In your briefing today:

📣 Iran and the US are locked in a stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz, with the waterway effectively closed after three ships were attacked yesterday.

The ongoing closure of the waterway continues to plunge the world into a deeper energy crisis, and comes despite US President Donald Trump unilaterally extending a two-week ceasefire. (AP)

📣 Prime Minister Keir Starmer ignored advice to wait for Peter Mandelson’s security vetting to be completed, given to him by two of his most senior aides. It’s not clear if Starmer read the advice: no response is recorded.

The row over Starmer’s decision to appoint Mandelson, subsequently disgraced over his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, has already cost the jobs of Mandelson, the PM’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and the top foreign office civil servant Olly Robbins. Starmer himself continued to face calls for his resignation yesterday. (Politico)

📣 A trans killer being held in a women’s jail has been accused of sexually assaulting a women prisoner, sparking an outcry from campaigners and questions about why the Scottish Government has yet to act on last year’s landmark ruling by the UK’s Supreme Court.

Ministers are seeking to prove that some prisoners born as men have a human right to be in a women’s jail, although a written ruling on that case is pending. (Daily Record has the exclusive)

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📣 Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay is the latest party leader to be interviewed in the Scotsman’s series: he reveals himself to be an art lover. (Scotsman)

📣 Police Scotland has committed 4,733 data incidents deemed too minor to report to the information watchdog since 2019 - including one episode where the entire contents of a rape survivor’s phone was shared with her alleged attacker. (STV)

📣 BBC Scotland is shaking up its daytime schedule: the biggest casualty is Michelle McManus, who is to leave the station and her daily Afternoons slot. (BBC)

📣 A think tank says Britain should gear up for mass mobilisation now - before it’s too late. (The Sun)

📣 The UK will pay France £662 million over the next three years to stop migrants leaving its shores to cross the channel - but some of the funding is contingent on French measures being successful. (Independent)

📣 Whoops: a pilot’s desire for a better selfie led to a mid-air collision between two fighter jets, an investigation has found. (Guardian)

⚽️ Rangers captain James Tavernier will leave the club this summer, he announced, after 11 years at Ibrox. He leaves behind an extraordinary record of longevity during a crisis-strewn period for the club and, of course, 144 goals - even if many were from the penalty spot - a British football record for a defender. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Manchester City climbed to the top of the league last night, with a 1-0 win over Burnley. (BBC report & highlights)

⚽️ Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior was duly sacked yesterday, less than 24 hours after criticizing his players for their dismal performance on Tuesday night. The Early Line doesn’t like to say “told you so”, but… sorry, that’s just not true. Told you so. Barney Ronay says Rosenior had an impossible job, anyway. (Guardian)

🗣️ Magnus Linklater is unimpressed with the politicians and commentators who have blithly accepted Donald Trump’s calls to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas in the North Sea.

It’s a call that is “about as stupid as it sounds,” he writes, although it’s a message being “gleefully transmitted” by Reform UK, “a party so committed to fossil fuels that its policies could almost have been penned by the US president.”

“It comes at a time when the predictions about ‘hothouse Earth’ […] have become increasingly stark,” he writes. “Far from global warming slowing down, it is accelerating.” (The Times)

🗣️Young people are “terrified for the future” and believe they’re getting a raw deal compared with their parents’ generation, Eddie Barnes, director of the University of Glasgow's John Smith Centre, says.

The centre’s UK Youth poll reveals a generation “stalked by financial anxiety and economic uncertainty” with the basic premise that the next generation should always have it a little bit better than previous ones being broken.

“The alarm bells should already be ringing,” writes Barnes. “Only 13 per cent of young people disagree with the statement ‘democracy in Britain is in trouble’. When asked which UK leader best embodies British values, nearly a half said either ‘none of the above’ or didn’t know.” (Scotsman)

🗣️ Could the SNP “do the unthinkable” and form a coalition with a Unionist party? Emily Gray, managing director of Ipsos, quickly points out it isn’t that unthinkable, despite the headline: Alex Salmond did just that in 2011. And she also points out coalition government is what Holyrood’s electoral system is designed to produce.

Another partnership with the Scottish Greens doesn’t look attractive, reckons Gray: their previous demands frustrated SNP MSPs, and will be just as polarizing for them - and voters - a second time around.

So to the unionist parties and that “unthinkable” - there’s that word again - deal. Alex Cole-Hamilton has already said he’d fall on his sword ahead of doing a deal with the SNP, but that doesn’t rule out something informal. That would also be the least divisive possible coalition among the Scottish public. (Herald)

🗣️Steph Paton thinks Kezia Dugdale has had a bad start as the new chair of Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity. Paton is unhappy that Dugdale has failed to take immediate aim at author JK Rowling, “a figurehead of the anti-trans movement; a voice that demands headlines over every asinine opinion shared, and who openly, proudly, uses her wealth to fund the anti-trans movement.

“Yet in [an] interview, Dugdale seemed positively giddy at the opportunity to gush over how much she respects Rowling – without a passing mention of her funding of causes that actively oppose Stonewall’s supposed remit.

“If I had a time machine and the means to zap the activists of the Stonewall riot to the offices of Dugdale today, I wonder how they would react to an organisation that took the name of a radical bash back at the establishment, only to become the equivalent of a wet handshake toward it,” writes Paton. (The National)

🗣️Graham Grant reckons John Swinney is firmly in Neil Kinnock mode: hubristically making plans to stay in power long into his dotage. “Mr Swinney’s arrogance is boundless – but he might find there’s a steep price to be paid for his weapons- grade hubris,” writes Grant.

“Voters don’t like politicians who think they’ve got it in the bag, and even those tempted to back the SNP might be put off by the notion of wall-to-wall Swinney, stretching into the next decade.” (Mail)

🗣️ I try to avoid bias, except perhaps on the matter of Crystal Palace, but I’ll also make an exception here: Sarah Campbell is right about music in restaurants.

“From jarring, genre-hopping playlists to volume cranked up so loud that conversation is firmly off the cards, there are few easier ways to kill the vibe. And yet, it’s unfortunately all too common,” she writes.

Restauranteurs! We came for your food and the great company. Not your playlist. (Herald)

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