In your briefing today:

📣 Scottish Government ministers are being accused of knowing the replacement Monklands Hospital was too expensive before May’s Holyrood elections - but keeping quiet about the project’s problems until 20 minutes before parliament closed for the summer.

Advisors told the Scottish Government the proposed £2 billion project should be abandoned two months before the election. The project has cost £225 million so far, more than four times the estimated £48 million it would take to fix problems at the existing Monklands hospital. (Times)

📣 Scottish Labour leadership hopeful Monica Lennon has said the contest “reeks of misogyny and male entitlement” as she battles against two - possibly three - other candidates to secure the necessary support to run.

“We can’t accuse others of cronyism if we operate like a private members’ club, placing personal and factional ties above principles and the country,” writes Lennon, who needs to secure more support from MSPs if she’s to make the ballot. “We must debate big ideas, find our backbone and rediscover boldness.” (See Lennon’s X messages) (Scotsman)

Three MSPs - Lennon, Michael Marra and Joe Fagan - have declared their interest in the job so far. A fourth - Katy Clark - is mulling running too, with nominations officially opening today.

📣 U.S. President Donald Trump says talks ​with Iran will happen later today, but refused to set a deadline for an agreement that could see the Strait of Hormuz reopened. Earlier, Trump said he’d called off an ‌imminent attack by the US on Iran in the hopes of accelerating talks. (Guardian)

Claude can be your analyst, editor, and strategist.

But most professionals are using it to fix grammar.

These 1,000+ Claude prompts take it from grammar tool to your most powerful AI work assistant.

Sign up for Superhuman AI and get:

Claim your free prompts

📣 Greek police say a man has admitted transporting the body of a Scottish woman in a suitcase to an abandoned building. A man, reported by the BBC to be from Afghanistan, has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, robbery and weapons offences. (BBC)

📣 The man responsible for delivering Glasgow 2026 said the city had "saved and reinvented" the Commonwealth Games, three years after its future was plunged into doubt when the original hosts pulled out. The games closed last night. (BBC)

📣 An MSP is calling on the Scottish Government to fund a cohesion strategy in the wake of last month's violent far-right rally in Glasgow. (Herald)

📣 Comedian Fred MacAulay has spoken about the freak golf buggy accident that almost killed him. It turns out a doctor friend saved his life. (Mail)

📣 Prime Minister Andy Burnham has promised a “relentless” fight against small boat crossings in the English Channel. (Independent)

📣 Britain could face shortages, farmers have warned, with a punishing drought for parts of England forecast to continue into next week. (Guardian)

📣 UK drugmaker AstraZeneca is in talks to combine with smaller US rival Bristol Myers Squibb in a deal that would create a $400 billion pharmaceutical group. (FT has the exclusive (£))

📣 “Violence as a service” is available from a shadowy network linked to Iran that arranges teenage hitmen to kill to order. Many get caught. (BBC)

📣 Pop star Ariana Grande will “take a break from public life” when her tour ends next month, amid ongoing public discussion of her health. That means she won’t take part in a London musical, as planned. (Independent)

⚽️ New Motherwell manager Alfred Johansson praised his players for grinding out a hard-fought win at Hibs, and revealed he missed the flowing move that secured them the winning goal at Easter Road. (Daily Record) (🎥 Highlights)

⚽️ Kilmarnock manager Neil McCann didn’t hold back after his side’s 4-3 defeat to St Johnstone. “We didn’t deserve anything. We were really poor,” he said. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Celtic take on Dundee tonight, as the Champions unfurl the league flag at Parkhead. What will a full season under Martin O’Neill look like, wonders Nick McPheat? (BBC)

🏅 Josh Kerr could be Scotland's greatest-ever sportsperson, suggests Susan Egelstaff. He’s certainly top of the active sportspeople, she argues, after a glittering fortnight of Commonwealth golds and a world record. (Herald)

🗣️ What’s going on in Scottish Labour? Anas Sarwar’s flight to a job in Andy Burnham’s government, and a place in the Lords, has sparked a leadership battle for Scottish Labour, and ensured the party is the soap opera of the summer for Scottish politics.

Monica Lennon, Michael Marra and Joe Fagan set out their pitches in Scotland on Sunday. All allude to the fact this one-time giant of Scottish politics is now struggling for any sort of electoral relevance at all.

Meanwhile, “insiders” have warned Rebecca McCurdy at the Herald that the infighting sparked by the leadership battle might tear the party apart. The big fault lines: the party’s position on the constitution and on trans rights. (Herald (£))

🗣️As the curtain closes on the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, First Minister John Swinney says people across the country can take “enormous pride” in what’s been achieved. “Over the past week, we have once again shown people around the world what we can deliver,” he writes.

We can expect the First Minister to focus on that topic in the coming week, with a series of high-profile visits across the country, starting in Aberdeen. (Herald)

🗣️ Why did nearly 50,000 migrants cross the border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta? It’s a bone of contention. In The Sunday Times, Katie Gatens hears of viral videos of people flooding across the border encouraging more to try.

Who was behind those videos? That’s less clear. Morocco has shown itself not to be above relaxing security on its side of the border, letting thousands across into Spain when tensions between the two countries rise.

But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also put in place one of the most liberal migration policies in Europe, and has blamed trafficking gangs circulating false information for the problems. (Sunday Times)

The New York Times, meanwhile, says Europe’s far right has entirely reset the tone on migration in Europe, turning a welcoming continent into something more hostile. (New York Times)

🗣️ What next for FIFA boss Gianni Infantino? The only place to look is The Times, where their football correspondent Martin Zeigler - current sports reporter of the year - has guaranteed himself another armful of awards next year with his scoop-after-scoop coverage of the Infantino plan to sell off the World Cup, and its subsequent implosion.

He now reports Infantino faces a battle to keep his job after the World Cup plan, from which he personally could have made tens of millions of pounds, collapsed. Support is ebbing away, he writes. “He’s an embarrassment,” one FIFA figure tells Zeigler, “and he’s not a lame duck but a dead duck.” (Sunday Times)

🗣️ Why is so much young Scottish footballing talent heading south to join English football academies? For the players, it’s the greater chance of winning first-team minutes: English clubs are better at offering that opportunity.

The trouble is, for English clubs, it’s a cold calculation: young Scots are cheaper to acquire than foreign ones, and can provide better support around the real diamonds - the ones they’re trying to polish. So most of these young Scots won’t make it. (The Athletic)

🗣️ And finally… broadcaster and Mail columnist Andrew Neil’s spat with British Airways shows just how far the airline has fallen, in so many ways. Not least that no staff were able to spot pissing off Andrew Neil would be a spectacularly bad idea.

Sent this by a friend?