In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! There’s no advertisement in today’s newsletter… just a request.

👣 Next week, I’m walking a marathon in aid of the Palace for Life Foundation - a brilliant organisation that I’ve been proud to serve as a Trustee since 2017. I got involved with them back in the days when I lived in South London.

The Foundation has been working with young people for more than 35 years, using the power of sport to transform the lives of thousands in their area, which can be a tough place.

💰 If you’d like to sponsor me, and my aching limbs, as I walk the 26-mile Marathon March route around London next week, you can make your donation here. Anything you can afford would be greatly appreciated and wisely spent. Thankyou!

📣 A staggering threat in Glasgow: the City Council is warning it will sack staff who don’t sign a new contract, in a move that’s sparked anger from unions, but which the city says is needed to replace a pay and grading structure which discriminates against women.

In the new deal, 63% of staff are expected to gain financially, while 11% lose out. More than 23,000 members of staff, from CEO Susanne Millar to refuse collectors, face a decision on the new deal.

It’s being billed as “fire and rehire”, although accounts today differ on whether that’s an accurate label. The Times reports council staff are expected to get dismissal notices next week. The BBC’s Jamie McIvor reports: “It is worth stressing that nobody is simply facing the sack as such. However anyone who did not sign a new contract would not have a job.”

Either way, unions have called the move a “scandalous threat”. (BBC) (Times)

📣 A mounting financial crisis in Scotland’s museums and galleries could see one in six of the attractions close within the next 12 months. Research claims that ageing buildings, soaring costs and the impact of climate change are causing a funding crisis in the sector.

The report also suggests Scottish attractions are disadvantaged because there’s no equivalent to the UK government’s Museum Estate and Development fund to support projects in Scotland. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Brussels has told Andy Burnham that he’ll need to raise tariffs on Chinese cars, and align more closely with EU trade policy, if he wants the UK to avoid “made in Europe” barriers that would damage British exports to the continent.

European officials have gone as far as to suggest Britain enter a customs union with the EU, which would cross a “red line” previously set out by Keir Starmer.

The warning has come after weeks of lobbying attempting to ensure British products are treated equally across the EU. (FT has the exclusive (£))

📣 First Minister John Swinney has reaffirmed his party’s support for decriminalising all drugs for personal use, after the spike in Scottish drug deaths. Drugs policy is a reserved matter decided in Westminster. (BBC)

📣 An attempt by Reform to call a vote of no confidence in drugs minister Maree Todd has failed to make the chamber for debate, after no non-Reform MSPs backed it. (STV)

📣 A Ryanair flight bound for Prestwick landed with “minutes of fuel left” after what sounds like a nightmare flight to Scotland from Pisa, which eventually ended up in Manchester. (STV)

📣 A US intelligence analyst claims Russia could attack European holiday hotspots around the Mediterranean in an attempt to break Nato. The claims are lurid and contradict the intelligence consensus, reported here in the last week, that Russia might look to carry out more covert attacks on Ukraine-supporting Nato members. (Sun)

📣 XI Jinping has called for closer cooperation with the US to avoid a “trap” that could lead to military confrontation between the US and China, amid rising tensions on AI, trade and Taiwan. (Guardian)

📣 Benjamin Netanyahu denounced UN delegates who walked out on his speech to the General Assembly as “moral cowards” and said attacking Iran “was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make”. (Independent)

📣 Former England football star Andy Carroll has revealed he was sexually assaulted in 2021 by a man who was subsequently jailed for three years. (Mirror)

⚽️ Scotland new boy Robbie Ure is desperate to plug a hole up front for his nation as they prepare to take on Slovenia in Ljubljana tomorrow. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Some welcome news for Celtic fans: they could see Portuguese winger Jota making a return to the pitch in the next few weeks. (Sun)

⚽️ And welcome news for Scotland (and Napoli) fans: Scott McTominay is back to solo training after surgery to correct a heart condition. (Herald)

🗣️ Should Andy Burnham call a general election? Tim Shipman in The Spectator is convinced he should. He’s had a decent first few months in Downing Street - especially compared to the “rioting, scandals, party infighting and u-turns that marked Starmer’s first few months,” he writes.

“Yet even as the Prime Minister excites the party faithful at Labour’s conference in Liverpool this week, he must be aware that things could only get worse. The ‘Burnham Bounce’ may be small, but he is now probably as popular he will ever be.”

With tough choices looming in the budget, NHS waiting lists and small boat crossings remaining high and the prospect of more conflict abroad, now looks a good time - especially with his opponents in relative disarray. And his own, more radical manifesto needs its own mandate, argues Shipman.

“Ending ‘40 years of neoliberalism’ is surely incompatible with a commitment not to increase national insurance, income tax or VAT. He needs his own manifesto and mandate, even at the risk of dozens of his MPs.” (The Spectator (£))

🗣️Tom McTague, editor of The New Statesman, speaks to Burnham for a long interview and profile of the Prime Minister. He finds a PM with “an intensity about him that has caught even some of his closest allies off guard” - a man who thought he’d never make it to Number 10, but who is now determined to grasp its opportunities.

He’s also a PM in mourning - he entered Downing Street just as his father was entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and has now died. His funeral comes after next week’s Labour Party conference.

“Despite the mournful challenges of his first two months in the job, Burnham has relished its demands and found himself energised by the pace and possibility of the power he now holds; of being at the centre of things, making decisions, proving people wrong, being leader,” writes McTague.

“Whatever the country feels about its seventh prime minister in just over a decade, Burnham himself is seized by the sense that this time it will be different, that he will be different – the culmination of everything he has worked for.”

He does not, by McTague’s telling at least, sound like a man ready to throw the dice on a snap general election. (New Statesman (£))

🗣️ One of the standout features of Scotland’s grim drug death figures, which we delved into yesterday, was the rapid rise in deaths connected to very strong synthetic drugs. That’s a global phenomenon - except in Italy, reports The Economist, where there’s a suspicion that the mafia are keeping fentanyl out of their territory. As the newspaper notes, it’s like something out of The Godfather.

“Drugs that kill their customers tend to be less profitable in the long run,” it observes. “For Italian organised-crime groups, that could threaten established heroin and cocaine markets. They seem to have decided that fentanyl brings unwanted attention and is bad for business,” at least for now. (The Economist)

🗣️ Is too much surgery useless? While there’s lots of evidence that surgery to, say, replace hips and knees “offer outcomes that are clearly superior to non-operative care” (which I can vouch for personally), other surgeries offer outcomes that aren’t much better than some good medicine, or time and rest. Lumbar-spine decompression: we’re looking at you, along with much back and shoulder surgery.

The trouble is, notes the Economist, “is a dearth of clinical data on whether [operations] work. It calls for a radical change in the way surgeons are taught, with a shift towards “shared decision-making” with patients that sees them guided through options - not just an edict for surgery. The prize would be less unnecessary surgery, and more availability for those needing the useful procedures. (The Economist (£))

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