In your briefing today:

📣 The Green Party won the Gorton and Denton by-election, with Labour losing a formerly safe seat and more than 25% of its vote, finishing third behind Reform.

Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green Party councillor, became the first non-Labour MP for the area in almost a century. In her victory speech, Spencer said people were being “bled dry” to “line the pockets of billionaires […] I don’t think it’s extreme or radical to think that working hard should get you a nice life.”

The result is an embarrassing defeat for Labour and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who had personally campaigned in the seat only this week.

The Green win is a big moment for the party in England, resurgent under the leadership of Zach Polansky, which can now claim to be a credible alternative to Labour and Reform. The party has found success by building a left-wing policy platform which, like its Scottish counterpart, stretches far beyond traditional Green issues. (Guardian)

📣 Pakistan has launched military strikes on Afghanistan, including parts of the capital Kabul, with the country’s defence minister declaring “open war” on the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan has accused the Taliban of turning Afghanistan into a “colony of India” and “exporting terrorism”. (AP)

📣 Children were left with lifelong conditions after treatment at the crisis-hit Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, MSPs were told yesterday. First Minister John Swinney was accused of “turning his back" on families’ attempts to expose a cover-up at the hospital. (BBC)

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📣 Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes says returning to work after having her daughter was "beyond brutal" and that she "would not wish it on anyone”. (Scotsman)

📣 A doctor who hid cameras in a bathroom to film friends and colleagues has been struck off the medical register. Anaesthetist Ju Young Um had worked at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. (BBC)

📣 A woman raped by a repeat sex offender has warned a decade-long protection order, designed to protect the public, is running out. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Two schoolboys have been charged after “horrific” video of an attack outside a Glasgow school went viral on social media. (STV)

📣 Hillary Clinton told a congressional panel she had “no idea” about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, and called for President Donald Trump to also be questioned under oath about his association with the sex offender.

The testy six-hour deposition was supposed to be held behind closed doors - but “descended into chaos” after a Republican member of the committee leaked a photograph of proceedings to a right-wing blogger.

Former President Bill Clinton appears today. (New York Times - 🎁 gift link)

📣 Double child killer Ian Huntley was said to be "fighting for his life” in hospital last night after being attacked in prison. Inmates were reported to have cheered after he was assaulted. (Mirror)

📣 Netflix has bailed on its $82.7 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing the way for Paramount to spend $111 billion to acquire the historic Hollywood studio. (Bloomberg - 🎁 gift link)

📣 A new viral phenomenon has youngsters in Buenos Aires identifying as animals. “I wake up like a normal person and live my life like a normal person,” says Aguara, who claims to identify as a Belgian Malinois. “I simply have moments when I like being a dog.” (AP)

⚽️ Celtic departed this season’s European stage with a win - their 1-0 victory over Stuttgart not enough to overturn a 4-1 defeat in Glasgow last week. They now face a crucial sequence of domestic games: away to Rangers, then away to Aberdeen - both in the league - and away again to Ibrox for a Scottish Cup quarter-final. (BBC)

🗣️Is it still worth going to University? Student loans have “become a tax on aspiration", The Spectator says in a leader, with the average student in England leaving with £50,000 in debt. "It’s another painful burden on a generation already battered by lockdowns, the housing crisis, and the disruption of AI,” the magazine says.

It welcomes proposals by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to reduce the interest burden on student loans, but thinks her proposals underline “the other crucial problem with today’s universities: not just the cost of the education they offer, but its quality.

“Our universities, from Oxbridge downwards, are in decline,” the magazine says, “failing to justify the debts being incurred by becoming less rigorous and more bureaucratic, and putting student comfort and increasing numbers ahead of academic excellence or greater employability. As Kingsley Amis once balefully predicted, more has meant worse.” (The Spectator £)

🗣️ The Crown is crumbling, posits Will Lloyd for The New Statesman's cover story this week: his long essay on the British Royal Family finds an institution being dragged “into the darkness” by the controversy around Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Even the late Queen, he says, faces having her reputation damaged by her son: “What did she know about her son; when did she know it?” he asks. “While Charles can be thought of as boring, and William dull, true reputational damage to Elizabeth herself would have been unthinkable at the time of her death in 2022. […] Besmirch her and we could start believing in anything.”

What, exactly, could happen? Lloyd spots the chance for change: “Envisioning a constitution and a monarchy appropriate to our circumstances is a challenge Labour was born to take up, though it is unlikely it will. Andrew’s arrest may have stirred memories of Charles I’s capture by parliament in 1649. But it does not appear to have woken up our legislators to their Cromwellian heritage." (The New Statesman £)

🗣️Donald Trump is at risk of launching a war in the Middle East with no purpose, warns the Economist. In a leader, it notes the waters around the region now host “the largest concentration of American military firepower since 2003”, built around two carrier groups.

That sort of build-up could leave the US President feeling he has no option but to use its awesome power against Iran. “By preparing the means to punish the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr Trump is bringing this crisis to a head,” it says in a leader. “This is both a moment of jeopardy and a test of his credibility.”

But Iran’s leaders may also feel they don't have many choices beyond defiance. They may stall over details of a deal, or risk an air war, or even imagine they can emerge stronger from a conflict. If that’s the case, Trump is in a bind: “Launching an attack without a clear goal is exactly the sort of misstep he has long derided.” (Economist £)

🗣️Luxury goods are Europe's global tax on vanity, posits Charlemagne. “Europe’s economy may be as flaccid as a damp baguette," writes the columnist, “but you wouldn’t know it if you were window-shopping in the posher arrondissements of Paris. Say you are looking for a bone-shaped leather trunk designed to carry two bowls to dispense dog food, admittedly one of life’s lesser essentials. Louis Vuitton happens to have just the thing, yours for a mere €15,000 ($17,700).”

Such trinkets are “slices of aspiration, of a European way of life - albeit one that exists largely in the imaginations of well-heeled foreigners," writes the columnist. “If Europe is an open-air museum, its most deep-pocketed visitors are made to exit through the Gucci gift shop.”

The only trouble is, that alchemy may not endure. Experiences, rather than things, are drawing the dollar of the "global have-yacht class”. And other places - especially the US - are getting better at making and selling luxury. Europe may not enjoy its exclusive luxury tax, at least at the same rates, for much longer. (Economist £)

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