In your briefing today:

📣 Prime Minister Andy Burnham has suggested a second Scottish independence referendum could be held if public opinion shows demand.

His comments were made in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions, in answer to a question by SNP MP Chris Law. Burnham said the Good Friday Agreement made clear the circumstances under which a referendum would take place in Northern Ireland, and added: “I would say exactly the same situation in Scotland.”

Scottish First Minister John Swinney seized on his comments, hailing a change in the Prime Minister's stance. But Downing Street later rowed back Burnham’s statement, saying there had been no change in the UK government’s position. (BBC)

📣 Reform UK’s funding is under criminal investigation by the Metropolitan Police, following allegations about illegal foreign donations made by Channel 4 News after an undercover sting. Police confirmed a broadening probe, while the Electoral Commission said it was also “considering all relevant information and regulatory steps”.

Two of Nigel Farage’s closest advisers, Dan Jukes and James Orr, resigned last week after footage showed them discussing ways to get around electoral law with a reporter, who was posing as the son of a foreign businessman. (Guardian)

📣 The Chief Executive of NHS Tayside has apologised for the destruction of theatre logbooks which could have shed light on the actions of disgraced surgeon Sam Eljamel. He is believed to have harmed hundreds of patients during his time as a consultant neurosurgeon in Dundee between 1995 and 2013, and his time there is now the subject of a public inquiry.

The theatre logbooks, which covered the entire period Eljamel was working at Ninewells Hospital, had a “do not destroy” notice placed on them from October 2024, but were destroyed because of what an independent report called “inadequate systems and processes” rather than deliberate wrongdoing. Nicky Conner told the inquiry that she knew the failing had “compounded and exacerbated distress for patients.” (BBC)

ChatGPT is insanely powerful.

But most people waste 90% of its potential by using it like Google.

These 1,000+ proven ChatGPT prompts fix that and help you work 10X faster.

Sign up for Superhuman AI and get:

Claim your free prompts

📣 The financial position of Scotland’s colleges is increasingly dire, Scotland’s Auditor General has revealed. Their collective deficit has grown to £5.6 million in 24/25, up from £1.9 million in 23/24. (Scotsman)

📣 Tributes have been paid to the woman who was killed in a suspected hit-and-run crash near Edinburgh Airport, as three people have been charged. (Mail)

📣 The SNP has called for UK North Sea oil and gas revenues to be ringfenced to support Scotland’s renewables industry. (Scotsman)

📣 An influx of overseas buyers could be causing an affordable housing crisis in St Andrews, where one in five properties sold was registered to an address outside Scotland. (BBC)

📣 Five people are confirmed to have died and 86 others are missing after a ferry caught fire in the Philippines. (BBC Live coverage)

📣 Tens of thousands of people caught up in flight disruption this week are unlikely to get any compensation, the airline regulator has warned. (Independent)

📣 Andy Burnham has been urged to target banks’ “bumper profits” by the head of the Trades Union Congress, who’d like to see a windfall tax in next month’s Budget. (Mirror has the exclusive)

📣 Donald Trump has pledged every American adult $5,000 dollars each if the Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives and Senate in the midterms - an extraordinary offer which would cost more than $1 trillion to deliver. (AP)

📣 Apple has unveiled a new $2,000 folding iPhone among a range of new gadgets. At the other end of the price spectrum, a pair of new AirPods headphones are cheaper than the model they replace. (BBC)

⚽️ A late strike from Bojan Miovski gave Rangers a 1-0 win over St Mirren at Ibrox, and had boss Derek McInnes celebrating like a fan. (BBC report and highlight)

⚽️ Celtic also made hard work of a 1-0 win away at St Johnstone, with German midfielder Mika Baur scoring his first goal for the club to secure the points. (BBC report & highlights)

⚽️ If goals were in short supply in Scotland last night, there was no problem in Europe: watch highlights as Barcelona put five past Feyenoord, and PSG spanked Slovan Bratislava 6-1.

Arsenal, meanwhile, beat Billy Gilmour’s Napoli 1-0, and Liverpool got off to a flying start with a 2-1 win over Atletico Madrid, thanks to Alexis Mac Allister’s second-half rocket of a shot.

Picks on TV tonight include…

🗣️ Alex Massie notes the First Minister’s new special advisor on education is a 25-year-old who comes to the role after “four years working as an events organiser for the Scottish National Party”.

“That is what you might term a leading indicator of the seriousness with which this notionally vital policy area is treated within government,” he suggests.

He also points out more members of the cabinet have had some responsibility for education during their political careers than have not. And blame for Scotland’s poor performance in international comparisons stretches beyond the SNP, he says.

“Opposition politicians minded to condemn these latest results might also do well to spend some time with their consciences,” he writes. “Every bad and fashionable idea in Scottish education has enjoyed widespread political support.” (Times)

🗣️Vicky Allan returns to the wildfires which scorched so much of the Highlands this summer, to hear calls for greater resources to fight future blazes. “We need education. We need more firebreaks,” Sandy McCook, chair of Nethy Bridge Community Council, tells her. “We need leadership from the people who know how to fight it, and that is basically gamekeepers.”

And, of course, the public needs educated about the dangers of the wildfires, and the stupidity of campfires in a tinder-dry environment. Park rangers, McCook tells Allan, were coming across people attempting to cycle through the wildfire-stricken area, or even… set up a campfire nearby. “You can have as much education as you want and some people will not be told,” he notes. (Herald)

🗣️Ruth Charteris, Scotland’s new Lord Advocate, writes in the Mail that she is “deeply concerned” about the prevalence of domestic abuse, in a week when it was revealed there were 34,586 domestic abuse charges reported in Scotland in 2025-26.

Yet, amid the statistics on a crime in which, in her words, “lives have been controlled, threatened or made unsafe by someone close to them”, she finds some hope: Scotland’s Domestic Abuse Act, introduced in 2019, may be the basis for only 8% of all domestic abuse charges, but is a “gold standard” in the world. It makes Scotland “a global leader in the legal response to domestic abuse,” she says. The number of cases brought under the legislation is slowly climbing. (Mail)

🗣️The car is still king, Rebecca McQuillan notes. But the extension of the capped £2 bus fare to the west of Scotland this week might begin to change that, at least in and around Glasgow.

Amid a cost of living crisis, she suggests, some people could be saving £8 a journey: “That’s a solid bit of help with the cost-of-living,” she suggests. “Some people looking at their monthly budgets this week will feel like they’ve just had a pay bump.”

“Add into the picture the abolition of peak time train fares a year ago, which slashed the cost of rail commuting on key routes, and contrast it with the rising cost of filling up the car (petrol prices having risen around 15p a litre in recent months) and public transport starts genuinely, at last, to look like the better option – even, perhaps, to a car enthusiast.” (Herald)

🗣️Net Zero is dying, claims Paul Wilson. “I am old enough to remember, because I am more than three or four years old, a time when to question the wisdom of net zero was to plough a lonely furrow,” he writes. “And yet now both Jackdaw east of Aberdeen and Rosebank west of Shetland look set to be approved by Andy Burnham’s Labour administration.

“It is only a matter of time before net zero is consigned to history as a strange and unscientific act of national self-harm,” he says. “The massive wind turbines that litter the countryside are our great follies of the 21st century so far, hulking ugly monuments to ideology over reality.” (Scotsman)

Sent this by a friend?