In your briefing today:

📣 Donald Trump has warned Nato faces a “very bad” future if allies fail to help the US in opening up the Strait of Hormuz. The US President, talking to the Financial Times, also said he was pressing China to help unblock the waterway, saying it was “only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there.” (Financial Times (£))

The White House spent the weekend hailing its war on Iran as a great success, while imploring other countries to join their effort to head off a worsening energy crisis caused by the Strait’s closure. (WSJ - gift link)

His calls, however, are falling on deaf ears so far. Sir Keir Starmer is refusing to send warships to help in the effort to reopen the Straits, although they are considering sending mine-hunting drones. (Telegraph - gift link)

📣 Health bosses are to ask for a replacement ward for seriously ill cancer patients after mould was found in the existing one at the troubled Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

The move comes after further testing raised concerns, despite repeated assurances from First Minister John Swinney and Health Secretary Neil Gray that the hospital is safe. (The Daily Mail has the exclusive)

📣 One Battle After Another has swept the Oscars, the comedy thriller winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” director Paul Thomas Anderson said in an acceptance speech.

He said he hoped a younger generation would help bring back “common sense and decency” to society. (Guardian) (AP)

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📣 Glasgow City Council’s leader, Susan Aitken, wants more powers to protect historic buildings after the devastating Union Corner fire. (Times - gift link)

📣 One in five adult Scots say they’ve been unable to get dental care on the NHS. (Herald has the exclusive)

📣 The firm behind the Encyclopedia Britannica, which “emerged from Scotland’s capital during a golden age” (of the Enlightenment), is suing OpenAI for “cannibalising” its work. (Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 The UK’s poorest households will get help with spiralling energy bills, the government is to announce. (Independent)

📣 Two people have died in a meningitis outbreak in the Canterbury area. One student at the University of Kent is a victim, while a further 11 people are ill. Most are students. (BBC)

📣 Claims that Peter Mandelson was illegally supplied prescription drugs by disgraced paedophile Jeffrey Epstein should be investigated, shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has said. (Mirror)

🏉 Scotland fell short on a thrilling last day of the Six Nations, but Gregor Townsend is talking up the positives, saying his side has proved it can be a match for anybody. His theory will be put to the test this summer, in the inaugural Nations Championship. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Rangers ground their way to a 1-0 win over St Mirren on Sunday lunchtime, to cap a weekend where Hearts’ title push looked to have taken another stumble. Hearts slipped up at Kilmarnock on Saturday night, and that - combined with Celtic’s victory over Motherwell - leaves the top three sides separated by only three points. (BBC)

⚽️ In England, Spurs salvaged something from a terrible week with a last-gasp equaliser against Liverpool, who got booed off the pitch by their own fans. (Guardian)

🗣️ The SNP’s campaign conference, held over the weekend, struck a “jubulant” note, writes Rebecca McCurdy. There is confidence, she writes, “that John Swinney’s strategy of securing a majority - of at least 65 seats - is the right one.”

Yet there’s little chance, reports McCurdy, of the SNP securing that sort of majority, if the polling is to be believed, which is also Swinney’s bar for demanding a second independence referendum. So will there be repercussions for him, if he falls short?

Dr Fraser McMillan, of the University of Edinburgh, thinks not. Quite the opposite, in fact. He tells McCurdy that Swinney’s plan makes a lot of strategic sense, “in terms of talking about [independence] enough to keep SNP voters on board and folk within his own party happy.

“He knows that even if he gets a majority, the UK Government will say no regardless. So, he is kind of in a strategic sweet spot.

“He probably won’t have to actually deal with the issue and he’s still able to talk about it enough to keep those pro-independence voters on board.” (The Herald £)

🗣️The First Minister also made a raft of promises at the conference, to be delivered should the SNP form the next Scottish Government. Those include £500 million more for childcare provision.

He also promised to use the powers of statehood - once Scotland was independent - to ban any foreign military forces from Scotland should they engage in illegal conflicts.

There will be more walk-in GP clinics around the country, and Swinney also promised a package of measures to help Glasgow in the wake of the Union Corner fire. (BBC)

🗣️The Sunday Times ran an extract from the updated paperback edition of Get In - The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer - which is far from flattering about the Prime Minister’s leadership style, and paints a damning picture of his cabinet’s dynamics.

Calling him “the absent PM” running a “passive premiership”, it claims there was an “overwhelming silence” in Number 10 as Starmer took to his study to read, and read, and then do nothing.

Rishi Sunak, his predecessor, did the same - but would emerge from his “long and lonely hours of research” demanding action, “seized not only of urgent conviction, but a desire to share his latest remedy with advisers, with the cabinet secretary, with anyone prepared to listen and challenge him.

“Starmer was different. He read everything, then said nothing. ‘It’s just so odd,’ said one senior official who observed Starmer closely, awaiting instructions that never came. ‘It’s a very oddly passive premiership.’”

And, it appears, Rachel Reeves is not a happy Chancellor. (Sunday Times - gift link)

🗣️The latest anxiety among members of Donald Trump’s inner circle: that they might be wearing the wrong shoes.

Trump has taken to gifting senior figures his preferred $145 Florsheim Oxfords. And, because he says “you can tell a lot by a man’s shoe size,” at least one person - Secretary of State Rubio - is now wearing pairs that are at least two sizes too large.

“All the boys have them,” said a female White House official. Another joked, “It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.” (The Wall Street Journal - gift link)

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