In your briefing today:

📣 Chancellor John Healey offered up a raft of small measures, including a £100 reduction in energy bills for the poorest homes, in his debut budget.

Investors welcomed a budget that did little to rock the boat, after Rachel Reeves’ sweeping changes last year. But the absence of major policy shifts or surprises also drew accusations the government was shying away from big decisions on spending - especially welfare - and taxation.

Healey blamed “global economic storms” - including the war in the Middle East - for a grim economic outlook driven by rising oil and gas prices. His response - a handout paid for by raising taxes on banks and landlords - was the centrepiece of a raft of measures to attempt to ease the pressure on households.

📣 The horrific train crash in Spain, in which at least 68 people have been killed and dozens more injured, could have been caused by a mistake by a controller who ordered one train to speed down a track blocked by a stationary train.

The country is beginning three days of mourning after the crash, which is Spain’s second major train disaster this year. Emergency crews were working through the night to cut through metal carriages, many of which had fallen down an embankment, to search for victims. Many are still to be identified.

📣 There are fresh reports that the United States has warned several Middle East countries and other allies that it plans to restart military action against Iran after next week’s midterm elections in the US.

President Trump has yet to make a final decision in whether to carry out new attacks on Iran. Other reports suggest Vice President JD Vance is seeking peace talks with Iran. (AP)

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📣 Staff in Scotland’s local authorities have been left in a state of “uncertainty” over their jobs amid SNP proposals to shake up the country’s local government. (Herald)

📣 The Acorn carbon capture project planned for near Peterhead has been thrown into doubt, again, after doubts emerged that public funds will be available to help get it running. (Scotsman)

📣 NHS Western Isles is prescribing weight loss drugs at three times the rate of other health boards. (BBC)

📣 Some board members at oil and gas giant BP favour splitting the company up, amid pressure from investors to increase returns. CEO Meg O’Neill is reported to be against the move and the plans may not go ahead.

BP, valued at $129 billion, is one of Britain’s biggest public companies and a key part of the London Stock Exchange. It’s due to report its earnings on Friday. (Semafor has the exclusive)

📣 We still don’t have the full results from Israel’s election but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s block is leading his rivals, even though he remains short of a majority in parliament. (BBC)

📣 Slow Horses star Jack Lowden is the “clear favourite” to become the next James Bond after completing auditions that also saw Callum Turner, Josh O’Connor and a mystery fourth actor take part. (Sun)

📣 It was a full card of Premiership action last night, full of twists and turns…

⚽️ It was as rowdy an evening as you might expect as Derek McInnes returned to Tynecastle with his Rangers side to battle out a 2-2 draw against Hearts. Along the way, barracking from the crowd, glaring missed chances and even an oddly frosty handshake between the two managers. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Celtic were happy enough to get a point off Dundee United, in the circumstances, having battled back from being 2-1 down at Parkhead, even though the extra two points would have opened up a commanding lead over Rangers. (Daily Record)

⚽️ With the final act of the match St Johnstone denied Motherwell a win, and secured a 2-2 draw in Perth: the visitors now haven’t won a game in seven attempts. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Aberdeen hardly head into their League Cup semi-final with Rangers this weekend in good form: they lost 1-0 to Falkirk at home. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ St Mirren and Hibernian battled out a dour 1-1 draw in Paisley (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Dundee beat Kilmarnock 3-1 to keep up their decent form and keep Killie rock bottom of the league. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

🗣️ “The contrast between John Healey’s first Budget and Rachel Reeves’s debut in October 2024 could hardly have been starker”, notes Ian McConnell in the Herald.

Not for him the “huge calls” of Reeves’ debut budget, which included a big hike in employers’ National Insurance contributions to raise £25 billion a year.

Instead, “Mr Healey delivered a Budget which contained relatively small and cautious moves,” says McConnell, “manoeuvring within tight fiscal headroom and amid challenges presented by higher UK Government borrowing costs and a sharp cut to next year’s growth forecast in which higher energy prices were a major factor.”

Investors were wanting dull - and that’s what they got. “With oil and gas prices this high and with one eye on France, a dull Budget is what was needed,” Matthew Amis, investment director at fund manager Aberdeen, told McConnell. (Herald)

🗣️ But one person’s “reassuringly dull” is another’s “debilitating fiscal status quo”, which is what John McLaren laments in The Scotsman.

Of yesterday, McLaren says: “Essentially, there have been a number of minor - in public finance terms - support measures to help households with, for example, energy costs, partly paid for by a temporary tax surcharge applied to banks.

“However, the overall picture around borrowing, taxes and public spending is little different to before. Meanwhile, next year's Spending Review awaits for a more radical settlement to be brought forward.”

That Spending Review really will be a big moment. It’ll offer two escape routes from that status quo, says McLaren: the first, and best, would be an economic revival that, ultimately, pays for everything. The second is tax rises, but Labour’s manifesto promises block that route off.

McLaren doesn’t discuss a third option - spending less. Is that just too politically implausible? (Scotsman)

🗣️ Alex Massie gets closer to that question in the Times. It was a budget that felt
“like something suspiciously close to a cop-out. Managing, not leading,” he writes.

“I do not believe many of the numbers in this budget bear much relation to political and fiscal reality,” writes Massie. “This is the unsparing bottom line: we spend too much and we borrow too much to fund that spending because, nationally, we do not make enough profit.”

What does it mean for Scotland? He points out Jenny Gilruth, the new finance secretary, has just four years to fix a £5 billion hole in the government’s finances. This budget does not, in turn, force her to make big choices about spending. And making that sort of move unilaterally - “to face down the public sector unions and a third sector that always believes there is never enough money spent on its preferred projects” - would require bravery.

“This was not a budget that addressed many, if any, of these problems,” writes Massie. “Perhaps this is because political and policy success have become uncoupled.” (Times)

🗣️ As Alan Young puts it in The Scotsman, this was a masterclass in kicking the can down the road. “We cannot wish away the storms we face, Chancellor John Healey told the Commons as he delivered his first Budget,” writes Young.

“That is true of course but, as he found, you can delay the difficult decisions needed to weather-proof the nation. He opened the door, took a look at the storm, and stepped back inside.” (Scotsman)

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