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In your briefing today:

• The budget arrives tomorrow - Rachel Reeves is calling on her Labour colleagues, and banks, to give it their support

• Rangers have shown their chief executive and sporting director the door after a dire start to the season

• What on earth is a “fish disco”, and why is it needed at a nuclear power station? All is revealed…

📣 Rachel Reeves is urging Labour MPs - and banks - to get behind her “make or break” budget, which she will deliver tomorrow. Amid swirling speculation about what measures she will unveil, she has said her Labour colleagues might “not like every measure”, but promised it would be “fair”. (Guardian)

• Banks have been asked to praise the budget after they escaped a tax raid (FT £)

• How much will it hurt? Budget predictions include changes to tax, benefits and savings (Mirror)

• Allegra Stratton: A “Destroy it yourself” budget? “As the nation braces for a council tax surcharge on its more valuable properties, home-owners have become very seriously interested in how to suppress the value of their manor.” (Bloomberg - gift link)

• Britain is in a “growth emergency” says business secretary (Mail)

📣 Russia has launched a wave of attacks on Kyiv overnight, as peace talks intended to halt the war continued in Abu Dhabi. (Reuters)

• Last night’s attacks hit residential buildings and energy infrastructure, while Russian air defences also shot down 249 Ukrainian drones, it was claimed. (AP) (BBC live coverage)

• Zelensky hails changes to Trump’s peace plan (Independent)

📣 John Swinney has agreed to meet the victim of a Scottish grooming gang as calls grow for an inquiry into child sexual exploitation. The First Minister will meet “Taylor” - not her real name - after she wrote a letter detailing the abuse she faced, and calling for an inquiry similar to that taking place in England.

Labour MP Joani Reid, who has campaigned for a grooming gangs inquiry in Scotland, said: “I welcome the First Minister agreeing to meet Taylor, but he has to stop dragging his heels on a independent review into organised child sexual abuse.” (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

• The NSPCC has called for “ministerial leadership” on tackling child sexual abuse in Scotland, warning the country still lacks a clear understanding of its scale and nature. (The Herald has the exclusive)

• Opinion: “The lack of a national review of grooming gangs in Scotland puts us out of step with other parts of the UK. The idea that the problem was rife in England but somehow stopped at the Border is now looking increasingly out-of-touch.” (Daily Record)

• The bill for Scotland’s historical child abuse inquiry (which is looking into institutional abuse) is now at £114 million. (Daily Mail)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Grieving parents who lost their son to suicide have warned schools are “shutting the door” on life-saving mental health education. (Daily Record)

📣 The reviews are in for BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast: and they’re not bad. Host Martin Geissler gets particular praise, although the pleas for interaction from the audience were less successful. (The Scotsman) (The Herald)

📣 Two hillwalkers were rescued after getting stuck on the Forcan Ridge in Glen Shiel on Saturday, in a blizzard. (BBC)

📣 They’re the Scottish boys who’ve scored the first vital hit of Christmas: five young lads who rocked up to a house in Denny, triggering a motion-detecting doorbell before unexpectedly bursting into a rendition of Wham’s Last Christmas. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Nigel Farage has responded to historic claims of racism by saying he “never, directly, really tried to go and hurt anybody”. Around 20 people have accused the Reform leader of racism and antisemitism as a teenager. (Guardian)

📣 Brexit is costing the UK up to £90 billion in lost tax revenue a year, a highly respected US think tank has estimated. (Independent)

📣 The head of the House of Commons’ culture select committee has questioned whether the BBC is in “safe hands” under the chairmanship of Samir Shah. Dame Caroline Dinenage called Shah’s evidence to the committee yesterday as “wishy-washy”. (BBC)

📣 A volcano in Ethiopia has erupted for the first time in 12,000 years, forming a huge ash cloud and grounding flights. (Independent)

SPORT

⚽️ Rangers have sacked chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell after the club’s disastrous start to the new season. They ended up paying the price for a disastrous start to the season: the club spent more than £20 million on players and brought in a new head coach in Russell Martin, only for several of the players to struggle and Martin be replaced. (Scotsman)

• Keith Jackson: They were out of their depth (Daily Record)

• Kris Boyd: The pair took Rangers backwards and had to go (The Sun)

⚽️ As trailed over the last couple of weeks, Frenchman Wilfried Nancy is on his way to Parkhead. He could take over on Monday, after taking in the game between Hibs and Celtic at Easter Road. (Daily Record)

• Nancy will target a move for Columbus Crew’s Palestinian striker Wessam Abou Ali as soon as he’s confirmed in the job. (The Sun)

IDEAS
Links of note: Why it wasn’t a good COP summit in Brazil | Raging at budget rage bait | The £700 million ‘fish disco’ | Remembering… Norris McWhirter

🗣️It was not a good COP conference. The global climate summit ended at the weekend with “a whimper,” notes the Economist (£). Terrible weather blighted the start of the conference; later, the venue went on fire.

“Michael Mann, a prominent American climate scientist, called it ‘a disturbingly apt metaphor’ for the talks, which many say may no longer be fit for purpose.”

What was actually agreed? The BBC rounds up the takeaways, which are… vague, at best. “The most important thing to come out of COP30 is that the climate 'ship' is still afloat,” notes Justin Rowlatt and Matt McGrath. (BBC)

🗣️In yesterday’s newsletter, I included the tale of woe from a Telegraph reader bemoaning the tax take on her £125,000 salary, and the further threat posed to it by tomorrow’s budget. It wasn’t the only piece featuring someone well-off complaining about tax in last week’s newspapers.

Mic Wright takes aim in his newsletter, (half?) jokingly pointing out that if the Daily Mail’s owners are allowed to buy the Telegraph “we’ll have moved ever closer to a British press where the majority of the output is rage-bait about house prices and news stories that make sure to note the value of murder victims’ houses.”

He takes aim at another Mail-owned title, the i paper, which ran a story: “We were hit with a £148k inheritance tax bill when mum died at 97 - it's disgusting”. It is, he says, designed to get both sides of the argument riled up: “Those people who genuinely believe that inheritance tax is appalling will share in Lemon’s disgust, while those who think that it’s fair enough that you pay some tax on a huge and unearned windfall will be enraged by the article’s whole premise.

“If the i paper wanted to reflect a true range of views, it might have grabbed a quote from any one of the other think-tanks not designed purely to advocate for wannabe non-taxpayers,” he suggests. “The question the newspaper could also have asked Mrs Lemon is this: Who does she think should pay taxes?” (Mic Wright’s Conquest of the Useless)

• The budget is tomorrow. I’ll round up all the last-minute advice for Rachel Reeves in tomorrow’s newsletter, if that doesn’t entirely put you off…

🗣️ A “fish disco” at Hinkley Point nuclear power station is set to join the annals of bafflingly expensive environmental protections - alongside that £100 million “bat tunnel” that’s part of HS2 - after it was revealed it and other measures will save 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout each year.

The “fish disco” and other fish protection measures will cost more than £700 million.

The disco gets its name because it hits the fish with a noise that keeps them away from the plant. It will also incorporate a “fish recovery and return system” and low-velocity water intake heads.

It’s prompting a discussion about complex and expensive environmental measures which are being insisted upon by wildlife bodies, and pushing up the cost of development. (The Times £)

🗣️If we’re off a similar generation (Gen X), you may recall Norris McWhirter as the genial geeky chap (before geeky was a thing) who appeared on the BBC’s Record Breakers, presented by Roy Castle, to take us through his literally encyclopaedic knowledge of world records.

You weren’t likely aware that his twin brother had been assassinated by the IRA in 1975 after offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of its notorious Balcombe Street Gang unit.

Or that the brothers were “dedicated, prolifically litigious Right-wing firebrands, who vehemently campaigned against trade unions, gay rights, and opposed sporting sanctions during the era of apartheid”.

It’s all remembered in detail in Gary Ryan’s nostalgic piece about the McWhirter brothers. (🎁 Telegraph - gift link)

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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