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In your briefing today:

• The Home Secretary is planning a crackdown on migration, in an attempt to defuse a problem she fears is being exploited by “dark forces”

• Five things we learned at the weekend: Political ambition, inside the BBC crisis, are middle-class parents gaming Scottish exams?, and I’m a Celebrity begins

• Scotland manage an astonishing capitulation against Argentina at Murrayfield. Meanwhile, the national football team tries its luck in a huge game tomorrow.

📣 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will unveil sweeping reforms to the UK’s immigration rules later today, in an attempt to make it easier to deport foreign criminals and small boat migrants.

Mahmood plans to change the way the European Convention on Human Rights is interpreted by UK judges so asylum seekers can no longer use their rights to family life to avoid deportation. (Independent)

• Other measures will include fast-track deportations, the end of multiple appeals against removal and an overhaul of legislation on human rights law. (BBC)

• Mahmood has warned Labour MPs, who are uneasy about her proposals, that “dark forces are stirring up anger” over migration. (Guardian) (Read the op-ed by Mahmood)

• Lawyers and Labour MPs want to “torpedo” Mahmood’s plans (Mail)

📣 Scotland’s Lord Advocate says victims of sexual offences will not have their privacy intruded on unnecessarily, after a Supreme Court judgement criticised Scottish courts’ approach to restricting questions on a victim’s history.

Dorothy Bain KC said the abuse of women and children was “the single greatest challenge our justice system faces”, after the UK’s highest court ruled the approach taken by courts in Scotland “risks depriving a defendant of their right to a fair trial”. (Scotsman)

• The mother of a teenage rape victim, who took her own life after she was forced to hold up her underwear in court, hit out at the Supreme Court ruling over the weekend. (Sunday Mail)

📣 Reform MSP Graham Simpson - who defected from the Tories earlier this year - says the party is aiming for more than 20 Reform MSPs next year, who will “shake up” Holyrood. He also says, in a long sit-down interview, that he’s helping lead Scottish policy development for the party. (Holyrood)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Tributes have been paid to a “beautiful” young Scot who was among five people killed in a car crash in Ireland on Saturday night. Chloe Hipson, 21, from Lanarkshire, died alongside four others in a Volkswagen Golf which was in collision with a Toyota Land Cruiser in County Louth. (Daily Record) (Mail) (BBC)

📣 It’s a year since Dundee University revealed its financial crisis. The Courier takes a look at five of the biggest questions which remain unanswered - including: where are the University’s accounts, and why did nobody act sooner? (Courier)

📣 There’s a chance of more snow in Scotland this week after northern parts saw some last week: cold Arctic air is sweeping across the country as Storm Claudia moves away. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Donald Trump has made a surprise u-turn on files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein: he’s now urging his fellow Republicans to vote for their release. (BBC)

• That hasn’t stopped Trump and former close ally Marjorie Taylor Greene escalating their feud after Greene hit out at the President over the Epstein files. Trump called her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” in a social media spat. (ABC News)

📣 Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to oppose any attempt to set up a Palestinian state. (AP)

📣 Former Chancellor George Osborne - tipped by some days ago to be the next Director General of the BBC - is, instead, in the running to become the chairman of HSBC, the £189 billion banking behemoth. (Sky News has the exclusive)

📣 The gadgets which allow criminals to steal keyless cars are being sold online for more than £20,000 each, a BBC investigation has found. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ Scotland boss Steve Clarke is pleading with the Tartan Army to roar Scotland to glory - and World Cup qualification - tomorrow night at Hampden. (Mail)

• The Denmark camp appears to be suffering from a bout of ill health ahead of the huge game at Hampden. (The Sun)

🏉 Scotland fans were entitled to boo their side off the Murrayfield pitch yesterday, captain Sione Tuipulotu acknowledged, after they watched their heroes blow a 21-0 lead against Argentina to eventually lose 33-24. (Scotsman)

• Scotland 24-33 Argentina: a new low for Gregor Townsend (Mail)

⚽️ Celtic are inching closer to confirming Wilfried Nancy as their new manager. (Daily Record)

IDEAS
Five things we learned at the weekend: Rayner’s (maybe) on manoeuvres, inside the BBC crisis, fears middle-class parents ‘game‘ Scottish exams, and I’m a Celebrity’s stars get the thumbs-up

🗣️Angela Rayner is “laying the groundwork” for a challenge to Keir Starmer, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

She’s going as far as to offer colleagues roles in her Cabinet in exchange for their support, and has offered the Tribune group of MPs on the soft left of the Labour Party.

“A source familiar with Ms Rayner’s moves said she was ‘on manoeuvres’”, reports Camilla Turner, “and was ‘getting her ducks in a row’ for a leadership bid, adding: ‘The unions will back her and help her.’

A “source close to Ms Rayner” was quoted as dismissing the claims, saying she was “focused on representing her local community”. (Sunday Telegraph £)

🗣️ The Observer took readers deep into the crisis at the BBC to paint a picture of board-level Machiavellianism, indecision and incompetence.

Ceri Thomas’s long read about the crisis has plenty of vivid detail: the Directors-General meeting for a dinner last year for dark-humoured toasts and dinner, the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy giving a strong impression of being out of her depth overseeing the Corporation, that inexplicable indecision about the bad Panorama edit of a Trump speech that sparked the crisis.

It was the original sin on which everything else rests: “The BBC knew at the turn of 2025 that it had made a mistake, and it should have been willing to admit it, unprompted,” writes Thomas.

But, in meetings which discussed the edit, “‘It didn’t strike any of us at that time as a significant issue,” a source tells him. “‘And that’s maybe where the whole thing began to unravel. Nobody left the room thinking, ‘Oh my god, we’ve got a real problem with Panorama.’ It just wasn’t like that.’” It is now. (Observer)

🗣️The British police are preparing for civil war, says the New Statesman, after its given a tour of a Metropolitan Police facility - a sort of fake small town - where officers learn to deal with riots.

“Fears that Britain is due for a bout of mass violence on such a scale – or greater – have metastasised through the body politic in recent months,” writes Felix Pope.

“Speaking to the New Statesman earlier this year, Lisa Nandy said she believed that northern England was so tense it could ‘go up in flames’ at any time. Dominic Cummings has claimed the intelligence services are discussing the potential for ‘racial/ethnic/mob/gang violence’. David Betz, a professor at the King’s College Department of War Studies, has gone further still and won much attention for predicting that Britain is sliding towards civil war.

So Pope witnesses the place, out in bleak Ebsfleet, where officers have (real) petrol bombs and (fake) bricks thrown at them, as they learn to cope with protests turned violent. “For some, the training itself is proof that the state is readying its forces for civil war,” writes Pope. (New Statesman £)

🗣️ There are fears middle-class families are “gaming” the Scottish exam system, with one in four Scottish teenagers now having some form of special arrangements for their exams: double the number who had “assessment arrangements” for formal tests seven years ago.

“While these include uncontroversial measures like braille papers for blind pupils, they also involve assistance for highly subjective conditions, such as mid-exam break periods or extra time for those with “anxiety” about sitting tests,” reports the Sunday Times. “Calculators or spell checkers can be allowed for those who have a ‘difficulty’ with numbers or writing.

Pupils from wealthy backgrounds are more likely to get that help than those from poorer, or minority ethnic, backgrounds. (The Sunday Times £)

🗣️I’m A Celebrity kicked off its 2025 season, and the Independent opened up a live blog to mark the occasion. There, we learn of the voting shake-up that “will change the series for better,” and the identities of the two stars voted to take on the first Bushtucker Trial. Their critic, Jacob Stolworthy, thinks it a promising start: the best show opener “in a while - perhaps due to the show not being marred by featuring a controversial contestant (see: Matt Hancock and Nigel Farage)”. (Independent)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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