TODAY’S WEATHER

🌤️ Sorry, Glasgow: those of us in the west today will have the worst of it, with clouds and some rain later. Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness and London will enjoy a bright and mild autumnal day. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Trump tells Hamas to accept “eternal peace” plan - or else | Starmer’s big speech | New toilet rules for schools

📣 President Trump has challenged Hamas to accept a US-brokered and Israel-backed plan to end the war in Gaza. Flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Trump said the plan could achieve “eternal peace in the Middle East” , saying it was “a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”. But the pair also threatened consequences for Hamas should it reject the offer.

The deal involves a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops and the disarmament of Hamas, and the formation of a temporary “Board of Peace” - chaired by him, and including Sir Tony Blair - to govern postwar Gaza. (The Times £) (🎁 New York Times - gift link)

• What is in Trump’s 20-point plan? (Guardian)

• “Israel will finish the job itself” warned Netanyahu, should Hamas reject the deal (Guardian)

• Hamas’s first reaction to the peace deal is telling (Sky News)

• Leaders in the Middle East have welcomed the Trump plan for peace (BBC)

• The Gaza plan is a big step - but faces fundamental obstacles (BBC)

📣 Sir Keir Starmer delivers his big speech to the Labour Party conference later today: he will insist his economic strategy can be the “antidote to division” being sown by the populist right.

Starmer will tell the party that growth “can either build a nation or it can pull it apart” depending on who, and where, benefits. His speech is expected to be more combative in addressing the rise of the right, amid frustration among the party’s MPs and members over his leadership. (Guardian)

• Starmer’s team is calling today’s speech “his clearest statement yet of his political creed” (BBC)

• Rachel Reeves could decide to increase VAT in the forthcoming budget, with the Treasury looking at adding it to services that are currently exempt, including private healthcare and financial services. (Mail)

• Reeves has also warned “Labour figures” (she means Andy Burnham) against “dangerously wrong” ideas to loosen fiscal rules. (Guardian)

📣 Scottish schools must provide separate toilets for boys and girls, the Scottish Government has said in new advice issued after April’s Supreme Court landmark ruling on biological sex.

Schools had previously been told to allow transgender pupils to use whatever toilet they feel comfortable in. They are now being encouraged to offer gender-neutral toilets for trans pupils, or access to disabled and staff toilets. (BBC) (Guardian)

• Campaigners say the new advice is still muddled and may be in breach of the Supreme Court ruling (Scotsman) (Mail)

• A judge has rejected NHS Fife’s last-minute attempt to change its legal defence in its case against gender-critical nurse Sandie Peggie, with the health board’s lawyers guilty of “negligence”, according to an employment judge. (The Times £) (Scotsman)

IDEAS
Edinburgh’s folly-in-waiting? The powerful case against more trams in the capital

🗣️ The City of Edinburgh is consulting on plans to extend its tram system to link the north and south sides of the city, to complement the east-west link already built. The project is a vast one - and one of national importance, given its costs of between £2 billion and £2.9 billion.

And, of course, Edinburgh’s trams have some history: the first phase ran so late, and so far over budget, it got its own (late, and expensive) public inquiry.

So far, the latest consultation has been viewed as offering a tricky decision on which route to take - the “preferred” route would involve bulldozing and concreting the Roseburn Path that runs through the north of the city: once a railway line but now a much-loved and wildlife-rich walking and cycling route. There is, as you might expect, a lively campaign against that.

But few have questioned the rationale of the entire line… until now.

In a damning Substack post Paddy Fletcher, co-founder of the Port of Leith Distillery, dismantles the case for the north-south link. It’s a terrific bit of analysis.

His key points: first, speed: the trams will actually take longer to get from Granton to Shawfair, he says - nine minutes more, by his calculations - than today’s buses. And if you start at Princes Street, you can make it to the Royal Infirmary in less than half the time of the planned tram.

Second: costs. As he puts it, “£2.9 billion is a big number”. He offers some context: it’s 9.5 times an entire decade of spending on Edinburgh’s transport infrastructure, at today’s levels of investment.

In fact, Edinburgh’s capital expenditure is falling - which means that, by 2030, the tram extension costs a staggering 37 times the annual capital budget for transport that year. It’s an awful lot of unfilled potholes, or unbought electric buses.

Perhaps to head off those comparisons with other things on which Edinburgh could spend its cash, councillors insist the investment won’t come from council tax: Edinburgh’s transport convener, Stephen Jenkinson, said it was Labour policy that council tax payers in Edinburgh won’t be asked to fund an extension.

So who does pay? Maybe Holyrood? Because this is a big number on a national level, too: 100% of a year’s transport spending across Scotland with £787m still to find. That’s a lot of roads, ferries and cycle paths. The Scottish Government has already said it won’t be picking up the tab.

Maybe borrowing could pay? But that’s expensive, and you’ve got to pay it back.

Aren’t trams all worth it for the greater good, though? After all, the council offers a lengthy economic rationale for spending those billions. But Fletcher is unconvinced. “Trams are a 19th century transport solution”, he writes. If we look at the booming methods of getting around, we see something very different to vast and expensive trams: we see e-bikes, such as the Lime bike in London.

“Edinburgh’s hills quake at the thought of a 56-ton tram,” he says, “but give them a 30kg e-bike and they giggle.”

“My point is,” he says, “you don’t need to spend 823% of the City’s entire annual capital budget on a bus replacement rail service to get people from Granton to a hospital across town you could build for 1/15th of the cost of the tram to get there.”

The council’s statements suggest they’re deadly serious, though. Transport convener Jenkinson told the BBC: “Projections for Edinburgh's population growth over the next two decades meant ‘doing nothing was not an option’. He said the tram network extension was a ‘bold and ambitious solution’.”

Maybe so. But the plan’s boldness is already upsetting locals, with its intention to concrete over much-loved woodland, and its ambition is leaving many unanswered questions - such as who will pay for it.

Councillors will make their final decision sometime next year, after consultation closes next month. One senses we haven’t heard the last of this. (Read Fletcher’s full SubStack post)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Labour MSP Foysol Chowdhury, suspended by the party last week, is facing claims of sexual harassment, made against him by a younger woman. A complaint was lodged by a Holyrood staffer. (The Daily Record has the exclusive)

📣 The self-styled “tribe” living in woods near Jedburgh is a risk to children, official documents say, with two of the campers involved in an altercation involving knives in their home town in England. (The Sun)

📣 An 89-year-old woman who broke her hip in a fall had to wait nearly four hours for an ambulance: her family say they feel “extremely let down”. (STV)

📣 Campfires and barbecues are to be banned in the Cairngorms National Park every summer. (Sky News)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The US government is on the brink of a shutdown - its first in almost seven years - amid a standoff in Congress. (AP)

📣 The Taliban has cut the internet for all of Afghanistan, with millions now cut off from the outside world. (Independent)

📣 A Chinese woman has been convicted in London of playing a key role in the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world, worth more than £5 billion. (BBC)

📣 Details have emerged of the “hellhole” prison in which a group of Scottish mobsters were held in Dubai. It was a long way from the life of luxury they had been enjoying in the Emirate, which they have now been told to leave. (Daily Record)

📣 Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have split after 19 years of marriage and two children together, amid claims their busy schedules to blame. (Mail)

SPORT

⚽️ Steve Clarke will name his squad today for next month’s vital World Cup qualifyers against Greece and Belarus. Alan Pattullo notes the Scotland manager will have had his eye caught by some impressive performances in the last week. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Hearts and Hibs meet in a mouthwatering Edinburgh derby on Saturday night: the hype is already building, with the Gorgie side sitting at the top of the table. Kevin Thomson reckons that will motivate Hibs all the more. (Daily Record)

⛳️ Laurence Ostlere takes a deep look at Luke Donald’s leadership of Europe’s Ryder Cup team - and finds “calm leadership” and “clever emphasis” on marginal gains. Motivation, plastered on the walls of their players’ quarters, came from an unexpected source: US captain Keegan Bradley, and his quote: “We’re going to go to Bethpage and fick their f***ing ass,” he’d said. (Independent)