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In your briefing today:

• It’s budget day: find out what experts are expecting from Rachel Reeves, and the likely reaction

• Nigel Farage continues to deny claims he racially abused fellow pupils at school

• What’s been discovered underground in Orkney?

• The world has a new biggest city

📣 Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers her budget today after weeks of leaks and speculation.

• The Mirror offers “15 things to expect in Rachel Reeves’ Budget - and they’re not all bad” (Mirror)

• Last week I offered another list of 15 things that could be announced today, based on all the rumours flying around: you can tick them off, if you want… (The Early Line)

• Other versions of what to expect are available across the UK media: BBC | Sky News | The Sun | Telegraph (£)

• Restrictions on new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea are likely to be relaxed. (BBC)

• Could it be the Irn Bru budget? Scotland’s other national drink could be hit by an extension of the sugar tax (Record)

• Reeves finally makes her choices - more coverage later in today’s newsletter ⬇️

📣 There’s a lot of scepticism that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia can be reached - anything reasonable to Ukraine and Europe would be rejected by Putin, say many - but Donald Trump has insisted overnight that Russia is making concessions, and Ukraine is “happy” with how the talks are going. (Sky News)

• US envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Army Secretary Dan Driscoll meets Ukrainian officials, as proposals are “fine-tuned”. (AP)

📣 Nigel Farage has continued to insist he did not racially abuse fellow pupils during his time at a top private school. (Independent)

• Another three ex-pupils at Dulwich college have come forward to “rubbish” the Reform leader’s claims his racist taunts were not intended to hurt. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

• Peter Ettedgui: Don’t believe Nigel Farage’s denials. He targeted me for being Jewish - and it hurt (Guardian)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Scotland’s drugs and alcohol minister has defended the SNP’s £250 million National Mission on drug deaths, despite it failing to turn round Scotland’s worst-in-Europe drug toll. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Covid lockdown restrictions harmed toddlers, a University of Edinburgh study has found, prompting calls for action to save a “lost generation”. (Scotsman)

📣 A man has been convicted of trying to murder a police officer after chasing him with a chainsaw. (BBC)

📣 One way to keep mental health waiting lists down is to reject referrals: new figures show a third of young people referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health services are knocked back. That’s 2,565 referrals just between April and June this year. (Daily Record)

📣 Archaeologists in Orkney have found a new “underground feature” at the Ness of Brogan Neolithic site during a geophysical study: they’ll be returning to the site next summer to investigate. (Herald)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Millions of UK workers are to get a pay rise, with the UK minimum wage being increased from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour from April. (Guardian)

📣 Sir Richard Branson has said he is “heartbroken” over the death of his wife Joan, aged 80. The couple had three children and five grandchildren, and had been married three months short of 50 years. Branson called his wife - raised in Glasgow - his “best friend, my rock, my guiding light, my world”. (BBC) (Mirror)

📣 All 24 schoolgirls kidnapped last week in a mass abduction in Nigeria have been rescued. (Guardian)

📣 Taiwan’s President has warned his country to be ready for combat by 2027, saying China is getting ready to take the country by force. (Sky News)

📣 Pub quizmasters take note: Jakarta in Indonesia has now overtaken Toyko as the world’s biggest city. The Japanese city has fallen to third: Dhaka in Bangladesh takes second spot. (Axios) (Read the full UN report)

SPORT

⚽️ Hibs had a night to forget in Motherwell, losing 2-0 and seeing their hosts draw level on points. The Steelmen were as good as Hibs were hapless, putting in a dominant display that was only helped by Grant Hanley’s dismissal midway through the first half. (BBC)

⚽️ Hanley’s Scotland teammate Scott McTominay was having a happier night in the south of Italy: he was inspiring Napoli to an important Champions League win over Qarabag, scoring one and almost bagging another overhead kick goal. (Scotsman) (🎥 Highlights)

• Elsewhere in the Champions League, brilliant Chelsea overpowered Barcelona in London to win 3-0, while Leverkusen shocked Manchester City. (🎥 See highlights of all last night’s games)

• Big games tonight include Arsenal’s clash with Bayern Munich, and PSG hosting Spurs. Those games, and most of tonight’s, start at 8pm.

⚽️ Martin O’Neill has offered some good advice to incoming Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy: stay out of the civil war that’s erupted between the club’s board and a section of its fans. (The Sun) (Daily Record)

IDEAS
The day when, finally, leaks stop and choices are made

🗣️ Happy budget day, to those who celebrate. It’s a big occasion. What makes it unusual in modern politics is that it reveals plenty about the Chancellor and the government offering it up. It’s hard to obfuscate a budget’s intent, at least for long.

If governing is, ultimately, about choices, then the ones announced on budget day paint an irrevocable picture of what, exactly, a government is. What it values, what it wants to achieve, what it’s willing to trample on to achieve those goals.

Today’s arrives amid unusual, and difficult, circumstances. The UK is clearly in a difficult fiscal position. The government might enjoy a big majority, but it already can’t depend on its already-mutinous backbenches, who want to see spending.

But our large national debt means another stakeholder - the bond market - watches from the sidelines, ready to punish any signs of fiscal indiscipline.

It’ll be hard to please both groups.

Reeves has stated her priorities - by which we can assume the items on which she will spend money - are cutting NHS waiting lists, the national debt, and the cost of living.

The Guardian offers five charts to set out the conundrums she faces - particularly interesting is the productivity estimate chart, which shows how the Office for Budget Responsibility has consistently predicted a jump in UK productivity that just doesn’t come.

It’s difficult to predict how Reeves’ “smorgasbord” of measures will impact you, especially if you live in Scotland where many of the measures will either be at the discretion of the devolved administration in Edinburgh. That caveat aside, the FT predicts (£) people earning around £50,000 a year will be hardest hit as tax and NI payments go up. That’s a big group of people to hit.

After those taxes are announced, expect more headlines like today’s in the Daily Mail, which laments “£14,000 handouts to 18,000 families” as the two-child benefit cap is removed, and 18,000 low-income families with six or more children see that increase in their entitlements.

“Prepare for economic disaster”, says Adam Smith in the Telegraph (🎁 gift link). If budgets are about decisions, he suggests, then avoiding the difficult ones altogether is a choice too - and it’s the one that Reeves will reach for today.

“Whatever good fiscal intentions Rachel Reeves may have had at the start of the process,” he writes, “they have been abandoned and replaced by a package of measures crafted for one purpose alone: to keep the Parliamentary Labour Party from toppling the Prime Minister for a few more weeks.”

Even the more politically sympathetic Independent agrees the rhetoric has changed. “As she prepares to stand up at 12.30 pm on Wednesday and deliver her second Budget,” writes David Maddox, “Ms Reeves has abandoned the language of economic growth.”

The new priorities, he suggests: keeping her job, filling the financial black hole, building back a financial cushion against external events, appeasing her own MPs and providing some political ammunition to use against Nigel Farage.

In a leader, the newspaper spots hubris in previous Labour promises on the economy, and notes how patience is wearing thin for excuses that blame it all on the Tories.

It’s a hell of a job. For all the sound and the fury in the Commons chamber today, and huffing and puffing in opinion columns later, you’d be surprised if many would truly want to be in Reeves’ shoes today, announcing the choices she’s decided to make, and revealing those she’s decided to dodge.

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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