TODAY’S WEATHER

🌤️ In Glasgow you’ll see a cloudy morning and the chance of rain in the early afternoon. Fewer worries of rain in a brighter Edinburgh and Aberdeen. London will be dry and warm too. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Israel approves plan Gaza City plan | “Hypocrite” minister quits | Sturgeon “treated appallingly,” says McDermid

📣 Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to take over Gaza City after a session which started yesterday and ran through the night. The approval comes despite the reservations of Israel’s military and the opposition of some of the families of hostages held by Hamas.

The approved plan appears to fall short of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ambition, voiced before the meeting started, to take over the entire Gaza Strip. (BBC Live coverage)

• Another escalation in a devastating war (The Guardian)

• Hugo Bachega: Takeover of Gaza City likely first phase of a full takeover (BBC)

• Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City (AP)

📣 Labour’s homelessness minister has resigned after claims she evicted four tenants from a property she owns, then put it back on the market at a significantly higher rent.

Rushanara Ali was accused of apparent hypocrisy, given that she has spoken out repeatedly about the exploitation of private renters.

She backed Labour moves to let renters challenge unreasonable rent increases and ban landlords who have ended a tenancy from relisting the property. (Guardian) (Mail) (The i Paper (£) had the original exclusive)

• Swift and humiliating demise for the “do as I say Minister” (Sky News)

📣 Author Val McDermid says her friend Nicola Sturgeon has been “treated appallingly” by Police Scotland and by the media, “outside Scotland and inside”.

The author, interviewed by the Telegraph, continued: “I’ve seen some of the stuff she gets poured on her head and it’s horrible. You would not say that to your wife or your sister – but to say it to a complete stranger seems to be acceptable. It is misogynistic. Any woman in Scottish politics will tell you the same thing.”

She says she offered advice to Sturgeon while the former First Minister was writing her memoirs, and didn’t rule out teaming up with her to write a book together in the future. (🎁The Telegraph - gift link)

• Kate Forbes, appearing at an event organised by The Herald last night in Edinburgh, said the hatred in Scottish politics had become “exhausting”, and that “politics is a pretty brutal place to be”. (Herald (£))

IDEAS
Fading hope for Israel | Farage wins over women | Why PMs never get a holiday | A memorable road trip

🗣️ Is a two-state solution still possible in the Middle East? Jonathan Dimbleby asks the question in The New Statesman, in an extract from an updated edition of his book “The Palestinians”. But he starts by remembering his father’s impassioned broadcast from Bergen-Belsen, bringing the “hideous fact” of the Holocaust to the world’s attention. “We must vow with all our hearts that such things must never happen again,” he said in 1945. "Today,” writes his son, “the alarming resurrection of anti-Semitism makes those words “never again” more important than ever.”

That vow takes on poignancy and relevance as he writes of the appalling attitudes from Israeli leaders towards Paletinians over decades, and the poverty in which Palestinians have lived, even before the current war. Palestinians have faced a battle, among all the others, even for the right to be recognised - Golda Meir, then prime minister of Israel, said in 1969: “There are no such thing as Palestinians… They do not exist”.

Most of Dimbleby’s piece is a detailed history both of Palestinian suffering and turbulent Israeli politics, to the present day. He’s left “clinging to the belief” that a two-state solution is the “only realistic chance of securing lasting peace”, even if that is disappearing over the distant horizon.

“All that this chronicler can do is reiterate that the Palestinians did exist, do exist and – unless they are annihilated – will exist,” writes Dimbleby. He doesn’t make explicit the connection between those words and his father’s explicit: he doesn’t need to. (New Statesman £)

🗣️The Economist also writes about Israel and Gaza by reaching into history. The newspaper reminds us that Israel, in its Declaration of Independence in 1948, embraced universal human rights “irrespective of religion, race or sex”.

“Today,” it says in a leader, “the founding vision of Israel and the laws of war are under attack in Gaza. In its bombed and barren landscape the fate of both lies in the balance.”

A “just war” has “gone very wrong”, it writes, and Israel must hold itself to account. “Hamas’s crimes do not excuse Israel. The Jewish state is a democracy. It should hold itself to higher standards than terrorists, warlords and dictators.

“Israel has an existential interest in seeing justice done,” it concludes. “If instead it glorifies those who orchestrate famine and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, its politics and society will lurch towards demagoguery and authoritarianism. (The Economist £)

🗣️Nigel Farage is winning over women, reports Tim Shipman, after long years where his political vehicles were mostly supported by men.

Now it appears Keir Starmer has “the women problem” while Farage gains, especially among Generation X and Boomer women.

Why? “One explanation is that women in general are more likely than men to have a downbeat view of Britain’s future, to worry that the country is broken.”

Women also appear especially alarmed by migration and the housing of asylum seekers, and have led protests against both across the country.

Expect both Labour and the Conservatives to unveil more policies aimed explicitly at women in the months ahead. (The Spectator £)

🗣️Matt Chorley has an entertaining review of Prime Ministers’ summer holidays. Long story short: PM’s are mostly hopeless at taking a break, and the public doesn’t really like to see them away anyway.

Only a few - John Major’s low-key trips to Spain, Tony Blair’s glitzier efforts - appeared to be enjoyed. Gordon Brown didn’t enjoy them, remaining “defiantly” in work mode during a break in Suffolk. “Friends later claimed that he hated every minute of it,” writes Chorley. “It looked like it.” (New Statesman £)

🗣️The Spectator enjoys Greyhound, a book by Joanna Pocock, who travelled across the US by bus in 2006 and then did it again 17 years later, only to be shocked by the environmental changes she witnessed.

She finds rivers and canals filled with waste oil, chemicals poisoning the land and the “environmental catastrophe” of Las Vegas.

But it is also “a road trip like no other, a personal memoir interwoven with history, anthropology and landscape” and, depsite much of the subject matter, “not a miserabalist read”.

If, unlike Prime Ministers, you’re getting away this month, this doesn’t sound a bad companion. (The Spectator £)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Scotland’s economy is continuing to improve according to new data from the Royal Bank of Scotland. There is “increasing confidence” across mid-market businesses, solid performances across technology media and telecommunications (TMT) companies, and the fastest uptick in business services activity since 2024. (Insider)

• Scottish high streets are struggling, with only Edinburgh bucking the trend (The Scotsman)

📣 Next year’s Scottish elections could get messy, warn Ruth Davidson and Harriet Harman - co-hosts of the Electoral Dysfunction podcast. (🎙️listen to the podcast)

📣 Oasis has arrived in Edinburgh ahead of their first Scottish shows in 16 years, with three nights booked at Murrayfield Stadium. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Trans women should be banned from single-sex spaces, the UK’s equality watchdog is expected to say. Schools, hospitals, leisure centres and cinemas will be told to stop trans women using lavatories and changing rooms under statutory guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. (The Times (£) has the exclusive)

📣 Donald Trump has insisted the US economy is on a solid footing after criticism his tariffs are damaging the country. Wielding charts in the Oval Office, he justified dismissing a senior official over job creation statistics. (AP)

📣 France’s huge mineral water industry is under the spotlight because of climate change and the industry’s environmental impact. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ It was a good night for Scottish clubs in Europe, with both Hibs and Dundee United putting themselves in strong positions in their first leg ties.

• Partizan 0 Hibs 2 - the Hibees “ran amok” in the “feared” Belgrade arena, to put one foot in the Europa Conference league play-offs. (The Sun)

• Rapid Vienna 2 Dundee United 2 - United set up a cracker for Tennadice after coming from behind twice in Austria. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Barry Ferguson says there’s a mole at Ibrox, who has been leaking team news for months. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)