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In your briefing today:

• The former Prince Andrew has his titles, and home, taken from him by the King

• In the weekly magazines: Why it’s time to abolish the monarchy | The Devil and AI | A battle for New York

• Edinburgh’s firework ban comes into place

📣 The King has stripped the now former Prince Andrew of his “prince” title and his mansion in Windsor, in a move that has been welcomed by the family of the late Virginia Giuffre. She had made allegations that, as a teenager, she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions. Andrew continues to deny those allegations. (BBC)

A statement released last night by Buckingham Palace said: “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.

“Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.” (BBC)

• “No one is bigger than the monarchy. Not even the king’s brother.” (AP)

• Is this finally rock bottom for Mr Andrew Mountbatten Windsor? (BBC)

• Not in this together: King Charles cuts Andrew loose to save royal family’s repute (Guardian)

• “An extraordinary punishment — unheard-of in the annals of the modern British royal family” (🎁New York Times - gift link)

• Scrubbing of Andrew’s titles is a humiliation for the history books (🎁 Telegraph - gift link)

• Continuing live coverage from Royal Lodge, Windsor (Mirror)

📣 The Scottish government doesn’t have a detailed plan to fill a £5 billion budget shortfall by the end of the decade, Scotland’s auditor general has warned. Stephen Boyle has also confirmed that, despite that, ministers recorded a £1 billion underspend for the last financial year, which was created by a £2.2 billion increase in UK government funding, and one-off savings. (BBC) (Times £) (Audit Scotland)

• “The SNP Government can't blame Westminster for its problems and then underspend its budget by £1 billion” (Daily Record)

• MSPs “in the dark” over Scottish Government fiscal plans (Holyrood)

📣 The two-child benefit cap is not likely to be entirely abolished in the budget. The controversial cap is hated by many Labour MPs, but would cost £3.5 billion to abolish entirely. With the chancellor already facing a £30 billion fiscal hole, the money will be hard to find.

Watch out for, instead, other measures to ease child poverty, according to officials talking to the FT. (FT £)

• Only full abolition of the two-child benefit cap will substantially cut poverty, says thinktank (Guardian)

• Rachel Reeves is not out of the woods on her failure to get the proper permits to rent out her home. She previously said her letting agent failed to tell her she needed a license. But a trove of emails released show her husband knew they would need a license - but relied on the agent to get one. The letting agent apologised yesterday for failing to do so. (Mail) (BBC)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Edinburgh’s firework ban zones come into effect tonight, in an attempt to prevent the kind of trouble which has marred recent bonfire nights. (BBC)

📣 Staff at Historic Environment Scotland who have been accused of racism are unlikely to lose their jobs, the new chairman of the troubled body has said. (Times £)

📣 “Morrisons killed us,” says Morag Doherty, who has worked in the most westerly shop on the British Isles since she was a child. Today The Ferry Stores in Kilchoan will close for the final time. (Guardian)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The United States has cancelled a summit in Budapest between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin after Russia said it would stick to hardline demands over Ukraine. (Reuters)

📣 Reporters are arriving in Jamaica and further illustrating the enormous damage from Hurricane Melissa. Aid is also arriving - but the scale of the challenge is huge. (Sky News) (BBC)

• Shocking satellite imagery shows the extent of damage (Independent)

📣 A Ministry of Defence official revealed confidential information by leaving a laptop open on a train, in another Afghan data breach. (The Independent has the exclusive)

📣 There have been five more arrests as the Louvre jewel heist investigation broadens out. Three of the four alleged “commando gang” are now in custody. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Ipswich Town’s Kieran McKenna might be many people’s frontrunner to take over at Celtic, but he says he’s had no talk about the job. He’s not ruling himself out, though. Another name mentioned for the Parkhead job, Craig Bellamy, says he’s committed to seeing out Wales’ World Cup campaign. (BBC)

🏉 Scotland take on the USA in their opening match of the autumn series, and Duhan van der Merwe has been urged to use his disappointing Lions tour as motivation for the season. (Scotsman)

📣 Tomorrow's Party Line - unlocked in full for paying subscribers - includes a full listing of all the weekend’s TV sport. It’s invaluable for the armchair fan… and paid subscribers make The Early Line possible! Upgrade today.

IDEAS
From the magazines: Why it’s time to abolish the monarchy | The Devil and AI | A battle for New York

🗣️ Given the Royal events of last night, The New Statesman’s cover story becomes even more timely: Will Lloyd’s long read demands the abolition of the monarchy. “Faced with the reality of monarchy, people simply do what they always do: they become blind,” he writes.

“The truth is that an estimated £13m of public money helped to fund the decades-long Caligulan lifestyle of a prince who cavorted with, among others, a convicted paedophile, a Libyan arms smuggler and a Kazakh oil baron. This truth was obscured, denied or ignored – that is, until Andrew’s world began to collapse in 2011.”

For Lloyd, Andrew’s downfall is just part of a wider decline in the state of the monarchy, an insitution that has its creed of “Windsorism” - of change made so that everything could remain the same.

“Windsorism relies on the moral authority of the Palace being greater than that of parliament. Charles has pushed Windsorism further than his mother. In a fractious and polarised multicultural society, Windsorists believe that only the Crown unifies.”

“‘Monarchy is, I do believe, the system mankind has so far evolved which comes nearest to ensuring stable government,’ Charles said in 1981. How stable is Britain now? The social peace and emollience the Crown is supposed to bring to our democracy have disappeared.” (The New Statesman £)

🗣️The Spectator has a cover story that I initially thought was going to be an extended Halloween metaphor. “The Devil rides out,” reads the headline (a thousand words on the EU? Hedge funds? Socialists? - this is The Spectator, after all). But the strapline mentions “the dangers of the modern occult,” and the lead author is Damian Thompson, and you realise… no, they’re serious. This is going to be about the actual Devil. And AI.

“The technology of artificial intelligence is now so advanced that even the people developing it are flirting with magical thinking and supernatural fantasies,” writes Thompson. “Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are talking in riddles that invest computers with occult significance.”

Meanwhile…. “The number of self-identifying witches in the United States has now over taken the number of Presbyterians,” writes Thompson, and “almost all” of them are using AI refine their magic, turning ChatGPT to write spells and craft incantaions.

Some of these people define right-wing Christians as their “sworn enemies”, and there’s plenty of focus on the Devil on that side of the political spectrum too: “Tucker Carlson devoted an episode of his YouTube podcast to ‘The Occult, Kabbalah, the Antichrist’s Newest Manifestation, and How to Avoid the Mark of the Beast’. So far it has notched up 2.6 million views; rarely can so many people have been treated to such a lavish smorgasbord of conspiracy theories in just under two hours.”

For Thompson, it’s all indistinguishable from hell. (The Spectator £)

🗣️The Economist leads on “The battle for New York”: the clash it can see coming between Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old leftist who is expected to win the city’s Mayorality on November 4, and Donald Trump, who has already promised to “straighten out” the city shortly afterwards.

“Mr Mamdani’s proposals make for terrible public policy,” says the newspaper, which doesn’t approve of the young politician’s plans for free childcare, free buses, a $30-an-hour minimum wage and four-year rent freeze. But “Mr Trump’s plans are a more literal threat to New Yorkers and, possibly, the law.

“The president has talked about an escalation of immigration enforcement, bringing to his home town the aggressive tactics he has tested in Chicago and other Democrat-run cities.

“The two men are set for a dramatic clash, with New York as its stage and victim.” That matters, says the newspaper: New York is important, not just for New Yorkers, but for America: a crucial economic engine with an economy bigger than Canada’s. The world will watch. (The Economist £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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