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In your briefing today:

• Donald Trump has launched an attack on “decaying” Europe, accusing its leaders of failing to control migration.

• Japan is on alert for a “megaquake”

• Scotland is losing its political tolerance: most of us would ban groups we don’t like from protests, and even public office

📣 Donald Trump has taken aim at European leaders, accusing them of being “weak” as they preside over “decaying” countries, failing to control migration or end the war in Ukraine.

He makes the comments in a remarkable interview with Politico, which also surfaces Trump’s growing frustration with the war in Ukraine.

Trump derides European leaders as talkers who “don’t produce” and says Zelenskyy has “to play ball” given that, in his view, “Russia has the upper hand.”

• 🎥 Watch the full interview on YouTube | Read the transcript 

• Analysis: The most powerful man in Europe thinks Europe is full of losers (Politico)

• Analysis: Trump’s withering verdict on America’s traditional allies (Sky News)

• Trump’s backing splits the European far right (Politico)

• Sam Kiley: Europe needs to shove Trump aside and stop Putin in Ukraine (Independent)

• Later in today’s briefing: why the new US Security Strategy is a pivitol moment for Europe, and the world ⬇️

📣 Storm Bram left its mark across Scotland overnight, with multiple vehicles overturning on the M74 in South Lanarkshire, power cuts, flooding and ferries and trains all facing cancellation. (BBC) (STV)

• Flying trampoline strikes train and tree lodges under carriage (Daily Record)

• SEPA has 15 flood alerts and 19 flood warnings across the country (SEPA)

📣 Japan is on alert for a “megaquake” after Monday’s 7.5 magnitude tremor, with a warning just issued by the country’s weather agency covering an 800-mile stretch of the country’s Pacific coast. People living there have been told to remain vigilant through the coming week, and have a plan for a rapid evacuation.

The top-tier alert is the first time the warning system has been used since its launch in 2022. Prime minister Sanae Takaichi urged members of the public to prepare, saying: “Please take appropriate disaster-prevention measures based on the principle that you are responsible for protecting your own life.” (Independent)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Scotland is losing its reputation for political tolerance: more than half of the population would like people they disagree with banned from public office, and stopped from staging protests. Pro-Palestine activists draw the most ire in a Times’ online poll: the core, academic research comes from the Scottish Election Study. (Times £)

📣 Nicola Sturgeon’s attainment gap pledge is “irrevocably broken” according to new figures, which suggest it would take more than 100 years to bridge the gap based on current rates of progress. (The Scotsman)

📣 Glasgow has had more than 34,000 potholes reported in two years - with fewer than half repaired. (Herald)

• Political tolerance isn’t just for Christmas (Scottish Election Study)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will hold a wartime election within the next three months, if Ukraine’s parliament and foreign allies will allow it. (Guardian)

📣 The Mail clears out its front page for an opinion column by Sarah Vine, in the wake of two Afghan small-boat migrants being jailed for the rape of a 15-year-old girl. “Enough is enough,” she writes. “A horror is unfolding before our very eyes, and it is time to confront some hard truths” about men “born and raised in a misogynistic, medieval society”. (Mail)

📣 How long could Britain fight if war broke out tomorrow? It’s an alarming question to ask, but probably an important one to answer. Frank Gardner’s long read doesn’t quite get to an answer. tl;dr - it’s hard to tell, but we’re not in great shape. (BBC)

📣 Madeleine McCann’s father is calling for greater scrutiny of the UK’s media, accusing sections of the press of “monstering” his family. He wants the cancelled second stage of Lord Leveson’s Inquiry into press conduct and regulation to be restarted. (BBC)

SPORT

⚽️ Former Hearts player Ryan Stevenson has urged new Celtic boss Wilfried Nancy to ditch his tactics board and green trainers if he wants to be taken more seriously. (Daily Record)

⚽️ Mohamed Diomande has not been included in Ivory Coast’s AFCON squad, which will be a boost to Rangers - if not to him. (The Sun)

⚽️ Celtic and Motherwell have paid tribute to legendary former striker John “Dixie” Deans, who died aged 79. (Mail)

IDEAS
Why Europe should pay close attention to Trump’s National Security Stategy

🗣️ In The Scotsman today, Ian Johnston casts an alarmed eye over the recently-published US National Security Strategy. It’s a document that’s worth the second look: dated November 2025, it was released to the public last week, and it appears Europe is only really waking up to its meaning in the last 48 hours.

[Read the full US National Security Stategy document (PDF)]

Johnston draws a line back to JD Vance’s now-infamous Munich Security Conference speech early this year, in which he warned - not of Russia, not of China - of “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

He wasn’t just an out-of-touch Vice President shooting his mouth off, it turns out. “Unfortunately,” says Johnston, “the new US National Security Strategy, published by the White House, confirms in no uncertain terms that Vance was providing a hugely valuable – and terrifying – insight into Donald Trump’s thinking.”

He flags “deeply concerning” packages about Trump’s desire to control a swathe of territory in the Americas far beyond today’s borders. He fails to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And there is further condemnation of European society which faces the “stark prospect of civilisational erasure”.

The vital lesson for Europe from the strategy? “Rearm, rearm, rearm,” writes Johnston.

It’s a “clear message to the free world,” writes Max Boot in the Washington Post. “In many ways, the NSS is a masterpiece of doublespeak,” he says. “The document hails Donald Trump as ‘The President of Peace’ even as the military he commands is blowing up alleged drug boats - and slaughtering their occupants - with scant legal justification.”

“The NSS’s entire section on Europe reads as if it were written by far-right trolls,” he says, warning “ominously” of the continent becoming “‘majority non-European’, by which it presumably means non-White.

“It attacks the European Union for undermining ‘political liberty,’ censoring ‘free speech,’ and even ‘cratering birthrates,’ and says that ‘our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.’ America will do this, apparently, by supporting far-right populist parties, which the document refers to as ‘patriotic European parties.’

For Peter Beaumont in the Guardian, the document and the strategy it describes is “one of the most profound crises for the Atlantic alliance since 1945.”

“Coloured both by racism and a staggering contempt for Europe’s political institutions and leaders, he has warned of the risk of civilisational collapse on a continent he barely knows, and that he has viewed more often from the window of an armoured sedan,” writes Beaumont.

He flags that interview with Politico, which he says is “lacking in any clear ideological coherence and “is replete with something else: the confused fear of an ageing white man confronted with a changing world.”

The independent Chatham House notes, sagely, that it would have landed with a thud across Europe - and to toasts in Beijing and Moscow. (Moscow has, indeed, confirmed the document aligns with its worldview).

“Saving the harshest critiques for Europe’s current trajectory, the 33-page grand strategy pushes commercial ties, strategic stability with Russia, and a strong US hand in Latin America,” writes Laurel Rapp. “The 2025 strategy aligns more closely with Trump’s worldview than his first. But its contradictions will limit its effectiveness.”

Another think tank offers the document a warmer reception, however, insofar as it offers absolute clarity on what the US thinks, and wants to do. It is, says Judy Dempsey at Carnegie Europe, something “Europe needs to hear”.

“The NSS is not about values,” she writes. “It is not about supporting democracy. It is not about defending principles that the Europeans have taken for granted since the end of World War II. It is about projecting power that should reflect American economic interests. Full stop.”

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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