TODAY’S WEATHER

🌦️ It threatens to be a dreich day, especially in Glasgow where rain’s a threat all day. Edinburgh and Aberdeen will see rain in the morning, but should brighten later. No such concerns in sunny Inverness and London, which share a bright forecast and temperatures only a couple of degrees apart. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Keir Starmer comes out swinging for Farage | US government shuts down | Tragedy of Glasgow student

📣 Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned Britain faces a choice between Labour and the populist right, delighting his party’s conference with an attack on racism and fury on the right as he denounced Nigel Farage, saying the Reform leader neither “liked or believed in Britain”.

“We can choose decency. Or we can choose division. Renewal or decline,” he said. “It is a test. A fight for the soul of our country, every bit as big as rebuilding Britain after the war.” (Guardian) (Independent)

• Nigel Farage has accused the PM of “descending into the gutter” and promised to “teach Keir Starmer a lesson” in May’s elections. (Mail)

• Chris Mason: Starmer had to show his critics he can take on Farage (BBC)

• David Maddox: Starmer finally comes out fighting (Independent)

• A review of reaction to Starmer’s big speech, below ⬇️

📣 The US Government is shutting down after a partisan stalemate in Senate meant spending proposals failed to pass. Hours before a midnight, US time, deadline Senate Democrats voted to block Republican plans which would have kept federal funds flowing. (AP)

• The first shutdown since 2019 could, this time, lead to mass layoffs and service cuts, with Donald Trump warning yesterday that “they’re taking a risk by having a shutdown […] we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible […] like cutting vast numbers of people and cutting things that they like.” (Guardian)

• The shutdown could mean 750,000 federal employees are furloughed, with an impact on air travel as air traffic controllers and security officers are required to work without pay. (The Times £)

📣 A Glasgow University student took his own life on graduation day after being wrongly told that he hadn’t got enough credits for a degree. In fact, the geography student had achieved a 2:1 honours degree, with the University later claiming “misunderstanding or confusion” among staff on the correct process for assessment.

His family spoke out yesterday, saying he died “believing he had failed” and seeking “justice for Ethan in the hope that other students and their families do not have to experience the pain that myself and my family will have to live with forever”. (Daily Record) (Mail)

IDEAS
Starmer’s big speech: the pundits have their say

🗣️ Sir Keir Starmer’s make-or-break speech to his party yesterday wasn’t one that was heavy on policy. It wasn’t, Anas Sarwar might have noted, particularly heavy on Scotland either: the Prime Minister thanked Glasgow shipbuilders for helping defend Europe from Russia, and lumped the SNP in with Reform as people wanting “Britain to fail”.

As my Record collegue Paul Hutcheon notes, “His occasional references to Scotland were not a snub or a surprise, given he was speaking to a UK-wide audience.

“But the looming Holyrood election may end up being the decisive factor on whether Starmer’s second conference speech is his last.”

This speech, then, would always be about the broader impression it could create: of a Prime Minister with a purpose, a government with a plan, and some outcomes that do something to improve the lives of people who might vote for it.

Did Starmer succeed? Hutcheon stikes a pessmistic note: “Few people listen to conference speeches and Starmer will not have alienated or impressed anyone with his latest offering.”

Some might be alienated. The Daily Mail is furious: they’re calling Starmer’s speech “the day Labour dragged politics into the gutter”, by claiming Nigel Farage was an “enemy” of Britain.

“The Prime Minister triggered a bitter war of words when he used his speech at the Labour Party conference to repeatedly attack the Reform UK leader,” the newspaper reports, “questioning his patriotism just days after branding his immigration policies 'racist'.”

Farage, says the Mail, responded by accusing Starmer of “putting a target on his back” and “‘inciting’ the ‘radical Left’ against him and his supporters,” invoking the murder of Amercian far-right acitivist Charlie Kirk. The Mail gives Farage a column to set out his objections in detail.

Reaction to Starmer’s speech is more measured elsewhere. At Bloomberg (🎁gift link), Alex Wickham and Ellen Milligan say the Prime Minister bought himself time: “His party’s annual conference in Liverpool had threatened to be a pressure cooker of discontent with the embattled premier,” they write. “Instead, a barnstorming speech left his internal rivals humbled and the party unified behind him — for now.”

They report that Starmer and his team spent much of the summer recess thinking about how to define his premiership and the message he wants to deliver. “They concluded he had to dig deeper to persuade the voters who’ve soured against him over the past 15 months: he had to be more muscular in his arguments against him and what the Labour party is for - and against.” This speech was a product of that.

And at the Morning Star, Andrew Murray notes “moments of insight" in the speech, “as when he said Labour ‘must never, never find ourselves defending a status quo that manifestly failed working people’ and warned that the party had ‘placed too much faith in globalisation.’”

Among more friendly commentators, the reaction is warmer - but still guarded. “Keir Starmer saved his best for the fragile circumstances of a difficult Labour conference,” writes Martin Kettle in the Guardian. “It may not yet be enough to save him.

“All the same, this was by some way Starmer’s most effective and certainly his most interesting conference speech since becoming Labour leader five years ago.

“There was only one problem, but it is a big one. This was the speech that Starmer ought to have given before the 2024 election, not now.”

Kettle’s colleague, John Crace, also offers cautious praise, with a wearly glance at the British electorate: “It sounded as if it came from the heart,” he writes. “The work of a thoroughly decent man making the case for decency. It’s just not entirely clear if decency is what the British public demands of its politicians these days.”

Over in The Times (£), sketchwriter Tom Peck also isn’t sure if this speech is what the electorate wants. It all, he suggests, sounds a little like hard work. “It really isn’t that long ago that Starmer was promising ‘a politics that treads a little lighter on people’s lives’. Oh to have ever felt those light footsteps, even for just a day,” he writes.

“It is conceivable Starmer may ultimately not be forgiven for never giving an exhausted country the boring, quiet, lightweight politics for which he is so perfectly suited, and which it so desperately craved.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A man has been arrested in connection with an ongoing investigation into the death of a man whose remains were found on the shore of Loch Lomond. (STV)

📣 The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) pastor who raped a woman and abused eight children has been jailed for 14 years. The Rev James Harem was found guilty of 19 charges spanning four decades. (BBC)

📣 A descendent of Dr Elsie Inglis has added to the controversy surrounding a new statue to the trailblazing suffragist and doctor, saying it should be “more feminine”. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 The Caledonian Sleeper is going to stop at Birmingham from the New Year, in addition to its other stops between Scotland and London. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 EU leaders are meeting amid tight security in Copenhagen, with a busy agenda that includes building a “drone wall” on their Eastern border, and appropriating €140 billion of sanctioned Russian assets. (Politico)

📣 At least 69 people have died in a huge earthquake in the Philippines, and officials have declared a “state of calamity” as they struggle in its aftermath. (BBC)

📣 Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda will team up to bring torrential rain to the UK this week, with nearly a foot of rain forecast for parts of the country. (Independent)

SPORT

⚽️ Steve Clarke named his Scotland squad yesterday, with some familiar - very familiar - faces returning, including 42-year-old goalkeeper, Craig Gordon - who’s not played a competitive game since April - and 33-year-old Grant Hanley. (Scotsman) (Sun)

⚽️ Is this the year “Scotland’s playground bullies” - Rangers and Celtic - finally get a bloody nose? With Celtic mis-firing, and Rangers in crisis, Hearts have a huge opportunity to split the Old Firm - or even beat them, says Graeme McGarry. (Herald £)

• Ryan Stevenson: McInnes magic trick has me believing (Daily Record)

⚽️ In last night’s Champions League action, Spurs fought back to earn a draw away to Bodø / Glimt, Chelsea beat Benfica 1-0 on Jose Mourinho’s return to Stamford Bridge, and Liverpool - with Sarah and Isak on the bench - sank 1-0 away to Galatasaray. (🎥TNT Sports have lots of highlights)