In your briefing today:

👋 Good morning Early Liners! If you have a Hotmail email address, sorry, a couple of editions of The Early Line were badly delayed last week. That was down to Hotmail deciding not to deliver your email because of problems with spam from another sender. Hopefully, the problem is now resolved: thanks for those who flagged it, and your patience.

📣 Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he is “not prepared to walk away” after Anas Sarwar’s dramatic call for his resignation. Starmer met MPs in Westminster last night, with reporters locked outside hearing “several noisy rounds of applause” for the MP as he addressed them. (Guardian)

“Every fight I've been in, I have won,” the prime minister told his MPs. But there were also a number of critical questions from MPs. (BBC - live coverage)

📣 King Charles says Buckingham Palace “will stand ready to support” police in any investigations into the conduct of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York who has been embroiled in allegations surrounding his friend, Jeffrey Epstein.

In an “unprecedented” statement, the King said he had “profound concern” about the catalogue of allegations surrounding his brother.

The palace is prepared to hand over documents relating to Andrew’s engagements, guests in royal residences and correspondence from royal email addresses, it is reported. (Mirror)

📣 Whistleblowers say the jailing of a Scottish Women’s Aid boss has “only scratched the surface” of a scandal that involves “millions” of pounds of charity money.

Three women who worked at the charity’s Argyll and Bute Branch in Dunoon have spoken out after its former manager, Jay Reid, was jailed for embezzling almost £40,000 and spending it on holidays and jewellery.

They have made allegations about another manager - now dead - and say money intended for deprived children was mis-spent. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

While you were debating if AI would take your job, other people started using it to print money. Seriously.

That's not hyperbole. People are literally using ChatGPT to write Etsy descriptions that convert 3x better. Claude to build entire SaaS products without coding. Midjourney to create designs clients pay thousands for.

The Hustle found 200+ ways regular humans are turning AI into income. Subscribe to The Hustle for the full guide and unlock daily business intel that's actually interesting.

Start making AI money

📣 The Scottish Government has been accused of dragging its feet over grooming gangs, after it said it would take 18 months to conduct a national review that will, only then, inform whether a full public inquiry is required. (Herald £)

📣 A stalker who left a BBC Scotland presenter terrified over a four-year period has been ordered to stay away from her for life. (BBC)

📣 A “useful idiot” who set fire to a beauty salon amid a gangland feud has been jailed. (STV)

📣 The Trump administration plans to repeal the scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health, in a huge regulatory rollback being seen as a huge victory for the fossil fuel industry. (WSJ has the exclusive - 🎁 gift link)

📣 The United Nations faces “imminent financial collapse”, its secretary-general has warned, unless its member nations pay their dues. The US alone owes nearly $4 billion: 95% of the organisation’s arrears is from the US. (AP)

📣 Watch out if you’re travelling to Cape Verde: health authorities have issued a warning after 155 stomach bug cases were linked to the popular winter sun destination. It’s claimed four people have died within months of being struck down with bugs while on holiday. (Independent)

📣 The new Michelin Guide stars have been announced - with two British restaurants, both in London, getting second stars, all of Scotland’s three-star restaurants keeping their awards, and two new Michelin-starred restaurants here too. (The Caterer) (Scotsman)

🥇 Team UK suffered disappointment at the Winter Olympics as a potentially magical Monday became a miserable one instead. Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds lost their mixed curling doubles semi-final against Sweden. Kirsty Muir came fourth in the slopestyle final, by a tiny margin. And Mia Brookes did the same in the snowboard big air. (BBC - report and highlights)

🏉 England come to Murrayfield on Saturday: Scotland have little time to wallow in defeat after their embarrassment in Italy last weekend, and head coach Gregor Townsend could ring the changes, writes Mark Atkinson. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Expect a tussle over tickets for the Old Firm cup quarter final at Ibrox next month: Celtic are expected to claim their full allocation of away tickets - up to 10,000 of them, versus their normal allocation of 2,000. But police would have to agree. (Daily Record)

🗣️ A failed gamble? That’s the verdict on Anas Sarwar’s call on Keir Starmer to stand down yesterday, justified by commentators on the basis that Starmer - far from resigning - appeared to be able to galvanise support around his leadership. Yet few seem to think Sir Keir Starmer will be around for much longer.

In practical terms, Starmer was saved - for now, at least, by “three hours of frenetic activity as a group of about 10 ministers and officials at the top of government hit the phones in a desperate – and ultimately successful – attempt to shore up the prime minister’s position,” according to Kiran Stacey in the Guardian.

“It was swift, organised and united,” said one government insider. “It was an excellent operation by some really excellent operators,” said another.

That had come after a “heated conversation at 1.30pm”, reports the Daily Record’s Paul Hutcheon (£). “The twenty-minute discussion, described as ‘difficult’ by one of Sarwar’s allies, was the culmination of a range of soundings the Scottish Labour leader had taken over the weekend.”

Supported by his deputy, Jackie Baillie, Sarwar had concluded the Prime Minister was a liability: “a never-ending migraine for Scottish Labour,” as Hutcheon puts it. “The scandal over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US was the tipping point.”

In a leader, the newspaper backs Sarwar’s call. Such is Starmer’s unpopularity in Scotland, “anything else robs Scots voters of a real choice at the polls in May,” in the Holywood elections where Labour are currently expected to come third.

But that focus on Scottish political prospects, rather than the victims of Peter Mandelson’s friend Jeffrey Epstein, was the wrong tone to strike for Sarwar, says Euan McColm in the Mail. “Tone is vitally important in politics. Yesterday, Mr Sarwar struck the wrong one,” he writes.

In The Scotsman, Brian Monteith - no political friend of Sarwar or Labour - has little sympathy for any of the players. “Keir Starmer should not be Prime Minister. This opinion is not new, for it has been held by many people for a long time,” he writes.

“Taking up the role of Brutus, Anas Sarwar chose to plunge the knife into Starmer’s back on the grounds that the row over Mandelson’s original appointment (when many people were pointing to the peer’s known friendship with Epstein) was getting in the way of Labour defeating the SNP,” writes Monteith. “What a bizarre, disconnected, deluded and hypocritical statement it was.”

But the calculus applied by Sarwar is that his demand was justified, writes Severin Carrell back at the Guardian. “Despite anger among his colleagues and criticism that his decision to demand Starmer stands down was ‘idiotic, immature and self-defeating’, Sarwar’s political calculation is blunt and uncompromising,” he writes.

“A successful outcome for Sarwar, such as it is, relies on Starmer quitting now,” he cautions. “He needs Starmer to resign gracefully and with humility. And it would matter too who stands to replace him.”

The odds of that, this morning, look very slim indeed.

Sent this by a friend?