TODAY’S WEATHER

☀️ It’s another bright day for Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness. By contrast, London will be overcast - but still dry. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Poll: Farage would be PM if election was held today | Starmer to announce ID cards | £300 million for Scottish communities

📣 Reform UK would be on the brink of an outright majority in the House of Commons if an election was held today, the latest polling reveals. Nigel Farage’s chances of entering Downing Street have “significantly increased” with the new figures, which suggest his party would win 311 seats - up from today’s five - making it comfortably the largest party in a hung parliament.

Labour would fall to 144 MPs, losing 267 of its current seats, with a large portion of the current cabinet losing their seats to Reform. Only nine Labour MPs would remain in Scotland, and three in Wales. The Conservatives would face the choice of becoming the junior partner in a coalition with Farage. (The Times £) (Sky News)

• Sir Keir Starmer has compared Burnham's economic proposals to Truss's “disaster” (BBC)

• Chris Mason: Starmer’s irritation with Burnham shows (BBC)

📣 Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce ID cards are to be made mandatory in a speech later today. The cards will be used for right-to-work checks, in an effort to slow illegal migration to the UK.

Polling shows strong support for ID cards. But civil liberties groups have branded the proposals “un-British” and said older and vulnerable people could be “locked out” of services. “Show us your (digital) papers” says the Daily Mail’s front page. (Independent) (Guardian) (Mail)

• YouGov: polling shows steady support for ID cards (YouGov)

• How would the “Brit card” digital ID work? (Independent)

• Keir Starmer: The left ignored immigration fears for too long (Telegraph) (BBC)

📣 The UK Government says almost £300 million of public money will be spent on neighbourhood projects in Scotland, but there are already concerns over how the money will be allocated.

Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander described the programme as “direct funding from the Scotland Office to local communities the length and breadth of Scotland”.

But council leaders in Glasgow cautioned against repeating mistakes made under previous programmes run by Conservative governments. (Herald)

IDEAS FROM THE WEEKLY MAGAZINES
Britain’s going bust, Burnham’s glowing profile, and why are we so bad at learning foreign languages?

🗣️Is Britain going bust? That’s the question posed by the front of this week’s Economist. And, tl;dr: the answer is “yes”.

Our public finances are the problem. We borrow more than 4% of our GDP each year, and we do so outside a big currency block such as the Euro or dollar. Yet the required change to make things much more sustainable is relatively small - a tightening of the belt of 2% of GDP is all it would take. That saving needs to come from over-generous pensions and welfare handouts, the Economist says.

“However, in Britain, as in France, the inability of the political system to grapple with a solvable problem is itself a symptom of decline,” says the newspaper. “The Labour government is led by technocrats with a working majority of 157 in Parliament. It has forgiving budget rules and as long as four years until the next election. If it cannot put the budget on a sound footing, then who will?”

The answer is the bond markets which did for Liz Truss. We are close to that happening again, the Economist says. “If Britain cannot budget responsibly by choice, then markets will force it to do so by necessity” (The Economist £)

🗣️ I mentioned yesterday that Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was on manoeuvres: those moves started with a very well-constructed profile - released online on Wednesday and well-worth the price of this week’s New Statesman, if Burnham might be your sort of politician.

Editor Tom McTague gave himself the job of profiling “Labour’s prince across the water”, and droitly paints the picture of a capable man from the north who has never sought to shake off his roots, is enjoying being back among them in his current job, but can’t help looking south to the bigger challenge.

What is Burnhamism? “To his critics, Burnham’s real agenda is less ideological than political, focused on his own advancement,” writes McTague.

“‘Public control is everything,’ he tells me. And now he wants more: control of housing, energy, water, rail – ‘the basics of life’ as he calls them. ‘I’ve described what we’ve been doing here as rolling back the 1980s.’ This, then, is today’s Andy Burnham, the anti-Thatcher – the north’s revenge.”

That sort of promise plays well in some places, although the Economist’s leader writers - and bond markets - might take serious fright. And even before that judgement is required, Burnham has to figure out how - and if - he could return to Westminster. Others may object to the suggestion that running Manchester is somehow preparation for running the UK.

So perhaps all seems a little far-fetched. But that could all change, and quite quickly. If it does, it all started here. (New Statesman £)

🗣️In the Spectator, Douglas Murray is unimpressed by the recognition, by the UK, of the state of Palestine. Keir Starmer, he says, appears to be “labouring under a number of misunderstandings” - that it would make any difference, that any of the “prerequisites” for a Palestinian state exist, that there’s any plan to get there. Moreover, he says, it was a reward for terrorism.

So why do it? Murray points to remarks by US secretary of state Marco Rubio who “make the point that none of our policians would” - “that Britain and co only recognised a state of Palestine because our country’s immigration policies mean we have been ‘flooded with foreigners who have become politically active and are insisting their government do these sorts of things’. (The Spectator £)

🗣️Anthony Browne tackles an issue that often tortures me: why are Brits like me so poor at learning foreign languages?

He identifies two issues “that never get mentioned”. First, that we have lots of places abroad to which we can travel… and speak English just fine. Second, there’s no obvious language to learn. French isn’t even a top 10 language globally. Spanish is spoken in the most countries, but Mandarin has the most globally.

The rest of the world solves this problem by choosing English. So maybe, he concludes, we should stop feeling guilty about it. (The Spectator £)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Children as young as seven can view graphic material on their school-issued iPads, parents have warned, despite assurances that search engines were blocked on the devices. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 Police are reviewing how they handled a protest by gender-critical campaigners which was met by a disruptive counterprotest by a trans rights campaigner. (The Times £)

📣 John Swinney has apologised to the young footballer left in agony on a football pitch for five hours after she broke her leg. Brooke Paterson, who plays for Linlithgow Rose Ladies FC, has since undergone surgery. (Mail)

📣 Scottish Television has announced plans to cut 60 jobs and produce only one news programme for Scotland. (STV)

📣 A much-loved Ash Tree on Argyle Street in Glasgow has won the annual tree of the year competition. (Guardian)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Sir Tony Blair wants to run Gaza. He’s made “repeated” visits to Jerusalem, and his London-based foundation is drafting a plan. “Multiple sources” say Blair could head a body called the “Gaza International Transitional Authority”, which would seek a UN mandate to be “Gaza’s supreme political and legal authority” for five years. (The Economist (£) has the exclusive) (Mail)

• Telegraph view: Tony Blair is Gaza’s best hope for peace (🎁 Telegraph - gift link)

• Trump says he “will not allow” Netanyahu to annex West Bank (BBC)

📣 A PPE company linked to Michelle Mone, which is being sued for £134 million, has only £666,000 left in assets. (Daily Record)

📣 Donald Trump has escalated his campaign of retribution against political foes, with charges brought against former FBI Director James Comey and an effort to classify some left-wing groups as “domestic terrorist organisations”. (AP)

• Trump gets the retribution he sought, and shatters norms in the process (New York Times)

SPORT

⚽️ Rangers lost 1-0 to Genk last night at Ibrox, with boss Russell Martin left wildly frustrated - and booed - on the sidelines once more. Genk had enough changes to have made this defeat much, much worse.

But the Ibrox boss could legitimately look to at least two very harsh refereeing decisions, and a moment of stupidity from Mohamed Diomande that earned a straight red card, as foundational to the defeat. (Record) (Sun) (Scotsman)

⛳️ Martin Dempster looks forward to the Ryder Cup, teeing off today, and says Rory McIlroy’s Team Europe can turn in the equivalent of a Broadway performance on Long Island to bring the trophy back across the Atlantic. (Scotsman)