THE BIG STORIES
The race to save the UK’s last steelworks | Cammy Day fights back over messaging allegations

📣 We’ve seen an extraordinary set of events play out over the weekend in the attempt to save the Scunthorpe steelworks, which employs 2,700 people and is the last place in the UK able to make virgin steel. Negotiations with British Steel’s owner, the Chinese company Jingye, broke down last week. (Recap from last Wednesday)

• On Friday, the cabinet decided special powers were needed to take control of British Steel, with a risk particular to steelmaking creating urgency: if the blast furnace at Scunthorpe cools down, it’s very difficult - and expensive - to restart it. A new blast furnace can cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

• On Saturday, the government took control of British Steel after emergency legislation was passed in a rare Saturday sitting of the House of Commons and House of Lords. It was only the sixth Saturday sitting since the Second World War. (Guardian) (The special measures bill)

• Yesterday, there were dark suggestions that the Chinese company had not been negotiating in good faith, and actually planned to close down steel production, making the UK dependent on Chinese imports. It has raised the alarm about Chinese investment in other critical infrastructure: you can expect to hear more on this in the days ahead. (Times £)

• Today, a race is on to find raw materials to keep the plant operating. There are claims from the UK Government that Jingye was attempting to tell off vital coking coal and iron ore destined for the plant. More than a dozen businesses have offered help. (BBC) (Guardian)

📣 Police have found “no evidence of criminality” in an investigation into alleged inappropriate messages sent by Edinburgh city council’s former leader, Cammy Day. He was forced to step down in December in the face of claims, which he is now calling a “coordinated political attack”, that he “bombarded” Ukrainian refugees with messages, some explicit. He’s now taking legal advice, he told the Sunday Times, after he says his opponents “ruined a whole number of lives”. (The Scotsman) (Sunday Times £)

• One of Day’s political opponents, Conservative Jason Rust, has spoken out in Day’s support, saying there are “clearly questions for others to answer” over the allegations. (The Times £)

IDEAS
Do Ministers merit their big pay rise? | Scotland needs its own Blair or Thatcher | Right-wing realignment

🗣️ Stephen Daisley was in coruscating form in the Mail on Sunday, his blood boiling at the news ministers were finally pocketing a long-deferred pay rise of close to £20,000 a year. “It is as though Ministers set themselves a challenge to convince an already cynical and disillusioned public that they aren’t nearly cynical or disillusioned enough,” he wrote. (Mail on Sunday)

Others will argue that if you pay peanuts… Andy Maciver, writing in The Herald back in January, made the case for all political salaries to be doubled. “The list is long,” he wrote, “of people in their prime who for whatever reason, felt that our Scottish Parliament was not for them. We are compelled, as a nation, to arrest this trend. We need to expand the gene pool [because] being an MSP is, frankly, a bit of a drag.” He makes a strong case too. (The Herald)

What do you think?

🗣️ Relatedly, or perhaps not at all… Chris Deerin says Scotland needs a Thatcher or Blair figure to bring a dose of fiscal reality to proceedings. He points to a Scottish Fiscal Commission report, out last week, which looks at the risks to devolved spending and funding over the next 50 years.

It finds a Scotland which is going to become older and poorer, as it struggles to cope with the costs of that aging population and the fact so many will retire from the workforce.

Yet, notes Deerin, nobody appears to be paying attention. “Whoever wins next May, it seems certain that the provision of ‘free stuff’, of universalism wherever an opportunity presents itself, will continue, and the really hard conversations will be avoided.” (The New Statesman £) (That fiscal sustainability report in full)

🗣️The Early Line featured a deep dive recently on the state/fate of the Conservatives in Scotland (we’ve done all the big parties at some point): a SubStack post by Dean M Thomson, an academic, moves things forward by wondering aloud if we’re headed for a realignment on the Scottish right.

His thesis is that centre-right politics should be a lot more popular in Scotland than they are, given the population’s political views (which aren’t much different to England’s). But there isn’t a culturally acceptable party to express them.

He doesn’t think Reform is that party, but he does forsee openings for something else. (Dean M Thomson)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Dodgy medical treatments and medicines dominate tabloid front pages today. The Daily Record warns the NHS is picking up the tab for the repair jobs required when untrained practitioners mess up Botox and filler injections. Meanwhile, The Sun warns that Ozempic “fat jabs” are on sale from drug dealers, alongside cocaine. (Daily Record) (The Sun £)

📣 There’s alarm at the growing number of S4 pupils leaving school - the number of people choosing to leave at the first opportunity has grown by around a third since the pandemic. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 A midge alert may be the last thing we need but here we are. Experts are warning the warm spring means they’ll hatch early, meaning “outdoor lovers” should “brace” for an “Easter invasion” of the bugs. (The Sun)

AROUND THE UK

📣 The army is being called in to help with Birmingham’s bin problems. Refuse workers have been on strike since March 11 in a dispute over pay, leaving thousands of tonnes of uncollected rubbish on streets. (Independent)

📣 Police forces in England were not ready for last summer’s riots, a report by MPs has found. The Home Affairs Committee said that lack of preparation left officers exposed to “significant risk”. (BBC) (Read the report)

• There was no evidence of “two-tier policing” in the Southport riots (Sky News)

📣 UK house prices have surged to a new high despite changes to stamp duty rules, with the average UK home now costing £377,182, according to Rightmove. (Independent)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Team Trump is trying to project “confidence and calm” after a week in which billions were wiped off company valuations and the future of the entire global economy was called into question because of its tariffs plan. In the US, Trump’s Cabinet members took to the airwaves to try to explain the need for tariffs. (AP)

🌎 Israel launched a wave of attacks on Gaza, killing at least 21 people including children. Gaza’s last major hospital was one of the buildings hit, with an emergency room, pharmacy and other buildings “severely damaged”. (AP)

🌎 Vladimir Putin appears to be raising the stakes in Ukraine with a wave of strikes on Sumy yesterday, which killed 34 people including two children. Why? (Sky News)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 Trump’s tariff exemption on technology products will be temporary, the President signalled last night on his social media network, in a blow for big US tech companies including Apple and chip-maker Nvidia. (Truth Social) (Yahoo Finance)

• Apple was “on the brink of crisis” before Trump’s exemption (Bloomberg)

SPORT

⛳️ Rory McIlroy won the Masters at Augusta on a “spine-tingling afternoon”, and did it the hard way, writes Ewan Murray. “From a seemingly untouchable position, McIlroy was dragged back into a scrap he was so desperate to avoid. He emerged from it on the first extra hole, where the unlikely adversary of Justin Rose was nudged aside. Rory McIlroy, Masters champion.” (The Guardian)

• “For the boy from Holywood, County Down, it’s a Hollywood ending” (Sky News)

⚽️ Rangers have an injury crisis to manage ahead of their Europa league quarter-final second leg on Thursday: a game which is pretty much all they have left to play for this season. They denied Celtic the league title for another couple of weeks yesterday, fighting back to draw 2-2 with Aberdeen at Pittodrie. (The Scotsman)

⚽️ The Scottish Premiership now splits in two: The fixtures come out tomorrow. (Daily Record)