In your briefing today:

📣 Donald Trump has attacked the UK for its position on the Chagos Islands, branding its plan to hand over sovereignty to Mauritius an "an act of GREAT STUPIDITY" in an escalatory social media post sent in the last hour.

"Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” he wrote.

“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.” (Truth Social)

📣 Scotland’s top civil servant has warned that public sector reform, including vast savings that are needed soon, is “one of the biggest challenges for this generation of the public sector”.

Joe Griffin, speaking at a conference in Glasgow, also said the civil service needed to learn from mistakes, but added: “I don’t subscribe to the view that everything is broken. But when mistakes have been made, we need to learn from that, we need to improve..” (The Scotsman (£) has the exclusive)

📣 There have been calls for a criminal investigation over failures at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, which have been linked to the deaths of child cancer patients.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said infection issues at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus were the “biggest scandal in the history of the Scottish parliament” and a “criminal” issue. (BBC) (Mail)

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📣 Dozens of Fife villagers face mass eviction within weeks after their private landlord announced they are selling up. Around 35 households in West Wemyss and Denbeath are known to face demands to leave their homes, and there may be more. (Courier)

📣 Labour MP Brian Leishman says a six-figure donation to Scottish Labour from McGill’s bus tycoons Sandy and James Easdale “does not sit well” with him. “I don’t really want multi-millionaire business people backing the Labour party,” he said. (🎁The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell will appear in court for the second time next month, the Crown Office has confirmed. (STV)

📣 Failing NHS computer systems - specifically, problems with printers - mean “thousands” of children’s vaccination appointments have been missed. (Daily Record)

📣 Ministers have launched a consultation on a social media ban for under-16s. (Independent)

📣 The water industry in England and Wales is set for a "once-in-a-generation set of reforms", the government has said as it proposes new legislation to overhaul the system. (Sky News)

📣 Brooklyn Beckham has accused his “controlling” parents, former footballer David and Spice Girl Victoria, of trying to ruin his marriage, humiliating him and causing him crippling anxiety. “For them Brand Beckham comes first. I don't want to reconcile. I'm standing up for myself,” he said in a six-page statement posted on social media. (Mail)

🏉 Scotland coach Gregor Townsend will name his Scotland squad for the Six Nations later: Graham Bean runs the rule on some of the youthful faces that could be making an appearance, and some of the older ones that might miss out largely through injury problems. (The Scotsman)

⚽️ Rangers could be in the market for another winger: Slovakian side Dunaksta Streda’s player, Damir Redzic, is said to be in the Ibrox club’s sights. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Celtic’s search for players isn’t going so speedily: Kris Boyd thinks Martin O’Neill could quickly lose patience if there isn’t some movement soon. Although some might say Boyd, a former Rangers star, would say that, wouldn’t he? (The Sun)

🗣️ It’s the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration: one year since he promised to “put America first”. A few weeks later, on Valentine’s Day 2025, JD Vance delivered that angry speech at the Munich Security Conference - and spelt out what “put America first” meant for relations with Europe.

Many people at the time saw the speech - both in content and delivery - as a huge shift in that transatlantic relationship. A typical comment: “In that one moment, all the pillars of transatlantic relations - shared values, mutual respect - were smashed to smithereens,” European University Institute professor Trine Flockhart said.

Less than a year on from that, we’re now learning what those speeches mean in practical terms. Trump has reiterated that he is determined to take possession of Greenland.

We can’t say we weren’t warned, it turns out.

“Historians differ about the real origins of World War III,” is how Gerard Baker, a right-leaning columnist for (and former editor of) the Wall Street Journal, puts it. His column (🎁gift link), which pretends to look back on this year's events from the future, is both darkly humorous and deadly serious.

He imagines the battle for Greenland: “It was never a contest,” he writes.

The real payload of his piece is in describing the subsequent economic and geopolitical damage of that American invasion: a new world order in which US dominance has been replaced by a tripartite of the US, Russia and China.

What he writes of the future is made plausible by events of this week.

Iain Martin is the former Scotsman editor who now runs the London Defence Conference: we can assume he’s well plugged in to defence circles in the UK and Europe. His latest Substack missive is also dark, even if it’s returning to a theme he’s struck for years: Britain (and Europe) is going to end up spending much more on defence, as the world order changes.

And don’t expect things to get better just because Trump will, eventually, leave office: “If the President eventually moderates his position, or if a successor is more conventional in his approach, the northern European part of the West is still undergoing a transformation in its understanding of geopolitics,” writes Martin.

“Trump is simply making clear what should have been clear to us Europeans years ago. While we whine and do our performative sanctimony routine, it is our own fault for underfunding our defence, not being serious about energy policy and for refusing to countenance the sacrifices required,” he says.

Closer to home, another veteran watcher of world affairs spots a looming decision which could signal that shift in geopolitics. Jeremy Grant, formerly of the FT, writes in his own Substack: “In a week or so, British prime minister Keir Starmer jets off to Beijing for what is anticipated to be a major reset in UK-China relations.”

Likely to be up for discussion: a £1.5 billion investment by Chinese wind power giant Ming Yang in Scotland. Until now, the chances of approval for that investment would have been around 50/50, thinks Grant, given frosty relations between the UK and China, and concerns about security. But, just as Canada has demonstrated with its own advances towards China, the winds may be shifting.

“When it comes to Ming Yang, [Starmer] might decide that a long-term reset with China outweighs any backlash from Trump,” writes Grant, “whose known hatred of ‘windmills' was one of the big reasons why the UK government last spring and summer put any decision on Ming Yang on the back burner.”

Investment from China would also make decent domestic politics, notes Grant, with two attractive outcomes that will appeal at home: jobs for the north-east of Scotland, and a robust new stance against Donald Trump.

That may all be too much for Starmer to resist, and the approval of that investment - alongside a green light for that huge Chinese “super-embassy” in London - will offer an early sign of how the world is changing through Trump’s aggression.

We can’t say we weren’t warned.

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