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In your briefing today:

• Celtic’s chairman is quitting the club after 20 years because of “intolerable” abuse amid the club’s slump in form

• Russia is attempting to “overwhelm” Europe with sabotage attacks

• A profile of the “fed-up” Scottish town that became the first to vote for Reform

📣 Celtic’s chairman is stepping down after an “intolerable” campaign of “abuse and threats from some quarters” amid a slump in form and the club’s limited efforts in the transfer market. Peter Lawwell, who has been associated with the club for two decades, will leave the role at the end of the year, and be replaced on an interim basis by Brian Wilson, the former MP and a long-serving non-executive director. (BBC)

• Club chief executive Michael Nicholson has backed manager Wilfried Nancy, and revealed three members of club staff were assaulted after the side’s defeat in the Scottish League Cup final on Sunday. (Daily Record)

📣 Donald Trump has delivered a partisan and defensive prime time address, claiming the US economy is stronger than many voters feel. US TV networks had cleared their schedules for the speech last night, expecting a major announcement - perhaps on the US campaign against Venezuela’s leaders. But instead Trump delivered a politically-charged speech that attempted to blame economic woes on the Democrats, and announced a $1,776-a-head bonus for America’s armed forces. (AP)

• MPs warn that UK agreements with Trump are “built on sand” after collapse of tech prosperity deal. (Guardian)

• Context and more detail later in today’s briefing ⬇️

📣 NHS Fife, embroiled in the trans doctor row, is to face a rare “level four” intervention by the Scottish Information Commissioner following “serious and systematic” concerns about the way it has handled freedom of information requests.

It becomes only the second body in Scotland to have faced such a high-level intervention, which comes after it rejected a trio of FOI requests related to the Sandie Peggie case. (The Scotsman)

• The Scottish Information Commissioner’s announcement

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The parents of a Scottish teenager who took his own life after being targeted by a sextortion scam on Instagram are to sue tech firm Meta. They claim the tech giant knew as early as 2019 that Instagram was exposing children to predators, but chose to do nothing about it. (Daily Record)

📣 The BBC profiles the “fed up” Scottish town that voted for Reform UK: Whitburn and Blackburn, in West Lothian. A cafe in the high street has GB News on the TV, and the owner accuses Labour of “destroying the country” with their approach to small business. (BBC)

📣 A hitman has been jailed for 26 years after he murdered a gangster outside an Edinburgh pub on Hogmanay 2023. Grant Hunter carried out the attack on Marc Wesley on “behalf of others unknown”. (Daily Mail)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Russia is trying to overwhelm Europe with a campaign of sabotage, officials say. The AP press agency has built a database tracking 145 incidents across the continent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from warehouse fires to broken overhead lines on railways, which it is claimed are part of a campaign of disruption masterminded by Russia. (AP)

📣 Teachers in England will be trained to spot and tackle misogyny in young boys as part of a campaign to reduce violence against women and girls. (BBC)

• Schools to tackle Andrew Tate’s toxic influence head-on (Independent)

📣 UK interest rates are almost certain to be cut by the Bank of England at midday today, after yesterday’s larger-than-expected fall in inflation, and signs of a weakening jobs market. (Yahoo Finance)

SPORT

⚽️ If the contents of my WhatsApp friends’ groups are any measure, then at least the grim contortions of the two Old Firm sides this season are providing great entertainment to fans of other clubs across Scotland.

It’s Celtic’s turn to be the turn, with luckless new manager Wilfried Nancy losing his fourth game on the bounce last night, a 2-1 reverse away to Dundee United. Celtic should have won - they had the possession and the chances - but United took their chances brilliantly.

• Five talking points as stirring United comeback triggers meltdown (Daily Record)

• The Chairman’s going - and now disgusted Celtic fans want Nancy out the door with him (The Sun)

• Tom English: It’s not just Wilfried Nancy’s team that’s a hard watch: it’s Nancy himself (BBC)

• Report & 🎥 Highlights (BBC)

🏉 Glasgow Warriors’ Jack Dempsey is back to his best, and looking forward to part one of the double-header against Edinburgh at Hampden on Saturday. (The Scotsman)

IDEAS
Trump’s prime time address: an odd speech that raises more questions than answers

🗣️ Donald Trump’s prime time speech last night was not about Venezuela, as many had expected. TV schedules had been cleared for 9pm, clearing the slot traditionally used by Presidents to deliver big news. Some had wondered if he might announce military action against the nation he’s been striking at for weeks.

Instead what the watching millions got was a Trump address that wasn’t entirely typical - it was brisk, less rambling - but also focussed on domestic issues, partizan and hugely defensive in tone. That may have come as a surprise if you were under the impression the US President was, relatively, popular.

The truth is Trump is - relative to some European leaders - not plumbing the same depths in his polling. But that doesn’t mean a majority of Americans think he’s doing a good job: 54% of them disapprove of him, according to the latest polls, and he hasn’t had a net positive score on that measure since early March.

His Republican colleagues aren’t delighted either: according to Semafor, they’ve been “cringing” at his attack on murdered film director Rob Reiner, in which he took to his social media account to call him “tortured and struggling” and claimed Reiner had died because of “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, his own chief of staff has delivered what CNN called “a series of unusually candid and at times unflattering assessments” of Trump, his second-term agenda and some of his closest allies in a wide-ranging set of interviews published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday.

The long read about Susie Wiles, which is free to view, is worth your time. Some of it is simply headline-grabbing stuff, such as when Wiles says Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality” and says his VP, JD Vance, is a “conspiracy theorist”.

She’s now disowned the story as “a disingenuously framed hit piece”, but offers no denials about the key quotes.

And it isn’t just a series of insults - much more than that, it paints a picture of how the White House works, its key characters and her relationship with Trump himself, which is clearly vitally important to the policy agenda and attitudes his White House strikes.

The leadership that administration is offering the US is now what is coming into sharper focus, and causing the heartburn among Republicans as they face next year’s mid-term elections.

The US is wrestling with the same issues as many western nations: a rising cost of living, rising unemployment (it hit a four-year high last month, it was revealed on Tuesday) and concerns about consumer spending.

One of Trump’s biggest selling points was his promise to steward the US economy more effectively than Joe Biden. Now, even staunch allies of Trump are now concerned the direction he’s taking will lead to them being punished at the polls next year.

For them, the signs are not good. A majority of voters themselves are unhappy with his handling of the economy.

That’s why, last night, Trump was so keen to say things are going swimmingly, even if it meant issuing blatant falsehoods along the way. As Chris Cameron of the New York Times noted last night: “Trump has gone back to asserting that he cut drug prices by 400, 500 or even 600 percent. But a 100 percent price cut would mean a cost of $0.”

And, no, petrol hasn’t “hit $1.99 a gallon” across the country - the average is $2.90, according to government figures.

“That was an 18-minute speech that will keep fact-checkers busy for hours,” said another NYT reporter, Katie Rogers.

Sky’s Washington Correspondent Mark Stone is blunt in his assessment this morning: he suggests Trump sounded tone-deaf in his defensiveness, cut off from the economic reality being faced by many in the US.

Worse than that, he also came off as slightly mad, says Stone. “There are observers who think Trump is kind of unhinged; losing his marbles a bit,” he writes. “The slightly strange tone of this speech will be evidence for them, for sure.”

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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