TODAY’S WEATHER

☁️ More of a mixed bag today: bright early on but rain later for Glasgow and Edinburgh, while Aberdeen should expect to brighten - and stay dry - all day. London will see showers in the middle of the day, but be warm. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Scotland’s budget swelled by billions | Bus maker moves to close Scottish plants | Brian Wilson dies

📣 The Scottish Government’s budget will increase by £2.9 billion a year after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spending review, according to the Treasury.

The news came amid confirmation of a flurry of well-trailed capital projects across the country, including the Acorn carbon capture project and a new supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh.

But the numbers were immediately questioned by Scotland’s Finance Secretary, Shona Robison, who claimed Holyrood had been “shortchanged” by more than £1 billion, because the block grant increase was smaller than the overall rise across UK government departments. (BBC)

• Spending war of words will only heat up as Holyrood election looms (Scotsman)

• Tax rises may be needed as £9 billion of new cash for Scotland will do little to solve the nation’s problems, according to economists (Times £)

• Reeves gambles on “renewing Britain” to win trust of voters and see off Reform (Guardian)

📣 Bus maker Alexander Dennis plans to end production in Scotland, with the loss of up to 400 jobs. The news is a further blow to the Falkirk area, which has also seen the closure of the nearby Grangemouth oil refinery. (Scotsman)

• The company, once rescued by a quartet of Scottish investors but now owned by a Canadian company, said it needed to react to strong competition from Chinese bus manufacturers, who have seen their market share soar. The firm’s managing director, Paul Davies, said “UK policy does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit." (BBC)

📣 Brian Wilson, the visionary Beach Boys musician, has died at the age of 82. Credited with creating some of pop’s most beautiful and enduring pop music, he was a complex character who wrote songs about surfing and girls, but also battled mental health problems for much of his life. (Guardian)

IDEAS
Reeves finds few friends among the commentators

🗣️ Don’t call it a comeback… or a relaunch. But the Kier Starmer’s government was trying something yesterday: at least a change in tone, perhaps a much more radical reordering of its priorities after a faltering first year in office.

Her choices on where to spend our money, and how much, were both practical and highly political, based on a set of beliefs about how things should be. The reaction - furious in some quarters - throws those choices into stark contrast.

Allister Heath in the Telegraph (🎁 free to read) is rarely a moderate voice, but his diagnosis of Britain’s problems, and Reeves’ solutions, is coruscating even by his standards.

“Britain has grown lazy, feckless and fat. We are addicted to bread and circuses, as long as others pay for them,” he says. “We crave ‘free’ stuff paid for by taxing the ‘rich’, and lap up Rachel Reeves’s nonsensical spending review: billions that we don’t have for an unfixable NHS, U-turns on benefit cuts and winter fuel payments, and bribes for the Red Wall."

The country’s central problem, he says, is that a majority of people, including 45% of working-age people, now take more in benefits and services than they pay in taxes. And that doesn’t include those who work for the state. “A full measure,” he says, “would suggest a society that is no longer meaningfully capitalist”.

I told you this was all political.

Heath is right-wing and pro-Brexit, so the reason for his ire is perhaps more apparent when you read the counter-view. Over to the Guardian, and Polly Toynbee, who hails “a bonanza of build, build, build,” and “diggers digging for social purpose”.

This capital spending programme “at last sounds solidly Labour,” she says, one of a panel of Guardian voices who are, otherwise, cool on Reeves’ announcements. “Defence gets its necessary catapult, protecting us and undersea cables, but its vital purpose is to bind us back politically into the lost Europe we rashly departed.”

Social purpose and closer to Europe? Little wonder Heath is so exercised.

Other, more moderate voices (than Heath) are also concerned by what they heard. The Times (£) today, noting that “to govern is to choose,” says Reeves has set a course for this parliament, even if her plans still lack credibility. “Ms Reeves may have explained what areas the government judges as important but the spending review underscores the overall lack of a compelling narrative or purpose: it remains a government without a theme.”

The Economist (£) branded “ridiculous” aspects of her “tub-thumping speech” about the virtues of big government. “The chancellor listed endless tiny projects, such as cash for Kirkcaldy’s high street and Southport’s pier, to make it sound as if she is showering the country with money.

“Even without the higher taxes or borrowing that Ms Reeves has forsworn, a statist turn, via regulation and the composition of spending, could do much damage,” the newspaper says, particularly in the housing market, where it believes social housing is not an answer.

The references to tiny projects around the country were, perhaps, attempts to placate backbenchers from her own party, suggests John Rentoul in the Independent, from a Chancellor “fighting for her political life”, based on polling showing her near-complete lack of popularity among Labour members.

In my search this morning for something more positive about Reeves’ speech to balance all this negativity, I found only deeper and deeper anger. John Crace, in the Guardian, decries Reeves as the “Minstering Angel of Death”, with only pain to offer. “And it turns out people aren’t all that thrilled with being offered a diet of yet more pain,” he writes. “A morally superior, fiscally responsible pain might sound good in theory, but people have had enough of everything being a bit shit.

“Even if they can logically understand it might take a while for Reeves to turn things round, they don’t want to hear about it. They would rather be lied to that there are quick fixes available. Just text Nigel Farage and he will offer you any number of them.”

All political, as I say.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A gun was found on an Edinburgh path cordoned off by police for five days. The weapon was found on the Roseburn Path during investigations linked to the gang war that is raging across Scotland’s central belt. The path - a busy cycle route through the north of the city - has now reopened. (Edinburgh Live)

📣 John Swinney announced a modest cabinet reshuffle, appointing Màiri McAllan, who’s returning from maternity leave, as the cabinet secretary for housing to tackle the national housing crisis. Marie Todd takes on a new role - minister for drugs and alcohol policy - following the death of Christina McKelvie in March. (STV)

📣 Tributes have been paid to pioneering drugs campaigner Peter Krykant after his sudden death aged 48. The former heroin addict was a leading campaigner for safe drug consumption facilities in Scotland, having set up an unofficial facility in a van. (BBC)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Gaza health officials say more than 55,000 Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war. (AP)

🌎 Elon Musk has conceded he “went too far” as he issued an apology to the US President after the pair’s explosive online argument last week. (Independent)

🌎 Donald Trump was booed and cheered by fellow members of the audience when he went to the opening night of “Les Misérables” at the Kennedy Center in Washington last night. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Some transfer speculation as the close-season rumour machine gets going…

• Rangers’ Hamza Igamane is “wanted by seven clubs” across Europe (Sun)

• Motherwell’s Lennon Miller is “cool” on Celtic’s interest as Sunderland join the race for his signature (Record)

• Former Aberdeen star Bojan Miovski would be open to returning to Scotland… one day (Herald)