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Thursday 21 May 2026
In your briefing today:
First Minister John Swinney has unveiled a slimmed-down cabinet, in which only he has kept the job he had before the election
Elon Musk’s SpaceX conglomerate has revealed plans for a vast listing on the stock market. It gives investors the chance for a big bet on a futuristic vision.
Scotland’s John McGinn led Aston Villa to a memorable European victory
TODAY’S WEATHER
THE BIG STORIES
Swinney’s ‘lean’ new cabinet | Streeting plans ‘wealth tax that works’ | Musk plans huge SpaceX share offer
📣 Former education secretary Jenny Gilruth has been promoted to Scotland’s deputy first minister, and will combine the role with finance secretary, as she emerged as the big winner in John Swinney’s reshuffled - and slimmed-down - cabinet. Swinney himself is the only cabinet member to have the same job from before the election.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s former Westminster leader, enters cabinet only days after winning his Aberdeenshire seat, becoming responsible for economy, tourism and transport. The ambitious Flynn will be kept busy by a brief that includes sorting out Scotland’s ferries.
Ivan McKee has also been promoted to secretary for public sector reform - a role which pundits see as central to cutting back Scotland’s civil service. (BBC)
📣 Prime Ministerial hopeful Wes Streeting wants to introduce a “wealth tax that works” as part of his pitch. It would work by increasing capital gains tax so it matches income tax, which he thinks would raise £12 billion a year. (BBC)
Andy Burnham, also hopeful, will back Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s changes to immigration laws, which would look to limit both legal and illegal migration. (Guardian has the exclusive)
📣 SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rockets-to-AI conglomerate, has revealed plans to list on the US Nasdaq stock exchange at a valuation of around $1.75 trillion, in a move that could make Musk a trillionaire.
The company’s filings reveal a lot of detail about the sprawling but hitherto opaque company, including the huge risks investors are being invited to take in order to buy a piece of a company that aspires to provide vital infrastructure for a future age of AI and space exploration. (Guardian)
Later in today’s briefing: Five things to know about SpaceX ⬇️
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AROUND SCOTLAND
📣 Two walkers on the West Highland Way had to be rescued after they drank water from a burn and - despite using filters - fell severely ill. (BBC)
📣 A new cycle lane in Greenock, part of a regeneration scheme in the town, is dividing a town - both metaphorically and literally. (BBC)
📣 Steam wins: the historic paddle steamer Waverley gave a lift to CalMac passengers left stranded on Mull when the much more modern Isle of Mull ferry broke down. (The Times)
Opinion: Bring back paddle steamers (Scotsman)
AROUND THE UK & WORLD
📣 The governor of the Bank of England has warned the government against attempting to control supermarket prices after the Treasury held talks over freezing the prices of essential goods. (Times)
Rachel Reeves plans to announce a range of measures to combat the rising cost of living later today (Independent)
📣 Net migration to the UK has fallen to its lowest level since Covid - but half of Britons think it’s still rising, research shows. (Independent)
📣 The three women found dead in the sea off Brighton have been identified: they were sisters, from London. Their father described them as the “beautiful light that filled our family with happiness and love”. (Guardian)
📣 Beware “killer kitchens”: California is voting, today, on a ban of engineered stone - the sort used on work surfaces in new kitchens. The state has recorded 31 deaths from silicosis, a lung disease caused by dust created by the stone. (Sky News)
SPORT
⚽️ Scotland’s John McGinn captained Aston Villa to European glory, his side sweeping to a 3-0 win over Freiburg in the Europa League final to win their first trophy since 1982. It was, for manager Unai Emery, his fifth victory in the competition. (Guardian) (BBC) (🎥 Highlights)
Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez broke his finger in the warm-up - but played the entire match. (BBC)
Owen Hargreaves was full of praise for skipper John McGinn - “His statue might be next to Unai’s,” he said. (TNT Sports)
Prince William, a long-time Aston Villa fan, led wild celebrations (Independent)
⚽️ Southampton lost their appeal against being expelled from the play-offs for spying on their opponents. Hull City and Middlesbrough will now compete in the world’s richest match, seeking promotion to the Premier League this Saturday. (BBC)
IDEAS
Out of this world? Five things to know about Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and the world’s biggest initial public offering
We have a history of net losses and may not achieve profitability in the future.”
🗣️ If you want to understand a business that intends to underpin the future, it’s all here: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced plans to sell shares and list on a US stock market, in what would be the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO) that would raise up to $80 billion in investment.
In doing so, it’s filed a 200,000-word prospectus that lifts the lid on the futuristic business and its ambitions, revealing an extraordinary set of goals - and an ownership structure that means the mercurial and highly controversial Musk retains control, almost no matter what. It also contains some very beautiful photography of rockets and space.
If he succeeds, the world’s richest man will earn billions more. If he fails, an awful lot of people - including you, potentially - stand to lose a lot of money.
Here are five takeaways. None of this is investment advice.
What is SpaceX?
SpaceX is Space Exploration Technologies Corp, to give it its Sunday name: Elon Musk’s “rockets-to-chatbot conglomerate”, in the words of the FT (£). Founded in 2002 with the goal of reducing the cost of launching rockets into space, it now dominates the space launch world.
Space X has also launched 10,000 satellites to create the global Starlink internet service. Starlink is valued by Ukrainian soldiers and rural Scots alike for getting high-speed internet services to places others simply can’t. And it’s an impressive business all by itself: 8.9 million subscribers generated $4.4 billion in revenue last year. That’s the bulk of SpaceX’s revenue, today.
SpaceX also owns X (nee Twitter) and the Grok AI chatbot.What are its ambitions?
If you follow the money, the biggest push is on AI. SpaceX wants to spend $60 billion on Cursor, an AI startup. It also wants to start lifting entire AI datacentres into orbit, to be cooled up there by the void of space, and powered by solar energy. Oh - and Musk has long stated he wants to colonize Mars. There are big rewards baked into the IPO plan should SpaceX achieve that goal. There’s further capital investment planned to continue to develop its giant, reusable space rocket, Starship, which is - of course - central to all these plans.AI… in space? Why?
Elon Musk isn’t the only person thinking about putting datacentres in space. Chipmaker Nvidia, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Google and others are all thinking hard about the challenge. Why? Data centres are vital to the growth of AI, but need two things - a source of power, ideally cheap, and a means of cooling. Space offers solutions to both, although it’s less straightforward than you might imagine: yes, there’s abundant solar energy, but the vast power needs of AI mean the floating datacenter could come with solar arrays that are multiple kilometers in scale. Space can also be very cold, but it’s quite complicated to keep things cool in space. The Wall Street Journal explains both.How does Musk stay in charge?
Amid all these vast gambles, there’s another bet for potential investors to weigh: Elon Musk will be pretty much un-fireable should they not like how he’s running SpaceX in the future. Musk has 1.3 billion “super-voting” class B shares which carry 10 votes each. They aren’t worth anything unless goals are reached in the future - but their votes count today. Given he can only be removed by a majority vote of class B shares, and he controls 93.6% of those shares, his job is safe, even if it all goes wrong.How it could all go wrong
No reward without risk, right? But it could all go really wrong. Just after the pretty pictures in the prospectus, on page 26, a long “risk factors” section sets out just what could go pear-shaped.
So… there are the risks involved in firing a big spacecraft towards the heavens - and Starship really is central to everything, which is why it comes top of the list.
There’s also the normal, heady risk of developing complex, cutting-edge tech, plus regulatory risk, and the inherent risks of the AI world and social media swamp.
And a lot, lot more. Investors will find it hard to argue they weren’t warned.
But, given Musk’s ambitions and track record, many will still want to jump aboard his interplanetary ride.
👍 That’s your Early Line for the day
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