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In your briefing today:

• Jamaica is braced for what is being described as the biggest storm in recorded history - a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane

• Brendan Rodgers has quit as Celtic manager, with the club’s major shareholder branding him “misleading, divisive and self-serving”.

• Rachel Reeves faces huge choices in her budget, less than a month from now: we round-up some of what’s flying around.

📣 Jamaica is bracing for the strongest storm this year, possibly in history, as Hurricane Melissa approaches this morning. It’s expected to make landfall early today, and circle around the island, with sustained winds of 175 mph and a storm surge of up to 13 feet expected when it arrives. Rated category 5, it’s expected to have a catastrophic impact, and has already cost seven lives across the Caribbean. (AP) (Guardian live coverage)

• The US Air Force’s “hurricane hunters” have flown inside the storm, and taken some extraordinary video. (AP)

• Climate change is fuelling Hurricane Melissa’s ferocity (AP)

📣 The Chancellor is facing a larger-than-expected “Budget hole” because of poor productivity in the UK economy. The downgrade in productivity performance from the Office of Budget Responsibility is an accounting measure, but will mean Rachel Reeves has to find a further £20 billion in savings or new tax revenue when she delivers her budget late next month. (BBC)

• Who’d be Chancellor? The conflicting advice, and floated ideas, flying around before the budget - see below ⬇️

📣 Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers resigned last night, in a move that shocked fans and prompted a damning missive from the club’s major shareholder, which accused the former Liverpool manager of being “misleading, divisive and self-serving”.

Dermot Desmond’s statement continued: “When we brought Brendan back to Celtic two years ago, it was done with complete trust and belief in his ability to lead the club into a new era of sustained success. Unfortunately, his conduct and communication in recent months have not reflected that trust.”

Rodgers has yet to comment. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Martin O’Neill, the veteran manager who last took charge of the side between 2000 and 2005.

The developments came the day after Celtic lost 3-1 against Edinburgh rivals Hearts, who are now eight points clear at the top of the Premiership table. Celtic play Rangers in the semi-final of the Scottish League Cup this weekend. (Daily Record) (Sun) (Mail) (Scotsman)

• Keith Jackson: Brendan Rodgers’ actions hours before Celtic bomb went off make an extraordinary situation even more curious (Daily Record)

• How Brendan Rodgers and Celtic’s relationship met a sad and acrimonious end (Scotsman)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A “grooming gang” based in Dundee has been jailed for an horrific string of crimes at flats across the city between 2021 and 2022. The Romanian group, led by ringleader Marian Cumpanasoiu, drugged their victims and subjected them to horrific ordeals. (Mail)

📣 Arts and crafts retailer Hobbycraft has apologised to a customer thrown out of its Dundee store for objecting to a “No Terfs” badge being worn by a member of staff. (Daily Record)

📣 An 81-year-old man was killed after a light aircraft crashed near the Scottish Gliding Centre in Perth and Kinross. (STV)

📣 A fully-equipped fire engine, donated by Dundee firefighters to their counterparts in the West Bank city of Nablus, could be sent back to Scotland after being impounded by Israeli authorities for more than a year. (Guardian)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Asylum seekers will be housed in military barracks - including the Cameron Barracks in Inverness - as the government looks to stop using hotels. Industrial sites, temporary accommodation and otherwise disused accommodation are also being considered. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump has warned Vladimir Putin that Russia’s recent test of a nuclear cruise missile was “inappropriate” and said the US “has a nuclear submarine off your shore”. (Independent)

📣 China’s leader, Xi Jinping, will want to soften US support for Taiwan in their talks this week, say analysts. (🎁 New York Times - gift link)

📣 Amazon is to lay off up to 30,000 workers - 10% of the giant’s global white-collar workforce. (🎁WSJ - gift link)

📣 Scottish Information Commissioner David Hamilton is also an experienced international aid worker. But even he, it seems, has been taken aback by what he’s seen on a mission to Ukraine. He published a very raw video blog on his LinkedIn profile, after watching a women and her two young children bury their husband and father. (LinkedIn)

SPORT

⚽️ Aberdeen have added to the colour of Scottish football by hiring Lutz Pfannenstiel as sporting director. The 52-year-old German has had an extraodinary life.

He’s played in all six FIFA confederations in a 25-club career, once stopped breathing on the pitch three times after a collision, has modelled for Armani and once stole a penguin from a wildlife colony, keeping it in his bath for two days.

Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack says Pfannenstiel can be a catalyst for success in his new role. (STV)

IDEAS
Budget 2025: The key bits of speculation about Rachel Reeves’ choices, rounded up

🗣️ In little less than a month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves will set out her second Budget. Speculation about its contents will dominate politics in the run-up, and dissection of her plans will fill the weeks before Christmas, and determine the future of Keir Starmer and his government.

Chatter is being fuelled by several parties. The Treasury itself is “flying kites”, effectively market testing some ideas to see if the political fallout would be survivable. It will also - points out former PM Rishi Sunak - routinely tout a trio of “tax bombshells” so that the one it finally delivers will not seem so bad.

Various factions within government are also pushing pet ideas and warning the Chancellor off cuts in their areas. And, of course, opposition parties and special interest groups are pushing their own ideas, and making trouble.

Here are seven talking points from recent days, illustrative of the kites being flown, as well as the conflicting choices and advice Rachel Reeves must be seeing crossing her desk.

1. Spending may be cut and taxes put up, the Chancellor herself has suggested in the last 24 hours. That might sound like a statement of the bleedingly obvious, but given it’s come from Rachel Reeves, delivered to a group of business leaders in Saudi Arabia, it has the benefit of being the biggest kite flown so far. (BBC)

2. That will sound only half good to Rishi Sunak, who is a columnist these days and offers some unsolicited advice: Reeves should increase the fiscal headroom - spare cash - she gives herself, to reassure markets and thus reduce government borrowing costs. But she shouldn’t raise taxes to do that: she should cut spending. What spending should go he leaves to her - that’s the joy of being a columnist, not Chancellor, after all. But he nods to welfare cuts - which the parliamentary Labour party is vehamently against - being just the ticket. Raising taxes, he says, will “crush confidence still further and depress growth, making next year’s budget even more painful than this one”. (Sunday Times £)

3. She could raise billions without breaking manifesto pledges, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But they want to see a wider overhaul of the “unfair” and “inefficient” tax system, no wealth tax and no changes to income tax relief on pensions. (Independent) (IFS: Options for Tax Increases (report))

4. Startups have warned against a raid on limited liability partnerships - venture capital funds, which support startups, as well as private equity, law and accountancy firms are all alarmed at the prospect of having to pay employers’ National Insurance Contributions. (Sky News)

5. A mansion tax won’t cut it either, warn some commentators: a levy on properties worth at least £2 million, which is said to be on the cards, would not raise enough, according to former IFS director Paul Johnson. He’s calling for an overhaul of council tax, which is still based on 1991 values, and capped “so a small family home can end up paying not far off what a £50 million Mayfair mansion pays”. (Independent)

6. A gloomy Telegraph offers five ways the budget cost “cost us all billions” - not directly, but because some decisions could spook markets. So budgeting too tightly, or changing her (increasingly notorious) fiscal rules, bringing in “the wrong sort of tax hike”, increasing spending or simply proposing a higher deficit would all be bad news. (🎁 Telegraph - gift link)

7. The Guardian also offers its version of what Rachel Reeves should say. They propose a new public balance-sheet rule: net public worth (the value of assets minus liabilities) must rise over the economic cycle. That, plus a bank tax, will allow a “job guarantee” to secure full employment - and enable a lot of new borrowing. (Guardian)

Who’d be Chancellor?

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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