TODAY’S WEATHER

🌦️ Both Glasgow and Edinburgh will see some rain amid the sunny spells today: over lunchtime in the east, and late afternoon in the west. Aberdeen and London should stay dry. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Pressure grows on Starmer as “Blairites” get key jobs | Scots “Jews not safe” claim | Life for mushroom killer

📣 Keir Starmer enters the new week under pressure, being told by senior Labour figures to “stop making mistakes” after Angela Rayner’s resignation last week. Union leaders are warning against any attempt to “water down” Rayner’s employment rights legislation, currently making its way through parliament, while Number 10 is said to be “braced” for a bruising contest for the Labour Party’s deputy leadership. (Guardian)

• Douglas Alexander, the new Scottish Secretary, says Labour can fight back in Scotland through “hard work, humility and listening to people”. (BBC)

• Ian Murray, Scottish Secretary until Friday, was furious after being sacked by Keir Starmer over the phone with no warning while at a public event for his beloved football club. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

• Murray was rehired within 30 hours in a junior government role. (The Times £)

• Starmer has appointed “Blairites” to key roles in an attempt to push through welfare reform and ease net-zero regulations, aiming to drive growth. The new cabinet meets for the first time tomorrow. (The Times £)

• Who would be Sir Keir’s worst nightmare as deputy Labour leader? (🎁 The Telegraph - gift link)

• Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is establishing a centre-left network within Labour, aiming to shift the party’s direction. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 The sister of a Scot murdered by Hamas in the October 7 atrocity says Scotland’s Jews no longer “feel safe” after the Scottish Government decision to fly the Palestinian flag over St Andrew’s House. Dan Barker reports: “Ms Schosloff’s strong words came as a letter signed by thousands of people accused Mr Swinney of risking the safety of Scotland’s 5,847-strong Jewish community by pandering to an ‘extremist and increasingly aggressive fringe of the activist class’.” (Daily Mail)

• Stephen Daisley: Scots Jews are entitled to a First Minister who acts with caution… they got Swinney instead. (Daily Mail)

📣 The Australian mother who served poisonous mushrooms for lunch, killing her estranged husband’s parents and aunt, has been jailed for life. Erin Patterson also served her husband, the Reverend Ian Wilkinson, the meal: he survived only after a liver transplant, and months in hospital. Patterson will serve a minimum of 33 years for the murders. (Sky News)

IDEAS
Five things we learned at the weekend, including: too much Farage on the BBC? And the impact of migrants on our public services

🗣️What impact do migrants have on public services? Tom Calver’s analysis comes up with a fascinating conclusion. In short, there’s “no clear evidence” that areas with lots of migrants had long NHS waiting times.

Indeed, many migrants start making an immediate contribution to the state, because they arrive at working age and pay taxes. Average wage migrants make much more of a lifetime contribution to the state than the average UK resident.

The problem is that contribution isn’t then used to reinvest in services that “make their arrival less burdensome,” writes Calver - such as more doctors, houses, schools and so on. The extra revenue they bring is simply used to lower government borrowing.

“The direct link between failing public services and immigration may be hard to pin down, yet we are all capable of basic maths,” he writes. We’re four million homes short, compared to the European average, for instance. That’s why, for some, the country feels full. (The Times £)

🗣️The rise of the Scottish saltire as an expression of anti-immigration sentiment has “shocked politicians”, writes Libby Brooks and Severin Carrell. It’s been fluttering “from Maryhill and Tollcross in Glasgow to Peterhead and Aberdeen in the north-east,” they write. Yet, “until now, the saltire was associated with pro-independence marches through city centres where billowing saltires were carried aloft, or the national football and rugby teams.”

But at least one politician who pinned the raising of the flags to the “far-right” has been slapped down. The SNP’s Bob Doris MSP accused the far right of “hi-jacking” the saltire. But a community group responded: “The flags were not put up by far right – it was some of your own supporters and friends.” (The Guardian)

🗣️There’s political turmoil in Japan after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he’d finally bow to pressure and step down. His resignation comes after a series of thumping electoral defeats for his Liberal Democratic Party’s ruling coalition, which left it short of a majority in both of Japan’s chambers of parliament. It could take until November to choose a new leader. (🎁Bloomberg - gift link)

🗣️ People often say Nigel Farage is on TV too much. In fact, he should be on our screens more, according to a new academic study of impartiality in broadcasting, and specifically its analysis of politicians appearing on top UK debate and panel programmes. Cardiff University Professor Stephen Cushion, writing on LinkedIn, says politicians from Labour and the Conservatives tend to dominate the airwaves, “despite the rise of several third parties, most notably Reform UK”.

Reform UK - and, so often, that means Nigel Farage - made up only 4.7% of appearances, despite having a 14.3% vote share. Perhaps the perception that Farage is never off our screens is because he’s such a dominant figure in his party… and he’s effective. (LinkedIn) (Read the report)

🗣️ Apparently we’re all reading less, and that decline could be making politics dumber, fear scholars. The Economist flags an experiment which The Early Line has highlighted before, where students of literature at two American universities were given bits of Dickens’ Bleak House to read and explain. Hilarity ensued.

Smartphones are being blamed for the decline in quantity and quality of reads: today’s sentences are shorter and simpler than ones of yore. The Economist also highlights the Scottish autodidactic tradition, where shepherds “maintained a kind of circulating library” by stashing books in crannies for their colleagues. “Today that zeal for personal advancement has diminished,” it says.

That decline may lead “to decreasing political sophistication”. “Lose the ability to read complex prose and he fears you may also lose the ability to develop complex ideas that ‘allow you to see nuance and to hold two contradictory thoughts together’. (The Economist £)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Staff at the University of Edinburgh begin a five-day strike today over plans to cut £140 million from its budget. (Scotsman)

📣 Police have renewed their appeals for information about a hillwalker who went missing a year ago. Ian Ross, 66, last spoke to his family on 6 September 2024, with his car found 12 days later in a car park in Torridon. (BBC)

📣 A £10 million programme of repairs to the M8 starts today, with nine months of disruption to Scotland’s busiest road likely. The work is at the Hillington interchange, and will span both carriageways. (STV)

📣 A consortium of Scottish heritage and design organisations have bought the brutalist Borders studio of textile designer Bernat Klein that fell into disrepair. They paid £279,000 for the building - 15 times its guide price at auction - but now face a £3 million bill to restore the building to use as a design studio. (BBC)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Londoners, and visitors to the capital, face transport disruption this week amid tube strikes every day this week. Members of the RMT union are striking over pay and conditions. (The Independent has a guide to what’s happening)

📣 Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that Israel’s government has deprived Palestinian detainees of even a minimum subsistence diet, and ordered authorities to increase the amount and quality of food served to Palestinian inmates. (AP)

📣 Norway heads to the polls today in an election that’s been “dominated by the cost of living, wealth taxes, oil fund investment in Israel and relations with Donald Trump,” writes Miranda Bryant. (Guardian)

• Explained: What you need to know about Norway’s election (Reuters)

SPORT

⚽️ Scotland are in the Belurussian city of Zalaegerszeg for a peculiar qualifier tonight, held in an empty stadium because of sanctions over the country’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Alan Pattullo reports, a few Scotland fans have made the journey anyway. They might not see a game, but the city is having a festival of venison and wine, so they’ll have fun anyway… (The Scotsman)

• Steve Clarke orders Scotland to get “horrible” (Daily Record)

• What did we learn from Scotland’s draw in Denmark? (BBC)

• Watch the game on BBC One Scotland from 7.45 tonight.

🏉 Scotland lost to Canada in the Women’s World Cup: Iain Morrison offers eight takeaways, in which he notes “Scotland were brave, resourceful and determined. They were also wasteful, inaccurate and outgunned in the red zone where the big Canadian forwards filled their boots.” He looks forward with some trepedation to the quarter final clash with England. (The Offside Line)