📣 It’s great to be back. Thanks to everyone who wished me a good week off: it was wonderful, and I return refreshed and ready for another run of Early Lines that, all things being equal, will take us to Christmas.

In your briefing today:

📣 Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signalled a push for closer ties with the EU, hailing a “reset” summit next month as the first step toward a stronger relationship, and potential EU membership.

Burnham said it would be a “dereliction of duty” for Britain not to seek closer ties with the EU, and also relit a row over allegations of Russian meddling in the Brexit vote of 2016.

There are hopes the UK and EU will sign deals on food and drink, youth mobility and emissions trading, bringing both a substantial boost to the UK economy and signalling good faith ahead of more substantive discussions about the two sides’ long-term relationship. (Guardian) (Politico)

📣 Does Scotland’s public ethics body comply with the law protecting freedom of speech? That’s the question being posed by Professor Adam Tomkins, the University of Glasgow law professor, who says he’s aware of “growing concerns” about the Standards Commission’s approach.

The former Conservative MSP has questioned whether the watchdog understands the legal protections, or is declining to apply them.

His comments come amid growing debate about how councillors have been prevented from investigating or speaking out over decisions made by senior officials.

Several councillors have been suspended from office after publicly criticising officials and decisions. (Herald)

📣 Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston says he is “in deep despair” after the death, apparently by suicide, of his co-star RJ Mitte. Mitte, who played Cranston’s on-screen son, died suddenly aged 34. Mitte, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy aged three, was one of Hollywood’s best-known actors with a disability. (Mirror)

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📣 Seven Scottish pubs are closing every month across Scotland, according to an industry group, costing jobs and tax revenue. It wants VAT cuts to support the industry. (Scotsman)

📣 Public finance minister Mannah Mary Goodlad has defended hiring an “artist in residence” for her constituency, costing taxpayers £11,000, to explore “policy areas of priority”. (BBC)

📣 There are calls for Scottish Greens to be banned from this week’s SNP conference after the party’s Scottish leaders backed the “Zionism is racism” stance of the party in England and Wales. (Mail)

📣 Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself attending an exorcism in 2006 during an attempt to get footballer Marvin Andrews to sign for Raith Rovers, claims former Scotland (and Raith Rovers) manager Craig Levein. (Times)

📣 The UK economy will grow more quickly than expected this year, the IMF has said this morning, but British households will face higher rates of inflation. (Sky News)

📣 Hundreds more prisoners will be released today in England and Wales in the second phase of the government’s programme to reduce prison overcrowding. (BBC)

📣 NATO countries have set out a plan to protect Ukraine’s European allies from Russian acts of aggression. The plan - summarised as “block, blunt and break” is intended to “assure the one billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this”, according to US Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich. (New York Times)

📣 Paris’s oldest covered food market - the Marché des Enfants ‌Rouges - has been completely destroyed by a fire that broke out early yesterday. (Guardian)

⚽️ There’s plenty of football on TV tonight but, alas, no Scottish teams in action: it’s a Champions League night. Picks include:

⚽️ Scotland’s women take on the Czech Republic tonight in Paisley, nursing a 2-0 lead from the first leg of their Women’s World Cup round one play-off. (7.15pm, BBC Scotland) (BBC)

⚽️ Celtic are eyeing Thursday’s daunting trip to Portugal to meet Benfica: defender Liam Scales says they have a point to prove after a desperate European season to date. (Daily Record)

🗣️ Britain’s welfare system is in the spotlight with two reports - one out today from a think tank, the other from The Wall Street Journal yesterday - throwing out some surprising findings even in this very familiar territory, while The Times has also just launched its own “inquiry” into what it calls a “cheque and forget” culture.

This comes ahead of Chancellor John Healey's first budget, due later this month, which is expected to attempt welfare reform to encourage more people to work.

The Wall Street Journal’s report first. “The welfare state is crushing Britain,” it tells its readers, leading with the notorious case of Catherine Wieland - the benefits claimant who received £700 a month, from 2021, because her crippling anxiety prevented her from going outside or carrying out simple tasks.

Her tale came into doubt when it was discovered she could drive (using the BMW she’d got through the benefits-supported Motability scheme), dine out, and enjoy ziplining and quad motorbike riding during a holiday in Cancun.

“Wieland’s case is an extreme example of a new reality in the U.K,” write the Journal’s Max Colchester and David Luhnow. “Disability payouts are no longer just for those most in need; they have become a financial crutch for a large swath of the population as wages stagnate and prices rise.

“It’s blowing up Britain’s welfare bill, hamstringing its politicians and imperilling its long-term financial stability.”

Many voices in the piece call for welfare reform, saying the system is unsustainable, though the Journal also quote charity workers and individuals who rely on benefits. Eleonore Paxman, 52, is a mother quoted in the piece: her three children are on disability welfare, while her music arranger husband became deaf and lost his work. She says: “Without the help, we’d be in big trouble”.

The latest think tank to enter the debate is the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which has published a substantial report today. It’s worth flagging that - despite the name - most observers would view with CSJ as centre-right: it was founded by former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and has had its share of attacks from the left.

That’s not to dismiss its contribution, but to set it in context: when its report, State of Dependency (PDF), says “a broken benefit system is holding Britain back,” it does so from a particular position.

Its report concludes that Britain is suffering a crisis of “hidden unemployment”, with seven million people out of work and on benefits today who don’t figure in official unemployment statistics (which say around 1.7 million are unemployed and looking for work). Moreover, it says, incentives have become distorted: benefit income can be much higher than income from the average part-time job.

“Successive governments have used welfare over decades to compensate parts of the country for economic failure rather than creating the conditions for prosperity,” writes Duncan Smith in a foreword. That’s led to a “numbing” of the impact of economic decline in struggling regions, it claims: over the past 20 years, the UK has spent £1.1 trillion more on welfare than on infrastructure (read LBC’s coverage of that claim).

In the Times, another anecdote illustrates a wider ill: Fraser Nelson highlights the case of Gavin, a taxi driver who, having recovered from heart surgery, tried to come off sickness benefit. He couldn’t until he was reassessed and - even after a promised intervention by then work and pensions minister Liz Kendall - still hasn’t had that reassessment. It’s now almost four years since Gavin asked to stop the payments.

“Today, we can reveal why,” reports Nelson: “reassessments stopped in lockdown and were never properly restarted. Some 1.8 million claimants have been waiting for an average of two years.”

Nelson goes on to describe a system that, by his telling, is riddled with “benefit traps” that incentivise staying out of work and cost the taxpayer billions. He highlights three other big, recent reviews:

Nelson says the Times’ own review will build on all these, and highlight examples of successful reform in Europe.

Voices running against this broad - if largely centrist, or centre-right - consensus are hard to find, although it’s clear there have been some on the backbenches of the parliamentary Labour Party. Around the budget, they may find some volume. For the moment, the reformers have the wind in their sails.

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