TODAY’S WEATHER

☁️ The weather calms down today after yesterday’s storm. Early rain in Glasgow gives way to sunny spells by late morning. Edinburgh and Aberdeen will both start bright but have a little rain around lunchtime. London is bright all day. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Forbes’ decision to quit leaves Holyrood shocked | Exam results due today | Cleanup after Storm Floris

📣 The decision by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes to quit Holyrood next year has sent shockwaves through the SNP, and wider Scottish politics. Her decision is seen as a blow to First Minister John Swinney, and as a damning verdict on the chances of Scottish independence within the next few years. Some say the SNP will now move to the left with Forbes - a moderate - leaving the stage. (BBC)

• In an interview, Forbes said she had experienced an epiphany during summer recess while on a visit to an Indian orphanage. “It just suddenly dawned on me what a great privilege it is to be a mother but also to have a parent,” she said. (The Times £)

• Forbes could “see the writing on the wall” (Express)

• Decision is a bleak foreshadowing of future for women in politics (Herald £)

• “Totally gutted” - SNP politicians and members react (The National £)

• Today’s Early Line rounds up more reaction to Forbes’ decision, below ⬇️

📣 Young people across Scotland get their exam results from 8am today, although if they’re relying on the postal service to bring them news, they may face delays. More than 147,000 candidates will get results for Nationals, Highers, Advanced Highers and National Certificates, with the earliest news arriving through the MySQA digital service. (BBC)

• Exam results explained and… what happens next, after the results come out? (BBC)

• The SQA website also has advice

📣 Storm Floris has left 50,000 homes without power, and parts of the country facing a clean-up operation today. A yellow weather warning lifts at 8am for much of Scotland after a day of disruption, especially across the nation’s railways - which ground to a half - and airports, which saw many cancellations. (BBC)

• Disruption on Scotland’s roads and railways is expected to continue today (STV)

• ScotRail’s live network map

• The Mail features video of a Jet2 flight landing, sideways and very hard, at Leeds Bradford airport. (Mail)

IDEAS
Kate Forbes’ departure is a blow to the SNP and to Holyrood, pundits and politicians agree

🗣️ Kate Forbes, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, is easily the highest-profile - and highest potential - politician to decide to walk away from Holyrood ahead of next year’s Scottish elections. Forbes is regarded as an impressive, thoughtful and effective politician by parliamentary colleagues and outsiders, and her departure is being seen as a big loss - and a sign of a wider malaise - across the media today.

Magnus Linklater (£) suggests, in the Times, that her departure from politics is “a calamity”. It’s not just a blow to the SNP - “a party singularly lacking in sound business sense and independent thinking” - but one that diminishes Holyrood as well, he says. “Hers was a voice in parliament worth listening to, whether explaining the balance between religious belief and political affiliation, or setting out the path for a faltering economy.”

When Linklater interviewed her earlier this year, he notes, her young daughter slept downstairs in a parliamentary creche that was only available for three hours a day (“no one can quite say why”) and the rest of the time, a child minder and an “emergency list of family and friends” kept her domestic life running. “It was ‘impossible’ she admitted, even then.”

But he also nods to other reasons, too, that might have influenced her decision. She never quite won over parts of her party when unsuccessfully running for leader in 2023, perhaps because of her strong religious views, and never appeared in tune with “an SNP committed to independence, state-controlled public services, and a tax-and-spend economy”.

Her decision to stand down when she is still in her 30s “spells trouble for John Swinney and the SNP,” writes the Daily Record’s political editor, Paul Hutcheon. The party is ailing, and while its poll lead looks impressive, it’s “built on sand,” he says, and it’s struggling to deliver on its manifesto promises, or even agree on tactics for independence. “She had a decent chance of becoming First Minister, but even in these circumstances she has chosen a life outside Holyrood.”

Her departure “marks the final nail in the coffin of SNP centrism,” thinks Stephen Daisley in the Mail. “The Deputy First Minister was the last woman standing for anyone who hoped the Nationalists could cut a more moderate path on the economy, social issues and the constitution,” he writes.

In the Sun, anonymous insiders claim Forbes is leaving “after tiring of being undermined by Cabinet colleagues”. Her critics in the Scottish Government are “like a nest of vipers” who “made her life ‘as difficult as possible’,” the title says. “Given the personal sacrifices, it is clearly not worth the effort any longer,” an insider says.

But maybe she’ll be back, someday, suggests at least one observer. Former First Minister Henry McLeish, talking to the Herald (£), sympathises with her decision but notes it “may not mean she is lost to politics or [that] she won’t come back.”

"At her age, she has the opportunity to return if she so wishes in the future. I think there is the long term perspective here which she may have calculated.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Edinburgh International Book Festival director Jenny Niven has denied the festival is avoiding “difficult” topics after claims feminist and gender-critical authors have deliberately been left out of the festival programme. (Herald £)

📣 Two charities have quit a long Covid “strategic network” set up by the Scottish Government, saying they’re frustrated by delays in funding. (Scotsman)

📣 Photographers have been able to get close to the historic Cumbernauld church destroyed by fire over the weekend. It’s a sad sight. (Herald)

AROUND THE UK

📣 Parents at private schools are attempting to defy the government’s VAT on fees by paying in advance. Schools have taken in hundreds of millions in fees up front, although the Chancellor may now consider ways to “claw back” lost tax. (Telegraph £)

📣Talk radio star James Whale has died from cancer aged 74. His death came after a long illness. He was first diagnosed with cancer in 2000, and revealed in 2020 that it had returned. (Independent)

📣 Patients coming off weight loss jabs should be monitored for a year, to help them keep the weight off. (Mail)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Dozens of Palestinians were killed and wounded yesterday as crowds flocked to food distribution points and airdropped aid parcels. (AP)

🌎 The EU has approved plans for the UK to return some small boat migrants to France. In return, some asylum seekers will be admitted into the UK via a safe route. The system will now start within days. (Guardian)

🌎 A UN conference in Geneva will attempt to thrash out a deal on plastic production today, amid concerns the volumes of plastic in the world’s oceans is now at crisis levels. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ The league season couldn’t have started more brightly for Hearts, who beat a “wasteful” Aberdeen 2-0 last night to go top of the Premiership table on goal difference. Summer signing Stuart Findlay bagged one for his new side, backed by a raucous Tynecastle that has high hopes for the season ahead. (BBC)

⚽️ Rangers take on Viktoria Plzen tonight in the third round qualifier for the Champions’ League: Mikey Moore won’t feature, but there may be a chance of another new recruit - winger Oliver Antman - making the side. (Daily Record)

• Rangers v FC Viktoria Plzeň (7.45pm, BBC Scotland / iPlayer)