TODAY’S WEATHER

☁️ Things change a little today: a bright start but a chance of rain at lunchtime in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Aberdeen and London will be drier but cooler than recent days. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Starmer’s EU deal and its implications for us all | Biden diagnosed with “aggressive” cancer |

📣 Negotiators have been working through the night to bash out a UK/EU deal, Keir Starmer’s “reset” with the European Union, only hours before the Prime Minister is due to host a summit with the EU in London. There are suggestions this morning there’s been a “breakthrough”:" if so, we’ll likely all feel some practical impact from what is agreed.

What you think about it will depend on your views on Brexit: it’ll either be a welcome return to some of the cooperation that used to exist when the UK was in the EU… or it will be a betrayal of hard-won Brexit freedoms, and a return to the rule of EU law in the UK.

Last-minute negotiations are thought to have cleared the way for deals that will:

• Make it easier for young British people to live and work across the EU

• Make it easier for British exporters to get their goods to the continent

• Allow British defence firms access to a £126 billion EU weapons fund

• Return access for British travellers to Europe to EU passport gates and e-gates, cutting down on queues.

But there will be concessions on youth mobility - young Europeans will also be able to come to the UK - and European access to British fisheries will likely be extended. This last point has been a real sticking point.

Coverage of all this: BBC | Mail | Independent | Guardian | Telegraph (£) | Times (£)

📣 Former US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office said last night. Biden, who left office in January, was diagnosed on Friday after seeing a doctor for urinary symptoms. He, and his family, are reviewing treatment options. (BBC)

The news comes amid revelations about Biden’s health during his time in office. A new book says his condition was worse than publicly admitted at the time, although his frailty was evident to all who saw him in public. (CNN)

📣 Gary Lineker will announce his resignation from the BBC today, five days after apologising for sharing a social media post widely seen as being antisemitic. The presenter - the BBC’s highest-paid, on £1.35 million a year - has found himself in deep water over his social media posts several times in recent years. Although he was due to stay with the Corporation until after next summer’s World Cup, his position was thought to be untenable. (The Sun) (Guardian)

IDEAS
Five thoughts from the weekend…

🗣️ Enough is enough, said Matthew Syed in a powerful column in The Sunday Times. “Rarely have the objectives of a conflict been so powerfully accomplished,” he writes, yet “a kind of insanity has overtaken a critical mass (by no means all) of this nation.” Israel was lured into an over-reaction to the October 7 Hamas attack by jihadists who “may be psychopathic” but “are not stupid”. Israel has been “played like a violin,” he says. “I strongly side with those who argue that causing great suffering can be justified, provided one can glimpse a greater good on the far side of what the 17th-century English churchman Thomas Fuller called “a necessary evil”. […] But where are the sunlit uplands on the other side of Gaza’s evisceration?” (Sunday Times)

🗣️ Labour stands on the cliff edge, says James Butler in the latest London Review of Books, reflecting an increasingly mutinous mood around the party of (London) government. This month’s elections in England were “significant without being surprising,” “dire” for Labour and “cataclysmic” for the Conservatives. And they expose threats to both parties, where “class background and ethnicity have become less clear predictors of voting behaviour, and disillusionment and volatility prevail.” He continues: “Labour is governing badly. It has pointlessly squandered the popular goodwill that accompanied its return to office. Its leader is a besuited void.” The Tories are no better: “It isn’t simply that Kemi Badenoch is an erratic and tin-eared leader, and Mel Stride a supremely witless shadow chancellor: most contenders for the leadership are tainted by their years in government.” He calls for a change of course, before Labour plunges off the cliff… and Reform takes up power. (London Review of Books)

🗣️ The other Reform - the Scottish think tank one - has rebranded as Enlighten, for obvious reasons. It might have got to the “Reform” name first, but the rapid rise of the Farage political organisation using the same name means it’s a move which makes sense for the think-tank. It does excellent - and non-partisan - work on Scottish policy, and director Chris Deerin told The Herald that would continue, including with Reform - the political party. “We need to be interrogating Reform in the way that we interrogate the other parties, exposing their weaknesses, listening to their ideas,” he said. (The Herald)

🗣️ I wouldn’t have thought mathematics would have much to do with Jackson Pollock, the expressionist artist. But, wrote Stephen Smith in The Observer, “when a trove of previously unseen paintings by Jack the Dripper came to light after his death, dealers hoping to authenticate them turned not to a curator or art historian but a physicist, Richard Taylor.” An “invigorating” study by Marcus du Sautoy, professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, explains how that physicist found the geometry of Pollock’s paintings were “consistent with the actions of a painter almost losing his balance” - and thus exposed the “new” paintings as fakes. Fascinating stuff. (The Observer)

🗣️ And finally… this newsletter’s most overt bias is my love of Crystal Palace, the club which won its first ever major trophy on Saturday after beating the monied might of Manchester City 1-0 at Wembley. Here’s a joyous 40 seconds where you see what it means to a bunch of fans in the stands, drawn from multiple generations and, no doubt, all sorts of backgrounds and back stories. Enjoy. (Instagram)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A teenager has been arrested after the death of a boy in an alleged stabbing at Irvine Beach over the weekend. Kayden Moy, 16, died in hospital yesterday: there had been a disturbance, witnessed by a large number of people, on Saturday, and police are appealing for mobile phone footage. (Record) (Independent)

📣 Deaths from cardiovascular disease are up among working-age Scots for the first time in a generation, the British Heart Foundation has warned. (Scotsman)

📣 The University of Edinburgh could cut 1,750 staff jobs, the University and Colleges Union claims. It blames “bad choices by management and over-ambitious capital spending” for the University’s need to cut costs, and is balloting on strike action. (The Herald)

📣 The church that played a central part in Sunset Song, and is the final resting place of its author Lewis Grassic Gibbon, is to be sold off by the Church of Scotland, as the church looks to plug a £5.9 million deficit. (Mail)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Pope Leo XIV officially started his pontificate by offering a promise to work for unity across the Catholic church. He held his inaugural Mass in St Peter’s Square in front of an estimated 200,000 people. (AP)

🌎 Israel will allow a “basic amount of food” into Gaza after warnings of famine after a 10-week blockade. (Independent)

🌎 Footage of the Mexican tall ship hitting the Brooklyn Bridge went viral on social media networks before it became clear it was also a great tragedy: two crew members died, while a number of others were critically injured. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ The Scottish Women’s Premier League produced a stunning finale to its season, with Hibs winning on the final day by beating Rangers at Ibrox. The Leith side’s head coach, Grant Scott, said his team had worked through their “broken bodies” to land their shock win. (BBC)

⚽️ In the men’s game, Ross County ended up in the relegation play-off spot again - the third year running - after their 1-1 draw with Motherwell, and Dundee’s win over St Johnstone. (BBC)

⚽️ On an eventful penultimate weekend in the English Premier League…

• Arsenal beat Newcastle to secure a Champions League spot (Sky Sports)

• Everton’s fans bid farewell to Goodison (as a men’s venue) (Guardian)

• Jamie Vardy bid farewell to Leicester City with a goal, of course (Sky Sports)

⚽️ In Italy, Napoli remain in control of the Serie A title race. (BBC)

⚽️ Barry Ferguson won’t be Rangers manager next season. (The Sun)

⛳️ Scottie Scheffler “cruised” to the PGA Championship, five ahead of his nearest rivals. (Independent)

🏎️ Max Verstappen reminded us that he’s not giving up his Formula 1 dominance without a fight. (Sky Sports - with highlights)