THE BIG STORIES
Billions for Scotland’s defence sector | Putin cool on cease-fire | Swinney’s “warm” Trump Jnr meeting

📣 Chancellor Rachel Reeves will travel to Scotland today to announce a £2 billion boost to British defence companies, including BAE Systems and Babcock, both of which have big facilities here. The money will come in loans to allied governments who want to buy from UK companies. (Scotsman)

• European defence stocks have soared on the back of European promises to support Ukraine and increase their defence spending (Forbes)

• How much will rising defence spending boost Europe’s economy? (Goldman Sachs)

• Europe’s military personnel shortfalls exposed (AP)

📣 Vladimir Putin is in no hurry to agree to a cease-fire. As predicted, the Russian President did not rule out the US/Ukranian proposal for a month-long halt in hostilities at a press conference yesterday, but tied agreement to a long list of conditions that would likely make it difficult, time-consuming and even impossible to achieve. Donald Trump called the statement “very promising” and said he hoped Moscow would “do the right thing”. (Reuters)

📣 John Swinney had a “warm” meeting with Eric Trump in Bute House, talking golf and the Trumps’ business interests in Scotland rather than politics, according to the First Minister. (Guardian)

• File the visit under diplomatically necessary, but politically embarrassing: the Mail says Swinney was branded a “shameless hypocrite” for hosting Trump Jnr “for 50 minutes of tea and biscuits just nine days after calling for the US President’s state visit to the UK to be scrapped”. (Daily Mail)

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines

🗣️ I spent a portion of this week working in London. Reading on the plane up last night, Katy Balls’ piece in The Spectator (£) appeared to sum up much of the political gossip I’d heard while down there. 

Labour MPs have found their feet in Westminster and are starting to find their voice… and more than a few are using theirs to say how appalled they are at the performance of Starmer’s government to date.

Early on it was Starmer and Reeves’ downbeat language. Then the tax hikes, the “cosying up” to Trump, the botched job that’s being made of the assisted suicide bill: all that could be stomached in silence, more or less. And - as Balls points out in her piece - they actually applauded his stance on Ukraine, in a meeting on Monday.

But cutting £6 billion in benefits, and clearing out thousands of civil servants? For a cohort of MPs elected on restoring public services, it may become too much. Balls profiles a colourful array of formal and informal groups - lots of WhatsApp, it seems - ready, perhaps, to cause more trouble later in the year.

🗣️ Andrew Marr is on the same riff in The New Statesman. “There is a smash coming,” he writes. “A paradox in politics right now is that Keir Starmer has never had more authority, internally and externally, since immediately after election day – and yet his government is heading for a confrontation with his own party and large parts of the public that could define it, unhappily, for the rest of its life.”

Marr sees a darker mood, and the potential for faster rebellion, than Balls. One “not particularly left-wing MP tells him: “I think this may be the end of social democracy in Britain; we are heading straight back to austerity.”

The challenge, says Marr, is that the government has to navigate a way to both massively increase defense spending, while protecting the vulnerable. A way to offer a clear distinction between Labour and populism. “Get the answer right, and we are living through the growing pains of a two-term, consequential and ultimately popular government. Get it wrong, and we are heading for chaos.”

🗣️The Economist notes a “fresh critique of migration is gaining ground”. And it’s not supportive: the populist claim is immigrants create housing shortages, cost a fortune in welfare payments and dilute cultures. “What makes them powerful is that they are grounded in academic research,” notes the newspaper. “Only by grasping their strengths can liberals reject their excesses; and only by acknowledging where policy falls short can they improve it.” (The Economist)

🗣️Have Britons really got so much sicker, so quickly? The evidence is mixed and messy. (The Economist)

🗣️ Surgeon’s career ends. Is the Scottish independence dream dead? (🎥 The Spectator)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Kemi Badenoch finally made it to Scotland yesterday after being elected Conservative leader last November, and inisited the Scottish Tories can still beat Reform UK in next year’s Holyrood elections. (Herald)

📣 Baroness Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, have accused the UK Covid inquiry of an “establishment cover-up” after they were again refused permission to become “core participants”, which would have given them access to inquiry documents, make statements and ask questions of witnesses. (BBC)

📣 Close to 5,000 toxic sites across the country are largely untested and uninspected, according to new research led by the BBC. (BBC) (STV)

📣 An oil tanker that has been part of the landscape of Loch Long for six years moved on yesterday. The Australis had been used for storage at the Finnart oil facility, which serves the Grangemouth oil refinery that is, itself, closing soon. (The Lochside Press)

AROUND THE UK

📣 The abolition of NHS England will cut 9,000 jobs in a “high-stakes” reorganisation of the service intended to free up funds for patient care. Trade unions have expressed concern about the “shambolic” announcement of job cuts. (BBC)

• Why has Wes Streeting taken the gamble with NHS England? Denis Campbell, health policy editor at The Guardian, writes: “Streeting, a driven, impatient character, has been left in “shock” by what he has perceived to be a can’t-do mentality among senior people who, when asked what their plans are to address key challenges, respond by stressing how difficult they are to fix.” (Guardian)

• “Finally!” says the Mail. “Patients to be put before NHS bureaucrats”. (Mail)

📣 Senior staff at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked could face prosecution after police announced they were investigating gross negligence manslaughter. (The Times £)

📣 Russell Brand is being sued for £220,000 by his publisher, which claims the actor and comedian failed to write and deliver two books. (Independent)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Meta has won an injunction in the US preventing a former employee from promoting or distributing her memoir. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams contains a number of critical claims about her time at Facebook. At send time, it’s still on sale in the UK… (BBC)

🌎 Dramatic scenes in Denver where an American Airlines plan caught fire, and passengers had to evacuate onto the wing as the plane burnt. (🎥 See the video)

🌎 The staggering scale of US government cuts is illustrated by a long list of offices and buildings across the country which the government will be handing back to landlords later this year. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Rangers made it through to the Europa League on penalties on a night of noisy drama in Glasgow. Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce won the game 2-0, undoing the damage of their 3-1 defeat at home last week. But, amid the chaos of Ibrox, they couldn’t finish the job, Dusan Tadic and Fred having their spot kicks saved by Jack Butland, before Hakan Yandas sent his spinning into the Copland Road end. Mourinho was far from happy.

• “Callum Davidson, Stephen Robinson and Michael Wimmer. It isn’t company he might have imagined ever joining but Jose Mourinho is now included in the not-so-select band of managers who have masterminded wins over Rangers at Ibrox in recent weeks,” notes Alan Pattullo in The Scotsman. (🎥Highlights from TNT Sports)

• “Ibrox was shaking like it had been hit by a hurricane” (Daily Record)

• The Angry One: Raging Mourinho calls out “arrogant” referee (Sun)

🏉 Gregor Brown will start his first Six Nations game for Scotland on Saturday in Paris, one of two changes made by coach Gregor Townsend. Matt Fagerson also steps in, to replace the injured Jack Dempsey. (The Scotsman)

• Six talking points from Gregor Townsend’s team selection (The Offside Line)

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