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In your briefing today:

• On the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Keir Starmer warns students not to join pro-Palestinian protests across the country

• New legislation could cap the prices touts can charge for concert tickets

• Britain’s biggest phone gang is smashed, the police claim

• What’s going on in France? Crisis continues to rock its government

📣 The Prime Minister has urged students not to join pro-Palestinian protests today, as Israelis gather to mark two years since the October 7 terror attacks that killed 1,200 people. Sir Keir Starmer said it was “un-British” to hold protests on the anniversary, which he said had been used by some as a “despicable excuse to attack British Jews".

Protests are expected across the country today, including in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but Starmer writes in The Times that “this is not who we are as a country”. (The Times £) (BBC)

• Israelis gather to mark two years since Hamas attack (Guardian)

• Two lives torn apart by the Hamas attack - and Israel’s response (🎥 Sky News)

• After two years of war, Israel is stronger - and more isolated - than ever (WSJ)

• “Israel’s main memorial ceremony is being organised by bereaved families, not the government, reflecting deep divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership” (AP)

📣 Close to 5,000 Scottish homes were still without power last night as the cleanup continues after Storm Amy. SSEN said it had reconnected 83,000 households after the storm last weekend. (STV)

📣 The UK’s “biggest phone gang” has been smashed: there are dramatic reports this morning of a dawn raid and links between Bulgarians in a “mid-terrace suburban home” and a Hong Kong skyscraper “filled with a million stolen handsets”.

• The BBC says the gang smuggled 40,000 stolen phones from the UK to China in the last year. Mobile phone theft has become a scourge across the UK, especially in central London, where most are taken. Police raided 28 properties after a victim traced a single stolen phone last year. (BBC)

• Rich colour from the Daily Mail as it goes on one of the raids: “Head to toe in full riot gear with balaclavas pulled over their heads, the mass of public order officers quietly surrounded the mid-terrace suburban home […] A few minutes later, a tiny Bulgarian woman in a purple dressing gown was led from the home in handcuffs into a waiting police van.” It’s a scene in contrast to “the suffocating humidity of Kowloon, Hong Kong” where handsets often end up. (Daily Mail)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A man has appeared in court accused of murder after the remains of another man were found at Loch Lomond. David McColll, 50, is also accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice. (BBC)

📣 CalMac has confirmed it will not be restoring its seasonal service to Campbeltown next year because of its ongoing shortage of ships. (BBC)

📣 Scotland’s prison service is “refused to quit” a controversial Stonewall “Diversity Champions” scheme despite it being abandoned by bodies including the BBC, multiple government departments and the Scottish Parliament. (The Times £)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 There could be a cabinet revolt over Budget tax rises, with senior ministers fearful that further measures to target the rich - on top of the abolition of non-dom status and the imposition of VAT on school fees - could accelerate the “wealth exodus” from the UK. (Independent)

📣 The UK Government will cap the price of concert ticket resales, in a “hammer blow for ticket touts” who use computer bots to vaccum up seats and then resell them at a huge mark-up. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 The sight of Margaret Thatcher’s old outfits, on display at Tory party conference, is “creepy,” writes Quentin Letts. “There is something peculiar about exhibiting the late leaderene's schmutter. The clothes, draped over headless mannequins, seem to levitate in the air. They could be three corpses on a gibbet,” he writes. They’re also a metaphor for where the party is now. To win, he says, they have to let go of the past. (Daily Mail)

📣 That spectacular autumn we’re all expecting is about to erupt, says the National Trust. (Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ Who on earth would take on the Rangers job? It’s the question gripping Scottish football this morning - with names being raised and dismissed almost as quickly. Steven Gerrard is the man tipped by many for a return to Ibrox - but there are reports he doesn’t fancy the challenge of getting the existing squad to perform.

• Gary McAllister smiled at the suggestion of an Ibrox reunion with Gerrard - but admits he doesn’t know if his former boss will return to Rangers after nine months out of the game. (Daily Record)

• In an open letter to fans, the Rangers board admitted they got things wrong - and would lead a “rigorous and thoughtful recruitment process” to find a successor to Russell Martin. (The Sun)

• Running the odds - who are the favourites for the Ibrox hot seat? (Scotsman)

⚽️ Scotland’s assistant coach Steven Naismith says Scotland are fuelled by determination and anger as they attempt to reach next summer’s World Cup. The team plays Greece next, at Hampden on Thursday evening. (Scotsman)

IDEAS
What’s going on in France? The “ungovernable” nation lurches back into crisis

🗣️ Shortly after yesterday’s Early Line was dispatched, France plunged into yet another spasm of political chaos: Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned, along with all those he’d appointed to his cabinet only 12 hours earlier.

From “fresh start” to “complete chaos” overnight: even by France’s recent standards, the turn of events was disorienting. That it then, a few hours after that, lurched to a halfway house of “let’s see if we can make it work” offers a little more comfort: Lecornu is staying on for 48 hours more to “conduct final negotiations […] to define a platform for action and stability”. We’ll see.

France has been stuck on the question of its increasingly troubled national budget for years. It has a huge debt, a huge budget black hole that’s adding to the debt, and a lack of political ability to agree to even (relatively) modest changes to spending or tax raising in order to partially plug the gap.

Lecornu said he had been working for weeks to forge a viable way forward, but - having promised a “profound break” with the past when appointed last month - he had named a new government dominated by allies of the President. Opposition parties were furious.

“It would not take much for it to work,” Lecornu is quoted by the Guardian as saying. “By being more selfless for many, by knowing how to show humility … One must always put one’s country before one’s party.”

His temporary reappointment does, at least, defer the difficult decision that French President Emmanuel Macron was facing after he spent an hour trying - and initially failing - to talk Lecornu out of his decision yesterday morning. Then, it was a simple, unpleasant, choice: try to find yet another new Prime Minister, capable of passing a budget, or dissolve the national assembly and call another set of elections.

He’s been reluctant to hold more elections: this situation, after all, was caused by his miscalculation last year when Macron decided to dissolve parliament and call elections that produced a national assembly divided into three blocks: the left, the (far) right and Macron’s own (centre) right. The centre is being squeezed. The left and the right were, yesterday, calling for more elections, both for parliament and for the presidency itself. They fancy their chances.

But Le Monde thinks Macron is unlikely to be toppled: “the process is long and complex, and its success remains unlikely,” it says. Macron could choose to resign, but he’s insisted to date that he’ll remain in office until 2027, as planned.

These machinations don’t happen in a vacuum. The markets were watching, and selling: the French CAC 40 stock index was down 1.4%, led by shares in its biggest banks, while the country’s borrowing costs rose, and the Euro sank against the dollar. All those moves signal investors wary of France’s direction, and a potential shock to its economy: the country already has a budget deficit that’s double that of the UK’s, and although its borrowing costs are less than the UK’s, they are creeping up.

“The only way to stop this crisis is to have a new election,” said Emmanuel Cau, head of European equities strategy at Barclays, quoted in the Financial Times (£). “It’s making Europe hard to invest in and creating an excuse for investors to tread carefully.”

That newspaper’s editorial board despairs: “France is not only ungovernable, its public finances are in a mess, the economy is weak, social tensions are rising and the markets are jittery,” it writes in a leader (£). “The country may not be on the brink of civil war as it was in 1958, but then it had a way out of the mire in the form of Charles de Gaulle. There is no saviour on the horizon now.”

Macron’s “lame-duck status” leaves him looking “more like a sitting duck”, agrees Lionel Laurent on Bloomberg (🎁gift link), with parliamentary elections looking the most likely way out of “a political crisis that threatens to spread to the European stage”.

But who knows what will happen in those. Another finely balanced parliament, or even a far-right government, is unlikely to bring the stability so many crave.

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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