TODAY’S WEATHER

🌤️ It should be a dry, autumnal day for Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, with temperatures hitting a maximum of 14 degrees. London will be dry too, and a few degrees warmer. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
UK recognises Palestinian state | Scottish teachers demand right to exclude pupils | Kirk hailed as a hero

📣 The UK, Australia and Canada recognised a Palestinian state, joining most of the rest of the world in doing so but defying the United States, ahead of UN General Assembly meetings starting in New York.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper warned Israel not to annex more of the West Bank in retaliation for the moves, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they gave “a huge reward to terrorism”. (BBC) (Mail)

• What does recognising Palestine as a state actually mean? (Independent)

• How the growing push for a two-state solution could backfire (AP)

• “Battered in NY, buoyed in DC: Israel faces split-screen reality ahead of Netanyahu’s United Nations trip” (Jerusalem Post)

• Nesrine Malik: “Starmer finally said it: ‘We recognise Palestine.’ But Gaza desperately needs action – where is that?” (Guardian)

• Suella Braverman: “It is painful to watch the atrocities of October 7 rewarded by a weak PM in thrall to Leftist extremists” (🎁Telegraph)

• Ahmed Kamal Junina: Recognising Palestine is important, but more is needed to save Gaza’s shattered generation (Independent)

📣 Teachers should be allowed to exclude the worst-behaved pupils according to a new report by a Commission on School Reform, established by think tank Enlighten. A “serious and growing behavioural problem” in Scotland’s schools is causing the country to slip in international league tables, the report warns. (Scotsman) (Enlighten: read the full report)

📣 Far-right political activist Charlie Kirk was hailed as a “great American hero” and “martyr” by President Donald Trump at a memorial service last night. Tens of thousands of mourners gathered in Glendale, Arizona, to remember Kirk and hear speakers pay tribute to his religious faith and conservative values. (AP)

• Donald Trump and Elon Musk were reunited, months after their bitter breakup (Independent)

• Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, said she forgave the man accused of her husband’s murder. (Guardian)

• Watch: Prayer, tears and the Trump-Musk handshake (🎥BBC)

IDEAS
What we learned this weekend: MSPs abandon Holyrood, the state of Palestine, a Miliband u-turn, Your Party debacle, and a poet’s disastrous review

🗣️Scottish politicians are falling out of love with Holyrood, which is why so many - including “most of the devolved legislature’s already dwindling number of political stars” - are quitting at the next election.

The Sunday Times highlights the Scottish Parliament’s committee system as a particular problem: unlike Westminster, the parties control who sits on committees and what they discuss, which makes them dull and frequently pointless.

An example: a proposal, last week, that the Culture Committee examine free speech at publicaly funded organisations, after a summer of high-profile censorship rows. It would have led to awkward questions for the government. So, instead, SNP and Green MSPs “instead backed a request from the SNP deputy leader Keith Brown to launch an inquiry into ‘the options for a legal mechanism for triggering any independence referendum’”, a question already answered “decisively by the Supreme Court”.

The problem, says at least one former MSP, is the people. Adam Tomkins, a former MSP, tells the paper: “Scottish politics promotes mediocrities and keeps talent on the sidelines. And it’s boring. Really, really dull. So it attracts and keeps dullards and the interesting folk stay away, or don’t hang about for long.” (The Sunday Times)

🗣️Amid all the talk of recognising the Palestinian state, the grim realities of the region were set out, powerfully, by Isabel Coles in the Observer, after she spent a week in one village in the West Bank.

“As the UK and other western countries have dithered over the question of Palestinian statehood,” she writes, “Israel has been taking active steps to foreclose it.

“Across the West Bank, it has enabled radical settlers, who are rapidly expanding their presence in territory that would make up the bulk of any future Palestinian state.” (The Observer)

🗣️ Ed Miliband is expected to soften his stance on North Sea oil and gas exploration, by looking at new ways to help existing fields continue production. “In a move that has been described by one insider as a ‘fudge’ speculation is mounting the government will approve a series of tie-back projects, allowing new fields to be explored via adjacent existing sites,” reports Martyn McLaughlin. (Scotsman)

🗣️It’s Your Party, and you can cry if you want to: the “debacle of the aborted launch” of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party is the subject of a long and unhappy analysis in the Morning Star. And what a debacle it has been: a Python-esque squabble over administrative details that has torpedoed any chances, it appears, of credibility for the new left-wing group.

Andrew Murray concludes Keir Starmer will regard the fiasco as a rare shaft of sunshine, while new Green leader in England, Zack Polanski, “will now feel that hegemony over the large and growing strand of opinion well to the left of the government is his party’s for the taking.”

But there were, says Murray, many others hoping for better: “Nearly 800,000 people have signed up to support the new party. Opinion polling showed that it could be 15 per cent of the vote, maybe more, in a general election. Allied to the Greens, it could replace Labour as the main electoral force on the left,” says Murray. Now it’s all falling apart, in a spat over its new membership system.

“Never have the hopes of so many been dahsed by so few,” one supporter tells him. (Morning Star)

🗣️ Bestselling Scots poet Len Pennie got a bad review. Indeed, not any bad review: The Sunday Times’ poetry reviewer, Graeme Richardson, says her new book “poems annaw” is so bad that “I don’t mean mediocre or dull. I mean execrable. She is (and I say it with due awe and reverence) the worst poet to have emerged from Scotland since William McGonagall.”

This was a big call, and it’s supported by evidence in his review. (“So the girlies succumb to the new trending craze:/ They nip and they tuck just to suit the male gaze,/ But the males for some reason resent that they’re gazing;/ They hate that the girlies are feeling amazing.”)

The review was greeted with a glee that I couldn’t quite fathom from certain parts of the Scottish political scene: I suspect that Pennie’s politics, or maybe her use of Scots, or maybe her rise to fame during lockdown, powered their new-found interest in Scots poetry.

But of more concern to her, perhaps, should be the review’s observation - in its closing paragraphs - that one of her “poyums” draws more than a little inspiration from another poet’s work. Even McGonagall avoided that. (🎁 Sunday Times)

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Defense experts have warned Scotland will be on the front line of any conflict with Russia. Faslane and RAF Lossiemouth would be Moscow’s “first UK targets” because of their importance to NATO’s submarine defences. (Herald)

📣 Vapes should be sold in plain packaging, a report suggests, to reduce their appeal to children. (Scotsman)

📣 Tens of thousands of pink-footed geese have arrived in Scotland for the winter after an 800-mile journey from Iceland and Greenland. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 The UK Government has approved a second runway for London Gatwick airport, giving the green light to a £2.2 billion project which its supporters claim will help drive economic growth, and could be operational before the next general election. (BBC)

📣 New Work and Pensions secretary Pat McFadden says reform of the UK’s welfare system “must happen”. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump has warned that the US would defend Poland and Baltic states from Russian attack, days after the UK sent fighter jets to Poland in a warning aimed at Russia. Vladimir Putin’s jets have overflown Nato territory repeatedly in recent weeks. (Independent)

📣 Airports across Europe continue to be disrupted this morning after a cyber-attack on Friday disrupted check-in and boarding software. (BBC)

📣 Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan could be part of a deal in which TikTok in the United States will come under American control, it has been claimed. (Sky News)

📣 Prince Harry will “never” be allowed to return as a “half in, half out” working royal, according to royal “insiders”. (Mail)

SPORT

⚽️ Both halves of the Old Firm managed a win at the weekend, and were then drawn to face each other in the semi-finals of the Scottish league cup, but their victories came against the backdrop of fan protests. (BBC)

• Brendan Rodgers warend Russell Martin his Celtic would be “a different animal” when they meet at Hampden (Daily Record)

• Celtic banked another £500,000 after their “leisurely Sunday stroll in the sunshine” against Partick Thistle (Scotsman)

⚽️ Pep Guardiola attempted to “park the bus” against Arsenal in their 1-1 draw in London, but Liverpool were the real winners from the stalemate, which was secured deep into injury time when Gabriel Martinelli equalised for the Gunners. (🎥 BBC report & highlights)