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👋 Good morning! It’s Saturday, 24 January 2026. I’m Neil McIntosh, editor of The Early Line, and it’s great to have you here.
📣 You’re reading the weekend edition of The Early Line. Paying subscribers get the full version, with six talking points and film, TV and sporting recommendations for the week ahead.
They also have my huge thanks for making the whole newsletter possible. If you’d like to join their ranks - thank you! - you can upgrade here.
And if that’s not for you, no problem: see you on Monday when the free Early Line is back at 7am.
Have a wonderful weekend, all!
🌦️ The weekend’s weather: The unifying feature of the weekend weather is that it’ll be chilly. Glasgow is dry today, wet much of tomorrow, while Edinburgh will see showers today and rain all day tomorrow. Aberdeen: solid rain, I’m afraid. Inverness has the best of it: sunny spells today, and cloudy - but dry - tomorrow. London will be wet this afternoon and tomorrow morning. (Here’s the UK forecast).
SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
Trump sparks uproar with Nato troops slur | His poll slump | Will AI end wealth? | Young Britons “written off” | Scotland’s new Pole Star | Fancy a Venetian palace… with a twist?
🍸 Donald Trump has achieved the apparently impossible: he has united commentators in Europe, across the political spectrum, after his remarks about European troops in Afghanistan.
To catch you up: in an interview with Fox News, he said: “We’ve never needed them … They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines.”
Veterans who watched their British comrades being blown up in Helmand have joined titles which would normally be supportive of the US President, and even Prince Harry, who served there.
American troops have called Trump a “draft dodger” - he received five medical deferments during the Vietnam war - and described his comments as “outright, 100 percent bulls—-”.
Keir Starmer has rebuked Trump, calling his remarks “appalling” and suggesting he should apologise, which marks a further escalation in tensions with the White House since the US President criticised the UK for giving up the Chagos Islands, on which the US has a base, to Mauritius.
The government’s bill on that handover was delayed in the House of Lords last night: hopes are rising among campaigners that it may now be reconsidered.
Upgrade to read the full Party Line, including some fascinating talking points: Donald Trump’s slumping domestic popularity, claims AI might make it impossible to make a fortune, an impressive new ship to tend to Scotland’s most lonely buoys, and a beautiful Venetian palace up for sale… with a grim twist.
PLUS: a little inspiration for your entertainment: top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend.
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