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In your briefing today:

• There are fresh hopes for peace in Ukraine… but some are worried about the gains Russia will make in exchange for peace

• Rachel Reeves remains under pressure to resign despite the head of the OBR quitting yesterday

• Two cracking long reads for you today: one on “scam states” in the far east, and another on Spain’s battle with a vast drug smuggling network

📣 Russia and the US will meet for talks over Ukraine later today, with the White House saying it is “optimistic” about reaching a deal to end the war. US special envoy Steve Witkoff is likely to be joined by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (BBC)

• Ukrainian troops near the front doubt any deal with Russia will bring lasting peace (AP)

• The EU fears Kyiv may face huge pressure to make concessions (Guardian)

• Russia’s claimed a major victory ahead of today’s talks, seizing the key city of Pokrovsk (Independent)

📣 Chancellor Rachel Reeves remains under pressure after the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility resigned over the early release of the body’s analysis of last week’s budget. The OBR - publishing a report into its own mistake - said it was the worst in the organisation’s 15-year history. (Read the OBR’s investigation)

• The report also said the mistake had happened before, raising the possibility that there had been previous leaks of market-sensitive information. Investigations continue. (Independent)

• John Swinney has joined calls for Rachel Reeves to resign for misleading the public. (Scotsman)

• Faisal Islam: OBR head’s resignation leaves landmines for Reeves (BBC)

• Commentators agree the civil servant who did the right thing in quitting puts pressure on Reeves to do the same - more below ⬇️

📣 It’s day one for Scotland’s new exams body, Qualifications Scotland, today. It replaces the SQA - but critics have branded the move a “superficial rebrand” because the new body has many of the same staff as the old one.

Its stated aim is to “reset relationships with learners and teachers” in order to “win back trust”.

That comes after a series of fiascos involving the SQA, especially through the Covid era when pupils were unable to sit exams and the organisation imposed a grading system which systematically downgraded results of students from poorer areas. (BBC)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 The outgoing NHS Fife chief executive, Carol Potter, authorised the health board’s unprecedented attack on nurse Sandie Peggie’s legal team, the organisation’s solicitors have admitted. The admission has led to a new claim of victimisation by Peggie against NHS Fife, and the chief executive personally (Times £)

• Peggie has launched three fresh claims agains the health board (Express)

📣 A record number of Scots are taking out loans, or raiding life savings, so they can access private healthcare and bypass NHS waiting lists (Mail)

📣 The entire population of the village of Dull, in Perthshire, has been invited to Vienna for free, as the Austrian city seeks to prove it’s not dull. Aye, really. (Scotsman)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Here’s an extraordinary read about “scam states”: countries where illicit industry, such as fraud, has “dug its tentacles deep into” the state, reshaping the economy and corrupting the government. Case in point: a vast business park devoted to fraud, recently destroyed in Myanmar. (Guardian)

• And here’s a flashy investigation into drug smuggling into the south of Spain. Close to a staggering 30,000 people were arrested in the country last year in connection with drug smuggling: a vast industry which even this rich, first world state is struggling to cope with. (Sky News)

• The White House is facing increasing scrutiny over its “war” on drug smugglers, with it being confirmed a US admiral issued the order for a second attack on a drug carrying boat containing two survivors. (Independent)

📣 Australia “will not be intimidated” by technology companies, or the Trump government, following its ban on social media for under 16s. "We stand firm on the side of parents and not on the platforms," said communications minister Anika Wells. (BBC)

📣 Greggs, the baker, is launching a range of Christmas cards which come with the gift of a sausage roll. (STV)

SPORT

📣 The original Hampden Park must be saved, the National Trust for Scotland has warned. The site, currently a bowling club, is at risk of being sold for commercial use. (BBC)

• Hampden Park is to be sponsored by Barclays, in a deal worth £1 million a year (Daily Record)

⚽️ Former Rangers manager Richard Gough wants to stage an “intervention” over the state of his old club. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

⚽️ A huge gambling scandal is rocking Turkish football, with 149 referees and assistant referees suspended after an investigation found hundreds of professional match officials in the country had betting accounts. At least 19 people have been arrested, while bans of eight to 12 months have been handed down, with investigations continuing. (BBC)

• “How much does a red card go for in Turkish football? According to Ozgur Ozel, an opposition politician, 5.5m lira ($130,000)” (Economist £)

IDEAS
Commentators agree the civil servant who did the right thing in quitting puts pressure on Reeves to do the same

🗣️ It’s the defence of a faintly obscure civil servant you didn’t know you needed, until it arrived. Fraser Nelson’s In praise of the OBR’s Richard Hughes is a neat summary of why we should care about his resignation, and consider the role he’s just left as something important and useful.

“Hughes has just done something seldom seen in politics: taken complete and personal responsibility for an error that he had nothing to do with and knew nothing about,” writes Nelson.

“The OBR is usually wrong. But all forecasts are usually wrong. As the saying goes, all models are wrong - some are useful.

“Crucially, the OBR has no veto. It just gives advice, which a Prime Minister can ignore. But if a PM wants to live every year maxing out his credit card, he’ll live at the mercy of his creditors, who will want to take the advice of an independent watchdog. Much depends on the credibility of this watchdog and on its refusal to be bullied.”

Not everyone viewed Hughes, or the OBR, so warmly. Tensions between the Starmer government and the watchdog had been brewing for months, long before last week’s calamitous leak of its budget analysis, 45 minutes before Rachel Reeves had delivered the budget itself.

That’s a point picked up by the FT today (£), which notes Hughes had exercised his independence in ways that had “increasingly infuriated” Starmer and Reeves. Not least "there was Hughes’ decision to wait until the second year of the Labour government to downgrade the OBR’s heroically optimistic productivity growth forecasts, even though economists had warned they were faulty for years.

“The downgrade took away £16bn a year in projected tax revenues, though the OBR forecast Reeves would get that money back elsewhere because of higher inflation and wage growth. The prime minister was privately furious, Starmer’s allies said.”

Hughes’ final punch landed on Friday, when he decided to disclose details of the OBR’s forecasts in the period leading up to the budget. They showed Reeves had been less than candid - at best - with Cabinet colleagues and the broader public on the fiscal position the country was in ahead of her budget.

Hughes, reflects the FT, “was making enemies at the heart of government”, even without the cock-up around the budget report release.

The outcome of all this? Nelson worries that the government will be tempted to reach for the Donald Trump playbook, and appoint someone nakedly sympathetic to their cause to offer more “helpful” analysis.

For other commentators this morning, all this is an unwelcome distraction from a truth they see clearly. Rachel Reeves still must go. Her “near-term demise” is all but inevitable, thinks Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph (🎁 gift link), “the sooner the better in my view.

“Whether guilty of deceit or not, recent events have confirmed her as hopelessly out of her depth.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said yesterday that “if a chief executive had done this [overseen an operation that leaked so much market-sensitive information] they’d have been sacked.

James Moore in the Independent (£) agrees with Badenoch. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat opposite a CEO or finance director at this time of year and watched them gnash their teeth in frustration as a chancellor gets away with behaviour they could never,” writes Moore.

“If CEO Reeves quietly told her PR agency to leak a big deal today, for whatever reason, the FCA would be on the phone as soon as it flashed up as breaking news online. The conversation would be short and terse.

“An almighty fuss would follow, and if it got out that she was the source – unlikely but not inconceivable – she would have the book thrown at her. […] At the very least, the chair would take her out to lunch and suggest she consider her position. Which, in CEO land, is how you get fired.

“Rightly so.”

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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