THE BIG STORIES
Call on Swinney over University’s crisis | Flynn’s road to Holyrood opens up | Super Bowl spoiler alert

📣 First Minister John Swinney is under pressure from his own party to intervene in the financial crisis at Dundee University, with fears that the institution could be forced to shed up to 500 jobs. Dundee MSP Joe FitzPatrick has written to the FM asking him to consider what could be done, as the University forms plans to recover from a £30m budget shortfall. (The Courier)

• Emergency funding could help recovery plan (The Scotsman)

• Lecturer: how “reckless” decision-making worsened crisis (The Courier)

📣 Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, might have his route to Holyrood: Audrey Nicoll, whose Scottish Parliament seat for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine he’d had his eye on, has decided to step down after one term. (Daily Record)

📣 Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl while most of us were asleep. They “embarrassed” the Kansas City Chiefs, stopping what would have been an historic “three-peat” or triple win of the trophy. (Sky Sports: Match report & 🎥 Highlights).

• Kendrick Lamar performed the halftime show: Samuel L. Jackson appeared as Uncle Sam to kick things off. (Fox Sports) (BBC review)

• Superbowl ads are always a pop culture moment: here’s NBC’s roundup and review of this year’s big-budget, celeb rich moments. Including a spot for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise.

IDEAS
The “evil housekeeper” reshaping US government (And: could it happen here?)

🗣️ Have you ever heard of the “evil housekeeper problem”? No, nor had I, until the weekend. But the “evil housekeeper problem” matters a lot, now, as we watch Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) grab control of various parts of the US government machine.

As Dan Hon explains in MIT Technology Review: the evil housekeeper is the person who compromises all your fancy security measures by simply being in the room with the computer systems. “Because the intruder has physical access, you are in much more trouble. And the person demanding to get into your computer may be standing right beside you.”

That is what faces US government departments now, he writes. “It’s incredibly hard to protect a system from someone — the evil housekeeper from DOGE — who has made their way inside and wants to wreck it […] what DOGE is doing is a massive, terrifying problem.”

He says the US needs the equivalent of the UK’s National Risk Register, which discusses how the nation might recover from an attack on government. Except the US is being attacked from within. According to the UK Register, recovery might take months. Some individuals and organisations, reliant on funds from the federal government, might have to deploy a plan for the worst.

How did the US get there? According to Peggy Noonan (£), Ronald Reagan’s former speechwriter and long one of the most perceptive (and readable) columnists of the US right, the last US government went too far in demanding ideologically-pure policy. That just appeared too unreasonable to too many people. “Advice for everyone,” she offers. “The big domestic political lesson of the first quarter of the 21st century is ‘Don’t go too far.’ That way lies loss, potentially of more than you can imagine.”

Dark stuff. Could it happen here? At Prospect Magazine, editor Alan Rusbridger thinks it could. “You can be reasonably sure that there are a bunch of bright twenty-somethings in Tufton Street — the HQ of shadowy well-funded right-wing thinktanks — watching every move in Maga-land and plotting exactly how they could transplant it,” he writes. His conclusion: it would not be difficult to repeat in the UK what has been done in the US.

Sir Keir Starmer summoned his cabinet to an away day on Friday and had harsh words for colleagues queasy at harsher measures to control immigration. According to the Sunday Times, Starmer said: “Progressive liberals have been too relaxed about not listening to people about the impact of [failing to control immigration].” He also railed against those who are “complacent about the effects of globalisation” on voters who feel left behind.

Some in Labour are said to be alarmed that Downing Street is taking its cues from Washington. But perhaps Starmer is spotting the conditions that led to Trump v. 2.0 - and wants to stop them developing here. Every government has an inadvertent theme: preventing the UK’s own DOGE invasion could end up being Starmer’s.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Edinburgh and Glasgow’s city councils have begun talks over potential new “City Region Deals” to provide the billions in funding they say are needed to tackle “generational challenges. They’re pointing to recent “trailblazer devolution deals” for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands which gave new powers - and more cash - to the areas last year. The Scotsman has the exclusive.

📣 The Scottish couple found dead in France were not killed in a gangland hit, insists one former colleague, despite suggestions of that from local police last week. Andrew Searle was, before his retirement, a fraud investigator at Standard Life and Barclays Bank. (Daily Mail)

📣 Two Glasgow schoolboys missing for six days were last seen at Buchanan Bus Station boarding a bus to London, police say. (STV)

AROUND THE UK

📣 A second Labour MP has apologised for comments in a WhatsApp chat, after minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked over messages sent to the same group. Burnley MP Oliver Ryan said his comments were “completely unacceptable”. (BBC)

📣 Hundreds of people have been arrested since the New Year in a UK-wide crackdown on illegal working, the government has said. Teams raided 828 premises, including nail bars and car washes, making 609 arrests. (BBC)

📣 Nigel Farage is Reform’s biggest turn-off according to a poll - but Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have nothing to cheer, either (Independent)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰Rachel Reeves is calling senior executives from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest and Nationwide to discuss how to get the UK economy moving. The meeting, on Wednesday, will come just as banks start to report their full-year earnings. Sky News has the exclusive.

💰 It’s the toughest recruitment market since Covid, say recruiters. If you think you’ve read that before, recently, you have: it was also said just before Christmas, but things appear to have continued to worsen. Business confidence remains low: watch out for UK retail figures, due Tuesday, and GDP growth figures, due Thursday, to see if any green shoots are emerging. (FT £)

💰 Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports as he flew to the Super Bowl last night, and also promised a new wave of reciprocal tariffs on other imports later this week. (FT £)

SPORT

⚽️ In the Party Line on Saturday, we wrote that the hunt was on for the upsets in Scotland and England’s FA cups… few would have expected Rangers and Liverpool to be the victims. The consequences at Ibrox and Anfield are likely to be different, however: Rangers’ defeat is one of the biggest upsets in the Scottish Cup’s history.

• “Ger finished” reckons The Sun’s columnist, Kris Boyd (£), after Rangers’ 1-0 defeat to Queen’s Park at Ibrox. He says “Clement’s Rangers are nothing short of a shambles right now and he simply has to go.” (BBC: 🎥 Highlights | Match report)

• “The end of the quadruple quest” says The Mirror, of Liverpool’s exit. Slot spared his key players the trip to the Championship’s bottom side, Plymouth, and it backfired. (BBC: 🎥 Highlights | Match report)

• Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou is in deeper trouble: his side’s 2-1 defeat away to Aston Villa wasn’t a shock, with 11 senior players out. But eight turgid losses in 14 games isn’t a good look for a club with a £1bn stadium to pay for... (Mirror)

🏉 Scotland offered no surprises: they were blown away by Ireland in the first half of their Six Nations’ clash at Murrayfield, with the winners flying home 18-32 winners. “Scotland battled but Ireland were stronger, better, more clinical,” writes Graham Bean in The Scotsman. The game saw lengthy treatment for Darcy Graham: he was taken to hospital with concussion. (Scotsman)

• Player ratings (The Offside Line)

• BBC: 🎥Highlights | Match report