standoff not resolved (Guardian)

📣 China has launched a new visa to help it compete for global technology talent. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Shockingly, both halves of the Old Firm won yesterday. Hearts dropped points at home to Dundee United, meaning their lead at the top of the table is reduced to seven points, with both Celtic (second) and Rangers (fourth) having a game in hand. (Table)

• Rangers managed a largely competent 3-0 defeat of Dundee at Dens Park, including a Gassama screamer (🎥Highlights) (BBC report)

• Celtic notched up a 4-0 win over Kilmarnock at Celtic Park, although at the expense of some injuries (🎥Highlights) (BBC report)

• Derek McInnes said his side’s draw with United was an “off day” and “not a crisis”. (🎥Highlights) (BBC report)

• Aberdeen shared the spoils with Motherwell at Pittodrie. (🎥Highlights) (BBC report)

⚽️ In England, Manchester City thumped Liverpool 3-0, making it plain “they are in this race for the long haul,” thinks David Hynter. (Guardian) (🎥Highlights)

🏎️ Lando Norris won a thrilling Sao Paulo Grand Prix to ensure a perfect weekend at Interlagos - he also won Saturday’s sprint - and take control of the title race. (Sky Sports)

IDEAS
Five from the weekend: the BBC’s governance problem | ‘Natural’ birth dogma warning | Tate fades for teens | Top cop’s expenses highlighted | Scotland remembers

🗣️ The BBC’s problem is not (just) that it made some bad edits in an interview with Donald Trump. Its entire governance structure is a problem, says former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.

He points to the composition of the BBC’s board: a 13-strong body which includes business leaders, lawyers and people with experience in investment banking and private equity. “I counted three (not including the director general, Tim Davie) with any substantial record in journalism”.

Moreover, the key committee overseeing editorial standards is “even odder” given it comprises three insiders and two outsiders, including “proper Thatcherite Conservative” Robbie Gibb, who is far from impartial. Many of the characters around the BBC’s mechanisms of oversight left journalism years ago to embark on careers in public relations.

“If I were a BBC journalist, under such intense scrutiny and fire, I’m not sure I would be terribly comforted by these governance arrangements,” writes Rusbridger, “beginning with a director general with no substantive journalistic record, and a board with negligible experience of what it is to be a journalist in the 21st century.” (Independent £)

🗣️ Universities are being told to stop promoting natural birth ideology to midwifery students after a “litany of scandals” in maternity units across the UK. The Sunday Times found dozens of institutions promote “normal” birth which avoids the use of instruments, drugs and caesarean sections.

Experts say this focus has come to the detriment of clinical skills that midwives should have, especially as older and less healthy women are now giving birth. Moreover, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives said she had been raising “serious concerns” about the quality of university education for student midwives.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has been warned there is a “deeper malaise” in the service which needs tackled. (Sunday Times £)

Separately, two mothers in Scotland who endured “hell” in maternity units on this side of the border have called for an investigation here to take place urgently. (Daily Record)

🗣️Demos, the think tank dipped into the minds of the nation’s 16-year-olds… and found Andrew Tate is dead. Not literally, of course, but certainly metaphorically: a dead meme, a spent force. Today’s teens, they say, follow a far wider mix of creators, and apply sophisticated and well-honed sensibilities to what they see.

“They are testing values, building communities and seeking meaning in places adults rarely look,” say authors Shuab Gamote and Peter Hyman. “The real challenge for society lies not just in their online worlds but in how little we have invested in their offline lives.” (Observer) (Read the report at Demos)

🗣️There’s growing ire over generous public sector pay packets. The latest to feel it is Scotland’s Chief Constable, Jo Farrell, who got £134,000 in expenses to help her pay for a second home in Edinburgh (she also has a home in Northumberland, which caused her problems two years ago when she got a squad car to run her home).

The latest costs are thought to have been made up of £69,901 in relocation expenses and a further £64,525 in taxes, imposed in Scotland for second homeowners. Details of the payments, notes the Mail on Sunday, come “just days after the Chief Constable demanded an extra £140 million from the Scottish government and said Police Scotland was at a ‘crossroads’ financially and it would have to slash officer numbers if ministers short-changed it.” (Mail on Sunday had the exclusive)

🗣️On Sunday, we remembered. The Scotsman has a gallery of Remembrance Sunday events around Scotland. (Scotsman)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

Sent this by a friend?