In your briefing today:

📣 Counter-terrorism police are investigating potential links between Iran and a suspected bomb plot aimed at an RAF base used by the US military.

Five men were arrested early yesterday morning on terrorism charges, and three vans - parked minutes from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire - were searched. Reports this morning suggest investigators found what looked like improvised explosive devices in the vans. (Guardian)

📣 Chancellor John Healey will claim Britain is to enter “a new age of industrialisation” today, as he confirms that new floating docks for the Faslane submarine base on the Clyde will be built in the UK.

The move comes after extensive lobbying for the docks to be built at the Navantia yard in Fife: a revamp of the base will cost £15 billion over the coming decade. (ITV News) (Scotsman)

📣 New Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra has claimed the Scottish Government has “hoarded” money and control in Edinburgh, and has called for the devolution of power to Scotland’s regions. He made the comments during his first speech as leader to the conference, yesterday. (BBC)

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📣 It’s been two weeks since Sophie Rose Jenkins announced on LinkedIn that she wouldn’t be returning to St Andrews University this academic year because of the classism on campus. The Guardian finds “a growing tension” at St Andrews, “driven by the funding model of Scotland’s cash-strapped universities”. (Guardian)

📣 Thousands of staff at the University of Edinburgh begin a five-week period of industrial action over spending and job cuts. (Independent)

📣 SNP members have launched a new pressure group to demand the party “reprioritise” its central mission. (The National has the exclusive)

📣 Former First Minister Humza Yousaf has a new book out - in an extract from Under Fire, he tells of finding out - as he was preparing to speak to SNP party conference in October 2023 - that his in-laws were under direct attack in Gaza. (Sunday Times)

📣 Avanti West Coast train services, which run services between London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, are to be nationalised next March. (Sky News)

📣 France’s far-right National Rally party, whose Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is running in elections in April next year, have won a record 14 seats in the Senate. (Guardian)

📣 President Donald Trump downplayed US arms sales to Taiwan in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping by asking the Chinese leader if he’d be in the market for US arms. (AP)

📣 Iran has insisted diplomacy must continue after the US rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stop fighting. (Reuters)

⚽️ The fallout is only starting after Manchester City were found guilty of the majority of 115 charges against them, writes Paul MacInnes. (Guardian)

⚽️ Tom English is one of the many Scottish football reporters who gamely get a piece out of Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Slovenia, when many of us will view it as two hours we’ll never get back. (BBC)

⚽️ The Republic of Ireland beat Israel 3-0 last night in a match dominated by the politics surrounding it: the football was straightforward, even if nobody shook hands, Ireland bowed their heads during the Israeli national anthem, and Celtic’s Liam Scales was dropped after his support for Gavin Bazunu, the Ireland goalkeeper who refused to play, in a fraught pre-match team meeting. (BBC)

⚽️ Jurgen Klopp is still waiting on a win as Germany boss: after a 1-1 draw with the Netherlands on Thursday night, they lost 1-0 at home to Greece last night. (BBC)

🗣️ Just how far would you - should, could you - sacrifice your own child’s education in the name of equality? That’s the question that’s been raised by both the brilliant writing and actions of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter on race and inequality, who wrote a remarkable essay on her decision to send her daughter to terrible schools on principle.

They had access to better because she and her husband are members of Brooklyn’s upper middle class - good jobs, great area. But instead they decided, in an act of solidarity with other black families, to send her to schools in poor, largely black districts. They figured they’d improve the school by doing so - their middle-class questions, and influence, would stiffen the resolve of teachers and other parents. And they thought any educational shortcomings could be made up.

It didn’t go well, and the proverbial really hit the fan when young Najya, now 16, started researching college options and discovered just how poorly regarded her school was.

It’s a remarkable piece to read, not least because Hannah-Jones maintains a degree of reporterly distance on her own actions. Indeed, she’s unflinching as she appears to point to the cruelty of what she forced on her child.

The headline - “In fighting for every black child, did I betray my own” - poses the question. Her reporting makes the answer quite clear. In doing so it raises issues that are just as relevant in Scotland as in Brooklyn. (New York Times)

🗣️ I wrote on Saturday morning, in the Party Line, about Manchester City being found guilty of multiple charges of cheating, and how it has cast a shadow over an entire Premier League era.

Since then I’ve been looking back at some of the evidence. It’s right, I think, to salute some of the journalism that uncovered what City has been up to. Nick Harris, who writes the Sporting Intelligence Substack, is one of the journalists who did the hard - often near-forensic - work to figure out what was going on, and ask questions of the club

As he reports, in a post first published late last year - but still entirely interesting and relevant today - City’s reaction to his questions wasn’t to try and answer them, or smooth it away. It was to try and get him sacked. (Sporting Intelligence)

🗣️There’s a lot of the apocalypse about, from angst about AI annihilation to worries about World War Three. Before - or in addition to - that, the climate, Covid and the fall of Western democracy might have kept you awake, too.

David Wallace-Wells asks: why do we think this way? Are we right to sense our world is spinning out of control?

He looks back across Covid and sees, yes, chaos - but also “the first time in human history that vaccination had won a race against the global spread of a novel infectious disease”.

At this point, however, he’s less certain humanity has a handle on AI. (New York Times)

🗣️There’s been an awful lot of ink spilt about Earl Spencer’s book, Swan Song. Tanya Gold’s review, which appears to alternate between sympathy and appalled observer, is worth a read.

She notes, for a start, that this isn’t really a book about Diana - this “strange, self-deceptive books” is really Earl Spencer’s Swan Song.

She also sees a story of abuse: abuse is threaded through the entire volume. “Most of my notes about Swan Song relate to familial abuse in the Spencer and royal family: move the gaudy objects and public obsession aside, and this is what is left,” she reflects. (Observer)

🗣️ Celebrity Traitors is back, and the lineup has been released: the BBC will be hoping for a repeat of last autumn’s huge success, when it outgunned I’m A Celebrity and Strictly to be the buzziest of the “reality” shows.

There’s a decent celebrity turnout: actors Michael Sheen and Richard E. Grant will ham their way through it, while mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry might provide some analytical rigour to the innocents’ deliberations - assuming she’s not nominated as a Traitor… (BBC)

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