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In your briefing today:

• The ceasefire in Gaza is seeing its first tests, over the return of hostages’ bodies

• John Swinney got good reviews for his SNP conference speech… but under the surface, there are tensions over the party’s strategy. Three columnists take aim.

• Rangers appear to be closing in on a new manager - although It’s Complicated

📣 The Gaza ceasefire is facing its first tests as Hamas is accused of withholding the bodes of hostages, and brutally reasserting its control of the enclave as Israel withdraws its troops.

Israel halved its flow of aid into Gaza, and refused to open the Rafah border crossing with Egypt as planned, blaming Hamas for delays in returning the bodies of hostages. It had returned only eight bodies by last night, with 20 still unaccounted for: Hamas says it knows where they are buried. (Guardian)

In the meantime, Hamas gunmen have returned to Gaza’s streets, clashing with other armed groups and killing alleged gangsters and people it said were collaborators. (AP)

• Donald Trump said Hamas would be forced to disarm or “we will disarm them” (Reuters)

• Ehud Olmert: “That’s not what I call a peace deal,” says the former Israeli PM (Independent)

• Trump has railed against a “super bad” Time magazine cover marking his success in the peace talks, because he doesn’t like the photograph. (Guardian)

📣 GPs are warning that John Swinney’s plan for walk-in surgeries won’t be delivered because of difficulties in staffing them. The First Minister announced the plan during his keynote speech at the SNP annual conference on Monday. But the Royal College of General Practitioners warned Scotland’s GP workforce was now smaller than it was a decade ago.

Its vice chair said Swinney’s promise of one million more appointments each year was “not that large” compared to the 720,000 healthcare appointments offered in Scotland each week. (BBC) (Scotsman)

• GPs call for investment in workloads and staff shortages to come first (STV)

• Scottish towns have been waiting years for long-planned replacement surgeries (Daily Record)

📣 Nigel Farage’s Reform Party would sweep all before it, according to an “explosive megapoll” in the Daily Mail. The party would win the biggest Commons majority in history with Labour down to 73 MPs and the Conservatives reduced to only seven seats. The SNP would win 41 seats, just behind the Lib Dems on 42.

The poll also asked voters their biggest concerns: the cost of living continues to matter most, with immigration second and the NHS third. (Daily Mail)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A trade union has warned members not to talk to the press about problems at the crisis-hit Historic Environment Scotland. Workers have reacted with fury to the letter from the Prospect union, reports Catriona Stewart - the reporter who has broken much of the detail about problems at the quango. (The Scotsman)

📣 Calls for a Glasgow Airport rail link are being revived by a Labour MP and MSP. (The Scotsman)

📣 Energy companies are warning Scotland could miss out on 23,000 jobs if reforms to the controversial windfall tax on oil and gas profits are not brought forward. (The Scotsman)

📣 A baby and two toddlers are being treated for serious injuries after their pram was struck by a runaway trailer in Dumfries. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Rachel Reeves has confirmed she’s looking at both tax rises and spending cuts in the next budget. She has gone out of her way to avoid mentioning tax rises in previous interviews - but has now been briefed on the scale of the UK’s fiscal problems. (Sky News)

• UK facing highest inflation in G7, in another blow for Reeves (Independent)

📣 Margaret Thatcher had two affairs, a new book claims: one early in her career as an MP with Tim Bell, the advertising and PR guru, and another later with Sir Humphrey Atkins, the MP for Spelthorne who served in her early Cabinet. (The Times £) (Express)

📣 The government is under pressure over the collapsed China spy case, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats demanding it publish the evidence it submitted. (BBC)

📣 Russia is making more precise drones that can fly over long distances and be used to attack infrastructure. They are behind recent devastating attacks on Ukrainian railways. (AP)

📣 The US Government has revoked the visas of six people over comments they made in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk. (AP)

📣 Award-winning R&B and soul singer D’Angelo has died, aged 51, from cancer. D’Angelo released only three albums in his career, but was seen as a pioneer of the neo-soul genre. (Variety)

• Alexis Petridis: Experimental, sensual and political, D’Angelo radically redrew the boundaries of soul music (Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ There is some movement on the Rangers managerial front: former player Kevin Muscat is the front-runner to take up the role, but only after he’s finished leading Shanghai Port to what he hopes will be a second successive Chinese Super League title.

That would mean he doesn’t arrive at Ibrox until next month: another former player, Neil McCann, would become interim boss until then, and then Muscat’s number two.

In the meantime, the less experienced - but available now - Danny Rohl waits in the wings. (Daily Record) (The Sun)

⚽️ England thrashed Latvia 5-0 to qualify for the World Cup, but head coach Thomas Tuchel still took heat from travelling fans after he criticised the Wembley crowd for being “silent” during last weekend’s friendly win against Wales. (BBC)

IDEAS
From the columnists: What the SNP should do next

📣 The SNP’s annual conference was overshadowed by events in the Middle East, but still of consequence. John Swinney was seen to have a successful keynote speech… but, under the surface, the party continues to grapple with a rift over how to achieve independence, even as it looks likely to win another Holyrood election. Today’s trio of columnists look at party strategy, those disagreements, and one call for more radical action.

🗣️ The SNP’s election strategy is likely to succeed whether you like it or not, writes Kenny Farquharson. “Look past the flimsiness of the party’s position on the constitution, with flaws of logic so obvious they were unpicked by conference delegates barely old enough to shave, and SNP strengths come into focus,” he writes.

First, John Swinney is painting himself as the “anti-Farage”, says Farquharson. Unlike Labour and the Tories, who struggle to address the concerns of voters attracted to Farage, “He can present the SNP as unambiguously refugee-friendly and pro-immigration under a Scottish saltire.”

Second, Swinney can paint independence as a way out the prospect - unappealing to many Scots - of a UK with Farage as Prime Minister (which, as we report today, appears likely on today’s polling).

Third, he can “punch the bruise” of Labour’s lame first year and a half in power.

Watch out for an “imaginative” plan for the SNP to sponsor visas for care workers so they can continue to work in Scotland’s care homes. It could become a “new battleground” between Holyrood and Westminster. (The Times £)

🗣️Kevin McKenna is not so impressed. “So, is that it?” he asks. “More than 11 years after the first referendum on independence, the party mainly tasked with delivering it has effectively admitted it has no idea how it will set about trying to secure a second one.

“There is delusion; there’s M&S delusion and then there’s SNP delusion: trust us; we have a tactical plan, but we’re not telling anyone about it and don’t ask any questions.”

McKenna writes angrily about the rejection of the Sustainable Growth Commission’s recommendations, and notes the steady departure of key figures from the SNP picture, and the “passing over of others” in favour of colleagues who wouldn’t make a fuss. There’s been internal party frustration that internal debate over a detailed prospectus for independence was being quashed.

Today, says McKenna, the SNP has “failed Scotland’s most marginalised communities in every metric of analysis: homelessness; rough sleeping; child poverty; health and educational inequality; the broken Promise to vulnerable children. Last week, they turned their backs on those suffering from drug addiction.”

“If these are the best people you’ve got after 25 years of limited self-government then what was the point of it all?” he asks. (The Herald £)

🗣️Roz Foyer of the Scottish Trades Union Congress took a call for a wealth tax to the SNP’s annual get-together.

“Just five families in Scotland own as much wealth as the poorest quarter of the entire population. Five families,” she writes. “But the Scottish Parliament has powers to act. A modest 2% tax on the wealth of Scotland’s richest 10 families would raise nearly half a billion pounds, enough to fund 13,000 nurses, 13,500 firefighters or 17,000 home care workers.

“That’s what political courage looks like. Using the powers you already have to build the country you keep saying you want.

“My message to the SNP was, therefore, quite simple: we need less convening and more doing. Less consultation, more conviction.” (The Herald £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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