TODAY’S WEATHER

☔️☀️ It’s been a wet start across the country today, but it will brighten up by late morning in Glasgow, around lunchtime in Edinburgh and early afternoon in Aberdeen. London will see a little rain mid morning before warm sunshine this afternoon. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Thousands of jobs at risk in Scottish budget crunch | Starmer set for welfare concessions | Reform top in new poll

📣 Thousands of Scottish public sector jobs are at risk as ministers confront a “black hole” set at between £2.6 billion and £5 billion in the country’s finances. Pressures on public services, as well as the costs of achieving net zero and child poverty targets, will put acute strain on Scottish Government finances, its medium-term financial strategy has revealed. (Scotsman) (Holyrood)

• There will be “steep cuts” for areas outside the Scottish Government’s key priorities of poverty, climate change, economic growth and effective public services, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “Not all spending on the government’s priorities can and should survive the chop,” the institute says. “Indeed, the scale of the fiscal challenge could necessitate the Scottish Government to make trade-offs between its four priorities.” (IFS)

• Full details of Scotland’s Fiscal Outlook: The Scottish Government’s Medium-Term Financial Strategy (Gov.scot)

📣 Downing Street is ready to offer concessions to welfare rebels ahead of next Tuesday’s vote on its reforms, in an attempt to talk down more than 120 MPs who are posed to oppose the bill. Concessions could centre on eligibility for disability benefits, which have been a key point of contention. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

• Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meanwhile urging rebels to “read the room”. Angela Raynor, filling in for Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions for a second week yesterday, finally offered her backing to the reforms. (Independent)

• Brian Wilson: Time for change, Sir Keir: you must u-turn on benefits (Herald)

📣 Reform would win the most seats in a General Election, the latest YouGov poll has found. Support for the Conservatives and Labour has collapsed to less than half of the UK-wide vote. (Sky News)

IDEAS
Six ideas from the Substacks

An occasional review of interesting posts on Substack, the newsletter platform.

🗣️ A debate - or spat tinged with prejudice, depending on your view - is brewing about the state of London, sparked in part by this (reasoned and moderate, but worried) David Goodhart essay on how mass migration has changed the city over the last 25 years.

London’s a city I know well, to the extent you can know somewhere so vast well, and I don’t recognise some of what Goodhart writes about (although petty crime in the centre is undoubtedly worse in recent years, especially around the snatching of mobile phones, and fare-dodging on the Tube, both of which appear endemic).

It’s also clear how the reasonably moderate and reasoned critique of someone like Goodhart can quickly be amplified to a screech by the likes of Matt Goodwin, the rightwing commentator who dominates a big part of the discourse on that side of politics. Just see Goodwin’s X feed to see how he portrays the city. (David Goodhart)

🗣️By way of antidote, David Aaronovitch neatly and wittily parodies Goodhart, based on one of Goodhart’s X posts.

🗣️Not unrelatedly, Fraser Nelson has produced a documentary on Reform and Nigel Farage - Will Nigel Farage Be Prime Minister? - which airs tonight (Channel 4, 8pm). In his newsletter, the journalist reflects on what he found while touring the country preparing the film.

“We held focus groups in Solihull — swing territory, not Brexit heartland — and found something that surprised me,” he writes. “Most participants didn’t need persuading that Farage could become Prime Minister. Many, including young and previously disengaged voters, said they’d probably vote Reform. What was (then) my outside case was their base case.”

And he finds the concerns about immigration and race in the oddest places. “I meet Asim, a landlord from Salford, son of a Pakistani immigrant, with a Union Jack tattoo on one side of his chest and the St George’s Cross on the other. ‘This country gave my family everything,’ he says, having been bussed to Hamilton to campaign proudly for Farage. ‘But we’re importing people who bring their way of life and their habits here — and it doesn’t belong here.’”

Nelson finds a country ready to smash the glass and vote for a political revolution. It’s up to Keir Starmer and others to figure out how to stop Farage. (Fraser Nelson)

🗣️ Tina Brown’s Fresh Hell remains one of the best-written Substacks around, and she’s on fine form in her latest edition, writing about the women who are making the public eye.

She leads on the marriage of billionaire Jeff Bezos to journalist Lauren Sánchez, where “the 55- year-old bride Sánchez has proved that landing the fourth richest man in the world requires the permanent display of breasts like genetically modified grapefruit and behemoth buttocks bursting from a leopard-print thong bikini […] exuberantly and unapologetically [showing] the route to power and glory for women hasn't changed since the first Venetian Republic.”

Meanwhile, she writes, “Blown away by the massive ordnance penetrators that have phallicized our world, female political stars seem to have disappeared off the map.

“Why is mighty-voiced Michelle Obama relegating herself to that sappy podcast with her brother? Why are we supposed to admire 44-year-old former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, once idolized for her brave gesture of donning a hijab after a 2019 terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque, for drippily dropping out in January 2023 because she found politics “pretty unrelenting”? Her new memoir is called A Different Kind of Power, which seems to be the choice to not have any.” (Tina Brown’s Fresh Hell)

🗣️Kenny Farquharson has been wowed by Athens and Hydra, and taken some beautiful photographs with a camera that contains actual film. It’s a lovely read, and a lovely, evocative, black-and-white look. (The Jaggy Thistle)

🗣️Ed Conway, economics editor of Sky News, writes old-fashioned words very well too. His latest dispatch on Material World is long, but evocative, built around the extraordinary industrial landscape of Teeside (where I once played in a football tournament, surrounded on three sides by apocalyptic chemical plants, like some sort of Thunderdome devoted to plodding amateur sport).

Ed has a theory on why yet another big plant there has closed, the consequence of years of bad decisions and unfortunate events, and also why nobody really pays attention to this sort of industrial decline, and why they should. (Ed Conway’s Material World)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 First Minister John Swinney has apologised to Gypsy Travellers for the “Tinker Experiment” of 1940 to 1980, in which children were forcibly removed from their families in the name of integrating travellers into mainstream society. (STV)

• Read the full Scottish Government response, and background (Gov.scot)

📣 Mridul Wadhwa, the trans woman who resigned in disgrace from her role as CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre last year after a damning employment tribunal ruling, is running to enter Holyrood as a Green MSP. (The Times £) (Mail)

📣 Why are sheep disappearing from estates across the Highlands? Katharine Hay reports that “money talks”: carbon offsetting is more lucrative, but that’s having a knock-on impact on rural skills and employment. (The Scotsman)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 European leaders in Nato rubber-stamped an increase in defence spending to 5% of GDP, and thanked Donald Trump for driving the change. Secretary General Mark Rutte went as far as to liken Trump to a “daddy” figure presiding over two warring sides, calling him a “man of strength” at a press conference. (Independent)

📣 That stunning success of socialist Zohran Mamdani in the race to be the next New York City mayor has sparked a lot of concern in his own party, the Democrats. While many are hailing the young and charismatic Mamdani as a gifted campaigner, others see it as a big blow in the Democrats’ attempts to broaden their appeal and fight back against Donald Trump. (AP)

📣 A Reform UK council leader has quit, leaving his 18-year-old deputy in charge of Warwickshire County Council. Rob Howard, elected in May, said his health had forced the decision. (BBC)

📣 UK oil company BP saw its shares surge yesterday on claims its rival, Shell, was in talks to acquire the company. But Shell later denied the report. (Semafor)

📣 John Hunt, the BBC racing commentator whose wife and two daughters were murdered last July, has given an emotional first interview in which he describes the “legacy of love” they left behind. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ New Rangers manager Russell Martin made his first signing yesterday - right back Max Aarons arrived on loan from Bournemouth. (STV)

⚽️ Tony Bloom has completed his £10 million investment in Hearts, and says he’s ready to “disrupt the dominance in Scottish football”. (Scotsman)

⚽️ In-demand Dundee star Josh Mulligan looks likely to head to Hibs. (Sun)

⚽️ Shaun Maloney has returned to Celtic in a role looking after youth players’ progress. (STV)