In your briefing today:

📣 It’ll be the “worst snow in a decade” for parts of England: after battering the south west with winds of 99mph overnight, leaving 58,000 properties without power, Storm Goretti is now going to bring a big dump of snow to the Midlands. (BBC live coverage)

📣 There have been protests across the US in the wake of the killing of a woman by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. Officials in Minnesota say their access to evidence for an investigation has been blocked, with the FBI taking charge of the probe. (CNN live coverage)

📣 ScotRail has launched an investigation amid claims staff have taken “backhanders” in exchange for contracts.

The probe’s focus is on “at least two members” of staff at the Scottish Government-owned train operator, who have been suspended.

There are claims gifts - including a car - had been accepted. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

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📣 Scottish Labour faces a tough battle to get Anas Sarwar into Bute House in May. But, reports Paris Gourtsoyannis, the mood in the Scottish party “isn’t one of despair on panic”: they have a plan, “a strategy where success relies on this being one of the most tactical, and closest, Scottish elections of the devolution era”. (BBC)

📣 Edinburgh University’s principal is willing to go where Scotland’s politicians fear to tread… and suggest that Scottish students be allowed to pay towards their tuition. Professor Sir Peter Mathieson says the current funding system is unsustainable. (BBC)

📣 The Scottish Government’s budget, being delivered next week, is now likely to pass after Anas Sarwar indicated Scottish Labour would abstain on the vote. The Scottish Conservatives are critical of the “free pass”. (Daily Express)

📣 Two drivers who killed a mother as they raced their cars at 111mph on an Ayrshire road have been jailed for eight years each. (Daily Record)

📣 Iran’s internet access has been cut as protests demanding regime change have grown across the country. Security and judicial services promised tough action against protestors, but their threats offered no deterrent. (AP)

📣 Nigel Farage now has 34 school contemporaries accusing him of racist and antisemitic behaviour, raising fresh questions about the Reform UK leader’s evolving denials. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 The capture of that tanker in the North Atlantic earlier in the week highlighted a “shadow fleet” that exists across the globe, transporting illicit oil. The Wall Street Journal has a detailed explainer on how that network works. (WSJ - 🎁gift link)

📣 Could The Telegraph’s “Save our pubs” campaign score a rapid win? They claim Rachel Reeves is working on plans to offer relief for pubs who were fearing a big increase in business rates this year. (Telegraph £))

⚽️ Rangers are on the brink of spending £7 million on two new signings: full-back Tour Rommens, 22, will join from Westerlo, while midfielder Tochi Chukwuani joins from Sturm Graz.

⚽️ There’s no further news, yet, on Kyogo Furuhashi’s proposed loan back to Celtic after his disastrous year away in France and Birmingham. But Chris Sutton has told him to stop dithering and sign on the dotted line. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Hearts have made a couple of signings already in this transfer window, but boss Derek McInnes says there could be more yet - although a few fringe players in his large squad need to move on, too. (Daily Record)

🗣️Reform is plotting a path to Number 10, trying to assemble a vast team of parliamentary candidates, potential peers (500 of them, it is suggested) and backroom staff ahead of forming a government by the end of the decade, writes Tim Shipman.

It’s also taking inspiration from Donald Trump 2.0, - you’ll hear echos in plans for mass detention and deportation of illegal migrants and a “‘great repeal bill’ to withdraw from international treaties, override the human rights act and the equalities act”.

It’s also, reports Shipman, taking inspiration from historical figures such as Lord Haldane, the Scottish-born Labour politician and philosopher who, according to Reform’s Danny Kruger, “basically modernised the British state”.

Kruger wants to send a message to the “deep state” he expects will oppose Reform at every turn. “I want to say to the system: ‘You shouldn’t try and oppose us. We’re not Lenin-ists, we’re conservatives, we’re restorationists,’” he says.

“And yes, you might not like our position on international law, but get over it. We’re not going to destroy the country. So you shouldn’t want to block us, but if you do we will use the power of democracy to blow you away if we have to.” (The Spectator (£))

🗣️British-American foreign affairs guru Fiona Hill speaks at length to The New Statesman’s Daily Politics podcast this week about the world’s evolving “spheres of interest”, and the magazine runs an edit of the conversation.

Hill, who advised Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump v 1.0, is quite the expert witness.

Will the US come to dominate the Americas, while the rest of the world is divvied up between Russia and China? It’s not a certainty, she says.

“Spheres of influence might be all nice and neat and great for historians to talk about, but they rarely go uncontested,” she says. “The US is not the overlord of every country in Latin and South America in the way that it might have been. Brazil is a major power, it’s got options.

“Other countries are not as weak as Venezuela is. Are Canadians really going to just go along with anything that is pushed upon them? We can see from recent events in Ukraine and elsewhere that when people are put under a lot of pressure, some of them decide to fight back."

“This is a totally different place, the world we live in now, than it was 80 years ago, 40 years, 30 years, or even 20 years ago. It’s much more complicated, and I’m not so sure how much Trump is going to be able to throw his weight around.” (The New Statesman (£)) (🎥 Here’s the podcast episode, on YouTube, that includes the interview)

🗣️ “For 12 years Nicolás Maduro terrorised Venezuela,” notes The Economist. He stole elections, killed, raped or tortured opponents, looted the economy, propped up Cuba, supported Hizbullah, aided Iran and cosied up to Russia and China.

And then he was suddenly gone, snatched by US special forces.

But, for all that he was a bad man, and that this was a stunning display of hard power, the method of his departure helps neither Venezuela nor the US, the newspaper says.

What does it all mean? “Smaller countries close to the United States may feel they have no choice but to submit to Mr Trump’s bullying. Yet in the years to come, many leaders will seek to reclaim their sovereignty. And many countries will quietly seek closer ties with other powers, including China,” the newspaper says.

“Unless coercion is balanced by attraction, Mr Trump’s hemispheric doctrine will eventually fail and, in doing so, weaken the United States.” (The Economist (£))

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