THE BIG STORIES
Starmer plans Civil Service surgery | Russia’s demands | Sturgeon’s unsparing political obituaries

📣 Keir Starmer will promise reform of the Civil Service in a speech later today, saying that record tax and spending has not led to an improvement in services. He will also target a 25% reduction in the administrative costs of regulation. (Guardian)

• Writing in The Telegraph he says the Civil Service is “overstretched” and “unfocused”. He targets planning, in particular.

• He promises to bring civil servants “closer to communities, free them from bureaucracy” and use AI to make them more efficient.

• Read his full piece in The Telegraph (£)

• Seven times British Prime Ministers raged against the Civil Service machine (Politico)

📣 Russia has presented a list of demands to end its war with Ukraine which, say officials, are similar to previous terms they’ve offered. Details, however, are scant. (Reuters)

• Meanwhile, a leaked document from a Russian think tank close to the government has set out a “maximalist” position as American officials travel to the country seeking a ceasefire with Ukraine. (The Washington Post has the exclusive £) (Daily Mail)

📣 Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon confirmed yesterday that she does not plan to stand for re-election next year after 27 years as an MSP. She spoke yesterday of her “sense of relief” at making the decision. (BBC)

• A round-up of reaction is below. 👇

IDEAS
The commentators’ verdict: through all her time in power, Sturgeon simply didn’t achieve enough

🗣️ In the end, it wasn’t a statement at Bute House, or a speech to the Scottish Parliament, that Nicola Sturgeon chose to end her time as an MSP.

It was a post to Instagram - more recently filled with pictures of a smiling Sturgeon enjoying the company of author Val McDermid and actor Alan Cumming - where she first told her Glasgow Southside constituents the news, before a press call in Edinburgh. Instagram had also been where Sturgeon announced the end of her marriage.

Her decision not to run next year was expected: the question had only been one of timings. Cynics say yesterday’s big news keeps Sturgeon in the public eye as she prepares to launch her own book - a still-untitled memoir - on 14 August this year. Chris Musson in The Sun (£) says yesterday was all about helping her write the last couple of chapters.

Others will point out a number of senior SNP figures have been bowing out in recent weeks: this is the time to do it, around a year out from next year’s poll.

Either way, the political obituaries were ready to roll, if not pre-written then certainly front-of-mind for the authors. In a leader today, The Scotsman (£) says Sturgeon was “one of the most capable and talented politicians of her generation.”

That talent, and her longevity in office, “should have produced something special, a legacy that almost everyone, opponents and supporters alike, would agree had improved life in Scotland. Instead, there is really very little that anyone can point to and say with pride: ‘Nicola Sturgeon did that.’”

That sentiment is a theme that runs through coverage of Sturgeon’s legacy.

In the Daily Record, Paul Hutcheon says she will feel “regret and frustration” as her political career draws to a close.

“Scottish politics will be smaller, quieter and duller without Nicola Sturgeon,” says Alex Massie in The Times (£). “It will also be better”. Many of the problems now besetting the SNP began on her watch, he observes, and her initiatives were “swaddled in a pious, priggish sense of moral superiority”.

In The National, Lesley Riddoch (£) says the decision to stand down was the right one, and notes that the “four long years” of Operation Branchform have “coloured voter attitudes” towards her and the SNP. But she is “unquestionably one of the greatest political communicators of her age” who Scots knew “was on the case 24//7” through Covid. “But lack of real progress finally caught up with a politician who was bigger on targets and promises than cunning long-term strategies.”

Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars pulls no punches in the Daily Mail. “She was not good at governing,” he writes, listing her policy failures. “She was incapable of being a national leader able to reach out beyond the party boundary,” he writes. “She was an unrelenting antagonist to all who didn’t toe her line.”

And in the Herald, Neil Mackay (£) also offers an unsparing verdict: she didn’t do enough that mattered. “What will be held against Sturgeon is her own myth-making. Throughout her premiership, her claims that ‘indy is coming’ were first a rallying cry, then mere sound, and finally an absurd joke.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A legal challenge against cuts to winter fuel payments starts today. A couple from Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire has brought the case to the Court of Session, alleging the UK and Scottish governments failed to adequately consult on their plans. (BBC)

📣 Women’s rights have “been set on fire” in Scotland, Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has said. He was speaking during a Holyrood debate on single-sex spaces. (The Scotsman)

📣 Environmentalists and others are voicing concerns about the impact of pumped-storage power stations being mooted for around Loch Ness. A long-existing station there can already lower the surface by six inches - if all the mooted stations were refilled simultaneously, it would be 1.2m, according to one campaigner. Another case of tension between new uses for Scottish natural resources and the people already dependent on them. (The Guardian)

📣 SNP MSP Natalie Don-Innes says she won’t be running in next year’s Holyrood elections. The former minister was first elected in 2021. (STV)

AROUND THE UK

📣 The BBC has said it is “deeply sorry” for not protecting female employees from email abuse from ex-presenter Alex Belfield. The former Radio Leeds presenter was jailed for five-and-a-half years in 2022 for stalking. (The Guardian)

📣 A thermal camera aboard a nearby ship caught the moment the cargo ship and tanker collided in the North Sea earlier this week. (🎥 See the footage)

📣 “Communal sweating in saunas” is, apparently, the UK’s biggest wellness trend. (AP)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Polling says US voters find Trump’s actions on tariffs and the economy “too erratic”. (Reuters)

🌎 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is likely to face an unfriendly welcome from his G7 peers as ministers from the leading industrialised nations meet in Canada today. (AP)

🌎 It’s like The X Files all over again… A “splashy” new documentary being shown at the SXSW Festival in Texas asserts there is extraterrestrial life on Earth and says there’s a US government effort to hide information about alien activity. It’s drawing gasps from audiences, but ire from critics. (The Guardian)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 Scotland’s rental sector is stabilising according to David Alexander, CEO of the eponymous sales and letting company. But demand is still outstripping supply. (The Scotsman)

💰 JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said “uncertainty is not a good thing” for business as the trade war between the US and other countries hots up. But he downplayed the impact on consumer behaviour. (Semafor)

💰 Consultants warned against the Abrdn rebrand, and thought it was a bad idea to the extent that consultants working for the company asked for their name to be removed from promotional materials. The company pressed ahead with the move, which has now been reversed. (FT £)

SPORT

⚽️ In the Champions’ League, Real Madrid squeezed past city rivals Atletico to set up a quarter-final clash with Arsenal. The game had been poised on a knife-edge after Conor Gallagher scored just 27 seconds in to the second leg, levelling the tie on aggregate. (🎥 See highlights)

⚽️ Aston Villa and Arsenal eased through having taken commanding leads into their ties. (🎥 See more highlights)

⚽️ Fenerbahce will be “hurting” when they arrive at Ibrox tonight for their Europa League second leg against Rangers, having suffered a surprise 3-1 defeat at home last week. (BBC)

• Interim Rangers manager Barry Ferguson said Rangers need to “stand tall” tonight if they’re to progress, as Fenerbahce will “come for us” (Daily Record)

• Meanwhile Fenerbahce boss Jose Mourinho is certain his side "are better than Rangers". It’s all classic Jose mind games, reckons Alan Pattullo. (The Scotsman)