In partnership with

In your briefing today:

• A staggering - and record-breaking - pay package for the world’s richest man

• The owner of Sky TV is in talks to buy ITV’s TV channels

• From the weekly magazines - more shocking stories from maternity units. Do they expose a wider NHS failing? And is marriage on the rocks?

• Another poor night for Scottish clubs in Europe, with the only light a gritty point for Aberdeen.

📣 Tesla shareholders have approved a $1 trillion pay package for Chief Executive Elon Musk, a record-breaking plan “designed to motivate the world’s richest man,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new package could give Musk control over 25% of Tesla if he hits a series of milestones and grows the company’s value to $8.5 trillion over the next decade. It’s currently worth $1.5 trillion, and he owns 15%.

A big part of Tesla’s future will be in AI and robots. “Musk had said he wanted a big enough ownership stake in Tesla to be comfortable that the ‘robot army’ he was developing didn’t fall into the wrong hands, but not so large that he couldn’t be fired if he went ‘crazy’,” reports the Journal. (🎁 WSJ) (BBC)

• How Tesla shareholders put Musk on the path to be the world’s first trillionaire (Guardian)

• AI stocks continued to fall yesterday as concerns mount over the billions being spent on data centres. (Semafor)

📣 Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he is “angry and frustrated” over the accidental release of two more prisoners from Wandsworth Prison in London. One of the men has since handed himself in, but an Algerian sex offender remains at large. (BBC)

• Public “at risk” as more inmates sent to open prisons (Sky News)

• David Lammy finds himself in a perilous position (Independent)

📣 First Minister John Swinney has refused to rule out a tax rise in January, dropping his promise not to raise taxes for Scots in the next budget. His u-turn comes only a week after ruling the move out, driven by analysis which has shown a 2p increase in income tax applied in Westminster would lead to a £1 billion cut to the Scottish Government’s budget. (BBC) (STV) (Mail)

• Stephen Daisley’s sketch: Swinney spinning like a washing machine (Mail)

• Labour’s new deputy leader, Lucy Powell, has said Labour must stand by its promise not to raise key taxes (Guardian)

Read newsletters, not spam

Tired of newsletters vanishing into Gmail’s promotion tab — or worse, being buried under ad spam?

Proton Mail keeps your subscriptions organized without tracking or filtering tricks. No hidden tabs. No data profiling. Just the content you signed up for, delivered where you can actually read it.

Built for privacy and clarity, Proton Mail is a better inbox for newsletter lovers and information seekers alike.

Newsletters without the noise

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Grieving parents have urged the Scottish Government to introduce mental health lessons to every Scottish school. Three men - who each lost a daughter to suicide - met education secretary Jenny Gilruth: she described their message as “powerful”. (Daily Record)

📣 Culture Secretary Angus Robertson has admitted never meeting the board of the crisis-hit Historic Environment Scotland agency, despite a catalogue of scandals at the heritage quango, which receives more than £70 million in public money every year. (Scotsman)

📣 There’s a “substantial” risk to life from fire at Lenzie Academy, a report has found. (BBC)

📣 Thousands of North Sea oil workers will have to lose some weight - or lose their jobs - as new rules come into force. Anyone weighing more than 19.5 stone (125kg), including their work gear, will be banned from working offshore. (Mail)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The owner of Sky TV in Europe is in talks to buy ITV’s TV channels and streaming platform, in a move that would dramatically change the UK’s broadcasting landscape. (🎁 Bloomberg has the exclusive - gift link)

📣 Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been asked to appear before a US Congressional committee to answer questions over his links to Jeffrey Epstein. They don’t have the power to compel Windsor to appear. (BBC)

📣 The BBC has upheld a complaint against newsreader Martine Croxall after she changed the term “pregnant people” to “women” in a script, and raised her eyebrows while reading it. (Guardian)

📣 We’re not a very happy nation: eight in ten Britons say the nation is divided, up 10% from 2020, with half of people saying Britain’s culture is changing too quickly. (Mail)

SPORT

⚽️ It was another grim night for Scottish clubs in Europe - with only the tiniest shaft of light on offer. 

• In losing 2-0 to Roma, Rangers totted up their fourth consecutive defeat in the Europa League to confirm their position at the bottom of the table. There were boos at half time, and further protests against the club’s board. (🎥 Highlights)

• Three goals in eight minutes for Midtjylland sank Celtic, who could only respond with a late Hatate penalty. “I will try and teach them the game as quickly as possible,” said interim manager Martin O’Neill. (🎥 Highlights)

• Hope came in the unlikely form of Jimmy Thelin’s Aberdeen, who ground out “gritty” 0-0 draw with AEK Larnaca in Cyprus. That was no mean feat - the hosts had beaten AZ Alkmaar and Crystal Palace already this season. (🎥 Highlights)

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines: Crisis in NHS maternity units | Farage and co prepare for power | Who is Zack Polanski? | Marriage is on the rocks

🗣️ With ministers ordering an inquiry into maternity services in Scotland yesterday, the cover of this week’s New Statesman may not offer reassuring reading for women and anyone else with an interest in the country’s maternity services.

In England, nearly half of maternity units require improvement, or are rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission. Its own national investigation was commissioned in the summer.

Hannah Barnes points out that in the last decade, there have been three major investigations into failings at maternity units. A fourth is under way in Nottingham, a fifth is on its way in Leeds. “The failure is endemic and systemic - a ‘national scandal’ according to the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting.”

The New Statesman, with Channel 4 News, has been investigating yet another trust - Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - and heard “harrowing accounts” of deaths, injuries and trauma. “All of this has been compounded by the institution’s defensiveness in the face of criticism, and its extraordinary reaction when those most affected have chosen to speak out.”

The clear concern here is, as the Health Secretary himself puts it, this is a “moral failure” in the NHS overall - not just a set of tragic individual failures. (New Statesman £)

🗣️Nigel Farage and Reform are preparing for power. Ethan Croft writes that there is “a certain un-Farage-like seriousness” to the Reform operation. Leading in the polls, and with a “moonshot” chance at becoming Prime Minister, Farage is starting to think about who he’d put in his Cabinet - with few “recognisable politicians,” on the list, says Croft, in an echo of Trump’s appointment of business pals to key posts. (New Statesman £)

🗣️Marriage is on the rocks, says The Economist. “Throughout the rich world, singlehood is on the rise,” it says, with 50% of American men aged 25-34 living without a spouse or partner, and 41% of women. “Since 2010, the share of people living alone has rising in 26 out of 30 rich countries […] A great relationship recession is under way.”

What’s driving the change? Greater opportunity for women is the positive driver: financially, they don’t need a man’s support, and there’s less social stigma for staying single. But there are also more negative factors: unrealistic expectations, fuelled by social media and dating apps. “Most women on Bumble reportedly insist that a male must be six feet tall, thus filtering out 85% of potential matches,” the Economist notes.

More men are also failing to clear the bar of rising expectations around education and financial solidity. The “manosphere” has its own corrosive impact on their attitude and attractiveness.

“Many worry that a world with fewer couples and children will be sadder and more atomised,” the newspaper notes. But “a future with far more singletons is coming”. (Economist £)

🗣️Is Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, our version of Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the New York mayoral race? That’s the question notionally being posed by Andrew Gimson, although real comparisons between the pair are limited in his piece: this is really just a profile of Polanski.

And, being the Spectator, there’s a combination of fascination and - perhaps - a discernible horror at what he finds.

“Polanski promotes the politics of envy repackaged as the politics of hope,” writes Gimson. “He comes before the viewer as a nice guy. Although he describes great wealth as ‘obscene’, his tone is not rancorous.”

“The new Green leader seldom mentions the environment and never demands the sacrifices which saving it has traditionally been said to require. He has instead launched a left-wing, Momentum-style power grab, with himself playing the part of the new Jeremy Corbyn, leading a feel-good insurgency against the establishment.

“If Nigel Farage is the life and soul of the saloon bar, Polanski is the friendly proprietor of the local hipster coffee shop, making new arrivals feel welcome, behaving as if he is in an episode of Friends.” (Spectator £)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

Sent this by a friend?