TODAY’S WEATHER

⛈️ It’ll be a wet start in Glasgow, getting a little brighter - and less wet - later. Edinburgh and Aberdeen are likely to have showers all day. London will be largely dry, but has a weather warning for gusty wind. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Starmer faces double crisis ahead of Trump visit | Boxing world mourns Hatton | Adolescence wins big

📣 The future of the Prime Minister dominates the front pages. He faces two pressing problems: the row over Peter Mandelson’s ties to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, which continues to damage him, and growing concern over a huge far-right march in London over the weekend. He hosts US President Donald Trump on a state visit tot he UK later this week.

• No 10 knew of “fatal allegation against Lord Mandelson” days before he was sacked (Mail)

• Tories demand answers over what Downing Street knew (BBC)

• Starmer: Britain will “never surrender” to far-right protestors who use English flag as “symbol of violence, fear and division” (Guardian)

• Musk speech at far-right march denounced as “disgusting” (Independent)

• Starmer warned by MPs that he’s in “last-chance saloon” (The Times £)

• “Free speech” row threatens to derail Starmer’s talks with Trump this week (Independent)

📣 Tragic news from the world of boxing: Ricky Hatton, a world champion in his day, was found dead at his home in Greater Manchester. The death is not being treated as suspicious. Hatton, 46, had spoken openly of his struggles with addiction and mental health over the years, and had survived suicide attempts. (Manchester Evening News)

• Beckham leads tributes to boxing icon (The MIrror)

• Chris McKenna: Hatton was “one of the most-loved British boxing personalities there will ever be”. (BBC)

📣 Adolescence, the Netflix drama about a schoolboy arrested for murdering a schoolmate, cleaned up at the Emmy awards overnight in Los Angeles. Its Warrington schoolboy star Owen Cooper received a standing ovation as he became the youngest ever male Emmy winner, picking up Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Jamie Miller. The production picked up five other awards on the night. (Mail) (BBC Live coverage & video)

• From the red carpet: photographs of the best-dressed celebs (Independent) (🎥 Video from AP)

IDEAS
The day more than 100,000 walked with Tommy Robinson, and brought a chill to central London

🗣️ When I saw the Tweet saying "150,000 people on Tommy Robinson march” on Saturday evening, I’ll confess to dismisisng it as the usual propaganda. I hadn’t heard the “Unite the Kingdom” march was coming, and assumed the accompanying aerial pictures of huge crowds in the centre of London were old ones, misused in the name of propaganda (which some posts, confusingly, were).

Until yesterday morning. It became clear, from multiple sources, that between 100,000 and 150,000 people had joined a march inititated by this far-right thug. Even more strikingly, reports The Observer, Elon Musk’s image was pictured appearing on huge screens along Whitehall, calling for “revolutionary government change” - “Fight for your futures!” the tech billionaire told them.

The Mail covered what happened around the fringes of all this - the moment the “protest march turned savage,” as an “unconscious man has to be dragged to safety by police as thugs batter horses.” They have video.

If it was alarming to see on the screen, it was worse to be there. Author Ian Dunt has a powerful account of what it was like to be accidentally caught up in it all. “I arrived at Waterloo at the wrong time yesterday. Outside the station were the fascists. A small army of them, nearly every one holding a flag they do not understand and a symbol they do not deserve to stand under. A great swell of entitlement, and hatred, and cultivated victimhood.”

Dunt’s partner is, in his own words, “a brown woman”. They had gone their different ways - she to go home, he to a meeting - and he was grateful she’d missed the group outside the station. “And so even then, within moments, they had done something which can never be forgiven. They had introduced a notion of racial awareness. They had made brown people feel unsafe. They had made the people who love them think in terms of personal security,” he writes.

Writing in The Telegraph (🎁gift link), Rakib Ehsan said the afternoon showed why Nigel Farage will have little to do with Tommy Robinson. We should not be surprised, he said, “given some of the people there, that the event resulted instead in significant forms of aggression towards police officers and undermined the cause of the British populist Right.”

Not all these people, says Ehsan, were of the far right. There were those proud of their history, heritage and traditions nursing “legitimate anxieties”.

Yet, notes Ehsan, “for a national rally with a supposedly strong emphasis on uniting these islands, a flurry of foreign provocateurs was on show to sow division,” including Musk and Brian Tamaki, who leads a religious organisation in New Zealand and has reportedly called for expressions of non-Christian religions to be outlawed.

On the streets, Sky News picked up this new theme of extreme Christian nationalism. “People carried wooden crosses. One person had a light-up crucifix,” reports Tom Cheshire. “When the crowd arrived at Whitehall, they were led from the stage in a chant of 'Christ is king'. And then a public recital of the Lord's Prayer shortly after that. It's an important difference. Not just a flag to rally around, but a religion too.”

Not that there was any shortage of flags - mostly St George’s Crosses and Union Flags, but a smattering of Saltires, Red Dragons and Stars of David. Elements of the kingdoms were, indeed, united.

Searching for positives, government minister Peter Kyle told Sky News yesterday that the march “doesn’t disturb me, because it’s actually proof that we live in a country where free speech, free association, is alive and well.”

But the sheer numbers involved will have come as a huge shock. Keir Starmer’s later, stronger statement - that Britain will “never surrender the flag” to far-right protesters - was less glib, and spoke more to real alarm in the government and its backbenches.

Were the protests a flash in the pan? Dunt thinks not. “It's clear now that we are in a battle of terrible proportions, he writes. “They are in their pomp.”

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Scottish Conservatives are warning that the Scottish Government’s justice reforms risk becoming a “sham victims’ bill” without “serious surgery”. (Herald)

📣 NHS staff are being “stretched beyond their limit” according to data released under freedom of information requests. (Scotsman)

📣 Campaigners are calling for a direct award of ferry work to the troubled Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & THE WORLD

📣 There’s a growing clamour for Charlie Kirk’s critics to be ostracised and fired from jobs, as the American right continues to mourn the conservative activist after his murder last week. (AP)

• The alleged killer continues to refuse to cooperate with authorities, and has not confessed to the crime. (BBC)

📣 Israel has stepped up its bombing of Gaza City, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived to discuss the future of the conflict. (Reuters)

📣 The UK and US are to sign a “landmark” deal to accelerate the development of nuclear power, in a move expected to create thousands of jobs. (BBC)

• The SNP is being urged to change its stance on nuclear to boost Scottish jobs (Scotsman)

SPORT

⚽️ Celtic’s Brendan Rodgers hailed new boy Kelechi Iheanacho after he scored a dramatic late penalty to beat Kilmarnock. It drew the line on a turbulent fortnight for Celtic. But Kilmarnock were also furious at the losing a point so late on. (The Sun) (Mail)

⚽️ Across the city, Rangers’ inquest continues after yet another brutal result: their 2-0 loss to Hearts at Ibrox on Saturday making this their worst start to a league campaign in 47 years. Club captain James Tavernier was sent out to face the press: he says this is the lowest he’s seen the club in his 10 years there. And he’s seen a lot. (Daily Record) (Scotsman)

📣 Scotland suffered a 40-8 defeat to England in the quarter-finals of the Women’s World Cup. The Scots were first on the board thanks to a Helen Nelson penalty, and scored last through Rhona Lloyd, but England showed their class in between for a commanding win. (BBC) (The Offside Line)

• It was revealed that the Scotland players had been distracted by the Scottish Rugby Union’s decision not to offer them contracts beyond the World Cup. Jade Konkel, who announced her international retirement on Friday, was one of those not being offered a deal: "There's been so many small conversations, background noise, and the fact that we made it to a quarter-final is - I'm not going to lie - through no help of the SRU,” she said. (The Offside Line) (BBC)