In your briefing today:

📣 Images are starting to emerge of vast destruction in Venezuela after a “doublet” - two earthquakes in quick succession - struck the country on Wednesday.

The quakes were two of the strongest in over a century in the country, and toppled high-rise buildings, destroyed roads and services and killed at least 235 people. That toll is expected to continue to rise as rescue workers dig through the rubble. (BBC)

📣 Plans to replace the crumbling Monklands Hospital have been halted because the Scottish Government says it can no longer afford the £2.1 billion project. Health Secretary Angela Constance said the plans currently on the table “would not deliver value for money for the public purse” and a new, cheaper plan will be put forward next year. (Scotsman)

📣 Two whistleblowers said they were intimidated while trying to raise concerns about the SNP’s finances during the period when former chief executive Peter Murrell was stealing from the party.

Allison Graham and Cynthia Guthrie, who were both on the party’s finance and audit committee for only six weeks before quitting, say they were blocked from doing their jobs and faced pressure after speaking out.

Guthrie said she and other committee members told Sturgeon they had noticed "problems with the accounts" in 2021. "She [Sturgeon] failed to follow it through."

Sturgeon, as party leader between 2014 and 2023, had a share of responsibility for monitoring the party's accounts. She has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell's wrongdoing, committed between 2010 and 2022. (BBC)

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📣 New footage of a man who died in prison has emerged, which casts doubt on evidence offered by officials. They had claimed Allan Marshall had smashed up a cell and covered himself in excrement: new footage shows Marshall, 30, appearing clean and walking calmly through the prison, lightly guarded by three officers. (BBC)

📣 Criminals - including those serving longer sentences for serious crimes - will be released years earlier, while others will avoid prison altogether under plans to reduce jail overcrowding. (Times)

📣 Controversial plans to house asylum seekers at Cameron Barracks near Inverness have been scrapped. (Press & Journal)

📣 A maurauding red deer is causing “chaos” in a Highland village. (BBC)

📣 Britain could have just slept, badly, through its hottest-ever June night: records were broken yesterday for daytime temperatures in Somerset and Hampshire. Critical incidents were declared at three hospitals. (Independent)

📣 The UN has halted the escort of ships through the Strait of Hormuz after a vessel came under attack from Iran. (Reuters)

📣 King Charles said he paid £12.9 million in tax for 2024-25 - and will not live in Buckingham Palace after its £369 million renovation. (BBC)

⚽️ Results overnight have not been kind to Scotland, with some surprises reducing the odds of our snagging a qualification spot. The biggest shock: Ecuador overcoming Germany 2-1 to book themselves a place in the last 32 for the first time ever. It was a stunning result, especially given they’d not scored in their first two games. (Report & highlights)

In other results since we last spoke…

Games in the next 24 hours:

⚽️ Hearts unveiled new manager Wouter Vrancken, and he immediately warned the Old Firm that Hearts are far from finished. Vrancken was Belgium’s manager of the year last year. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Rangers have signed full-back Ross McCrorie, and his mum is delighted (Daily Record)

🗣️ Oli Dugmore says it’s time for Andy Burnham to embrace “normie populism” and “declare war on the NIMBYs, the landlords, the management consultants and the vulture capitalists”.

He says there’s a fissure in modern British politics” “Progressives vs the new right. Young vs old. Earners vs owners. It is one that Keir Starmer, his club of centrist boys and New Labour throwbacks failed to understand,” he writes. “Their idea of the country, its people, the way they communicate is stuck in the late Nineties.

“There’s plenty of money in our economy; it’s just not in your wallet, or your son’s, or your niece’s. Everything is more expensive and nothing works,” he says.

What’s the answer? There’s an “abundance” of “vibrant thinking” on the left, he says. “You could tax wealth in the same way as work, equalising capital gains tax with income tax. That’s Reagan. You could require pension funds to buy newly minted infrastructure bonds. That’s Osborne.

“You can borrow. The fiscal rules are a distraction. Contrary to village wisdom, bond markets do not hate borrowing. They hate stupid borrowing for consumption, like Trussite tax cuts. Prohibitive costs – energy and housing above all – are driving inflation in our economy and, in turn, the cost of debt. Burnham could do worse than follow Mazzucato’s compass towards a common-good economy.” (New Statesman)

🗣️ Andy Burnham will deliver a big economic speech on Monday, writes Spectator political editor Tim Shipman, and you can expect it to be a defining one for his time as Prime Minister. One early symbolic decision: he’s moved the venue from London to Manchester.

“Seven people are working on the text,” says Shipman, “which will detail his ‘core script’ as prime minister, his desire to ‘put hope back on the ballot paper’ and explain how he will ‘unlock regional growth potential’ and move the ‘centre of political gravity away from being solely in London’. Expect government agencies to be relocated outside the capital.

“The Treasury has already begun planning for some tax-raising powers to be devolved, though Burnham will make that idea his own. ‘There will be a big devolution offer to the metro mayors and possibly the devolved administrations,’ an aide says.”

Expect renationalisation of some key utilities - especially water - to be a key promise, although you won’t hear anything about who will be his Chancellor. (Spectator)

🗣️ All that detail will be necessary, thinks the Economist, because Britain needs a lot more than hope. Burnham “shows little sign that he grasps the scale or urgency of the tasks that await him,” the newspaper warns.

Yes, he has skills outgoing PM Keir Starmer lacks. “Shaking hands, building coalitions and winning arguments are not distractions for a prime minister, they are a core competence,” it argues. And those are skills Burnham has in abundance.

“But that hardly amounts to a project to arrest Britain’s decline,” it says.

“A change of leader is the best moment to confront voters with the unwelcome reality that they are living beyond their means. Even as Britain faces demands to spend more on defence and infrastructure, the bond markets have put the Treasury on watch. The country has the highest borrowing costs of any member of the G7.

“Yet despite, in effect, auditioning to be prime minister in the Makerfield by-election, Mr Burnham has yet to set out a convincing programme to fix Britain.” (The Economist)

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