TODAY’S WEATHER

🌦️ A bright morning for Glasgow and Edinburgh will be followed by rain this afternoon. Aberdeen is bright and dry all day. London will see rain this morning but it’ll dry out later. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Portugal mourns after 15 die in funicular crash | Starmer backs under-fire Rayner | Glasgow’s “Golden goodbyes” criticised

📣 Portugal has entered a day of national mourning after 15 people were killed in an accident on Lisbon’s famous Gloria funicular railway. At least 18 others, including a child, were injured, five seriously, with some foreign nationals among the dead. (Guardian)

• Live coverage: The cause of the crash remains unknown. (BBC)

• Brave locals raced towards the scene as victims cried for help, video from the scene shows (Daily Mail)

📣 Keir Starmer has backed his deputy, Angela Rayner, after she admitted underpaying stamp duty when buying a £800,000 flat in Hove. Rayner blamed complex family and financial arrangements for a mistake in initial legal advice that failed to “properly take account” of her situation. (BBC) (Guardian)

• How merciless “Red Queen” Angela Rayner was brought down by a mess of her own making (Daily Mail)

• Sir Keir Starmer will do “everything he can” to save Angela Rayner’s political career. (The Times £)

• John Crace’s sketch: Angela Rayner is a picture of misery but Dr Kemi passes up an open goal (Guardian)

• Angela Rayner’s job is on the line - and she knows it (Independent)

📣 Audit Scotland has criticised £1 million of “golden goodbye” payments made by Glasgow City Council, saying the decisions “fell short of the values and principles expected” of them.

Payments included one of £357,845 to departing Chief Executive Annemarie O’Donnell’s pension, and two payments - of £223,065 and £59,971 - to Elaine Galletly, former Director of Legal and Administration. (Daily Record) (Audit Scotland: read the report)

IDEAS
Columns of note: Soaring numbers on out-of-work benefits, the “clandestine world” at Scotland’s heart, a sorry reshuffle and how Corbyn could hurt the SNP

🗣️ Fraser Nelson uncovers worrying unreported data about the huge numbers of people on benefits. “The UK keeps meticulous welfare records but they can only be accessed by querying StatXplore, the DWP’s near-impenetrable database,” writes Nelson on his SubStack. “It has just been quietly updated. Officially 1.67 million are claimant unemployment. But widen that to all of those on hidden unemployment - sickness benefits, etc - and the total has surpassed 6.5 million for the first time in history. There has been no announcement. There never is.”

This is a post-pandemic trend: there are more people on out-of-work benefits (as he calls this wider group of benefits) now than there was at peak Covid, in Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, London. It would be “an economic catastrophe if the UK was not able to import workers to take the place of those signed off on benefits,” he writes.

There are places where more than 50% are on these benefits - scroll down through the post to see a heat map, and Scotland in a particularly bad shape. “The waste of money is tragic,” he writes, “but the waste of human potential is far worse”. (Fraser Nelson on Substack)

🗣️Kevin McKenna launches a broadside at “a clandestine world” at the heart of Scottish politics and culture, noting that it’s almost five months since the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement on single sex spaces, yet For Women Scotland will be protesting outside Holyrood today, complaining about what they say is the Scottish Government’s refusal to act on the court’s decision.

“When I joined these women to greet the law lords’ ruling, their happiness at having been vindicated by the UK’s highest court was leavened with a degree of caution,” he writes.

“What they could not have foreseen was how quickly the backlash would begin to materialise and how malevolent much of it would become. It seemed to emerge from a dystopian world where truth, reality and freedom of thought had been replaced by lies, delusion and state diktat.

“Effectively, the Scottish Government has built a clandestine world which revolves around and among us. In its platinum lounges an anointed class of executives has evolved who communicate with each other through a language of nods, winks and symbols at events cordoned off from the rest of us. It proceeds with the silence and approval of those who one day hope to be rewarded for their acquiescence.

“They routinely subordinate the interests of working-class communities to the luxury beliefs of middle-class opportunists.” (Herald £)

🗣️Alison Rowat is unimpressed by the Starmer staff reshuffle. “Did anything sum up this Prime Minister’s political cluelessness like that reshuffle?” she asks.

“His personal poll numbers plummeting; his party barely staying ahead of the Conservatives and trailing Reform; a Budget looming; and the Prime Minister brings in people almost no one has heard of for reasons best known to himself. Will any pensioner facing higher fuel bills this winter sleep better for knowing Stuart Ingham has been appointed to Director of Strategic Interventions (whatever that is)?” (The Herald £)

🗣️Kenny Farquharson thinks the new political party led by Jeremy Corbyn could steal the SNP’s left-wing vote.

Lots of the talk is about how the new party will damage Labour. But Farquharson says the SW1 bubble hasn’t realised, yet, that its first electoral test will be in Scotland, where the dynamics are different. “Sure, a Corbynite uprising is a headache for Anas Sarwar,” he writes. “But speaking to lefties of my acquaintance I get the strong impression the party will cause as much trouble for the SNP as Scottish Labour.

“Why? Because the SNP has been the natural home for many years of exactly the kind of voter most likely to have their buttons pressed by the whiskery sage of Finsbury Park.

“I know these people and perhaps you do too. Some switched their allegiance from Labour to the SNP two decades ago in protest against the Iraq War. For others the final straw was Labour cosying up to the Tories in the Better Together campaign in 2014. Still more came to the conclusion long ago that the swiftest route to socialism was through Scottish independence.” (The Times £)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 First Minister John Swinney announced the Scottish Government would stop funding defence companies which supply Israel, amid “prima facie evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. As he spoke, a Palestinian flag flew above Holyrood.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the situation in Gaza was “beyond intolerable,” and that “the illegal occupation and genocide must end now”. In accusing Israel of genocide, Sarwar has gone further than Keir Starmer.

But Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay criticised the Scottish debate, saying Scottish ministers should use their powers to “improve people’s lives here in Scotland”. (BBC) (STV) (Daily Mail)

📣 Holyrood staff are now checking toilet walls for spy cams with some scared to use the facilities after claims of a hidden camera in a parliamentary loos. MSP Ash Regan said workers had been “looking around the walls” for signs of hidden devices. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 Nurse Sandie Peggie, already at the heart of an employment tribunal against NHS Fife, is taking further legal action against the health board and three colleagues, alleging harassment and victimisation. (The Scotsman)

📣 William, Prince of Wales, helped to perusade the late Queen to make her unprecidented intervention in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, according to a new book. At the time, the Queen told members of the public outside Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral, that she hoped Scots would “think very carefully about the future”. (The Times £)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Nigel Farage got a picture with Donald Trump in the White House, but only after a bumpy ride before a congressional committee examining freedom of speech rules, in which he compared Britain to North Korea. (Sky News)

📣 Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care, is now in operation at every acute hospital in England, health chiefs say. (The Guardian)

📣 Thousands of staff at Lloyds face losing their jobs if they don’t improve their performance, as the bank overhauls the way it manages its 63,000 staff and strives to “embed a high-performance culture”. Around 3,000 people deemed to be among the bottom 5% of performers will be put at risk of dismissal. (Financial Times £)

SPORT

⚽️ Scotland embark on a new World Cup qualification campaign on Friday, and Matthew Elder think it’s time for some changes to personnel and tactics for Steve Clarke’s side. “What many of the Tartan Army would like to see at the Parken Stadium […] is a refresh on the pitch after enduring some tough watches involving the national side,” he writes. (The Scotsman)

• Aaron Hickey is hoping to make the World Cup after “a two-year injury hell” (STV)

⚽️ Rangers’ sporting director Kevin Thelwell has broken his silence after a hectic summer of comings and goings at Ibrox, and a disastrous start to the season that sees manager Russell Martin clinging on to his job. He offered his backing to the manager. (Daily Record)