In your briefing today:

📣 US Vice President JD Vance has blamed the Iran war for the Republicans’ historic midterm election rout, sending shockwaves through Washington and starting a blame game that could envelop the heavily defeated Republican Party.

His apportioning of blame - on both the administration’s agenda and Republican party messaging - appears to have been done with Donald Trump’s approval, depsite claims in some outlets that his comments mark a split with the President.

Whoever he speaks for, the post-mortem of the defeat could leave Trump isolated, shape the agenda of his final two years in power, and see candidates to replace him, including Vance, jockey for position. (New York Times)

📣 Police officers will escort fire crews tonight as parts of Scotland brace for Bonfire Night, which has been marked in recent years by escalating disorder and attacks on emergency workers in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

Tonight’s security operation will see up to 1,700 officers deployed tonight as Police Scotland grapples with fireworks-related disorder, a major football match in Glasgow and the threat of a protest in Glasgow tonight. (BBC)

📣 A badly built drain caused the “devastating” Stonehaven train derailment in 2020 in which three men died, a fatal accident inquiry has determined. And unions have warned that a similar accident could happen again unless repairs to the UK’s railways are brought back in-house. (Scotsman) (BBC)

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📣 The UK government has moved to ban new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, although the plan will not affect any decision on whether to allow drilling at the Rosebank field. (BBC)

📣 First Minister John Swinney spent just 75 minutes discussing radical reform of Scotland’s councils before announcing they’d be replaced. (Herald)

📣 Nothing harmful was found in a suspicious package that triggered an evacuation of Elgin Academy yesterday. (STV)

📣 UK interest rates are expected to rise today for the first time in more than three years, as the Bank of England attempts to control rising inflation driven by the cost of fuel. (BBC)

📣 Hong Kong pro democracy activist Joshua Wong has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in a national security case: in messages written from prison, he worries that people will “forget Hong Kong” and “the countless ordinary people […] who have paid a price for their beliefs”. (Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 Typhoons are battering East Asia as El Niño makes Pacific “burn with fever” (BBC)

⚽️ It’s a big European night for Scotland: Celtic welcome Besiktas to Glasgow, while Hearts head to Switzerland for a late-afternoon kickoff against Thun.

⚽️ In the Champions League last night, it was a mixed night for English clubs.

🏉 Scotland face the All Blacks this weekend: Scott Cummings is looking forward to facing off against his former boss, David Rennie, who’s now head coach of New Zealand. (Scotsman)

⛳️ It’s the end for LIV Golf: the once-hyped golf league is set to wind down after an investor pulled out. (Golf.com)

📣 I wasn’t sure if we should take another long look at the American midterms today… But, reviewing the quality of the writing this morning, I thought it was worth our time. Events across the pond are seismic and will certainly impact our lives. So: a “what the columnists are saying” special on the midterms. Enjoy.

🗣️Nine writers identify the best and worst moments from Trump’s midterm rout. “Decency won,” writes one. “In an era of grubby corruption under a president who reveled in wanton cruelty, Americans have chosen a new path.” (New York Times)

🗣️ But read Allister Heath in the Telegraph and you might be tempted to observe: hell hath no fury like a right-wing commentator scorned. He’s a talented polemicist. “This was a referendum on a president who appears to be losing his capacities, who is terrifyingly detached from reality, who has fallen foul to narcissism, megalomania, delusion, impetuousness and mood swings,” he writes. “This was a verdict on Donald Trump’s Emperor Nero tribute act, on his White House ballroom-sized ego, on his court of sycophants, on his increasing incompetence, erraticism, impulsiveness, irrationality and capriciousness.”

Even when he was right, such as stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, he got it wrong, writes Heath. “Whatever a self-serving JD Vance might think, the Iran war was moral and necessary, but abysmally executed by a pathologically short-termist president who believes his own propaganda, doesn’t plan adequately, changes his mind incessantly, assumes he can take out a powerful regime costlessly, treats social media as a substitute for strategy and grit, and who, unbelievably, trusts Recep Erdoğan, the Pakistanis and the Qataris.” (Telegraph)

🎥 Right-wing US commentator Matt Walsh also reaches for the hyperbole as he lays the blame for defeat at Trump’s door, saying he “abandoned the America First principles that got him elected.”

“Just two years after Donald Trump retook the White House and Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, voters have made it clear - overwhelmingly - that, all things considered, they would prefer to be governed by the Democrat Party, which has been fully captured by communists who want half the country dead and openly seek to destroy Western civilization itself,” claims Walsh.

“There’s no way to soft-pedal this. It’s a political catastrophe of historic proportions. The Republican Party needs brand new leadership. No one should be spared from blame, starting at the top.” (Daily Wire)

🗣️ The mood’s lighter at the New York Times: Michelle Cottle may not be entirely straight-faced when she writes this is what Trump wanted: a result so bad, he faces “two years of nonstop, bare-knuckle brawling with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. In other words, Mr. Trump’s idea of heaven.

“Conflict is Mr. Trump’s jam,” she continues. “The nastier the better. For all his self-aggrandizing talk about building stuff, his true talents lie in combat and destruction. He long ago shattered the spine of the G.O.P., so humiliating its members now is a minor thrill at best. But facing off against Democratic majorities in both chambers still buzzing from their electoral win? Now that is something to live for.

“Expect Mr. Trump’s relations with Congress next year to make the partisan hostilities of his first term look like a meditation retreat.” (New York Times)

🗣️ The results may bring trouble for the UK government, reckons Allegra Stratton at Bloomberg. Those close to Andy Burnham may say they see the result as the beginning of the end for the populist right worldwide. But, with Trump constrained by a newly Democratic-controlled Congress in domestic affairs, he could turn his eye to the international front - “something that would make Burnham’s life harder, not easier,” she writes. (Bloomberg)

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