Afternoon summary
Concern about immigration is a “manufactured panic”, a campaign group has said after polling suggested only a quarter of people think it is an important issue locally. (See 11.16am.)
John Swinney should spend more time on domestic issues than seeking a deal with the US on Scotch whisky, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary has said. As PA Media reports, the first minister has pushed hard for an exemption to tariffs imposed by the US administration of Donald Trump, meeting the president four times this year. But, speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Alexander said:
I’m very happy for the first minister to be supporting the British government’s efforts on tariffs, but that’s all that he’s doing …
Respectfully, many of us here in Scotland wish the first minister was spending more time avoiding the underspend of £1bn as we discovered last night, or the state of our schools and hospitals.
But there’s a second point beyond the legal requirement that this is a competence of the UK government – Donald Trump doesn’t give gifts, he does deals. The only counter-party in those negotiations that can do a deal is the UK government.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Updated
Ukraine being asked to fight 'proxy war' against Russia on behalf of Nato without being given means to win it, peers told
Ukraine is being asked to fight a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Nato without being given the means to win it, Nick Houghton, a former head of the armed forces, told the Lords today.
Houghton, who was chief of defence staff between 2013 and 2016, was speaking in a debate in the Lords on Ukraine.
Without proper backing, Ukraine could be forced into a ceasefire that would humiliate the country and embarrass western governments while leaving Russia bullish, he suggeested.
Houghton said it was hard to derive any “moral satisfaction” from what Nato was asking Ukraine to do.
He told the Lords:
I say this primarily because the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to be a limited war – limited by both the means and the geography. These limitations are ones imposed by the United States and by Nato more widely. They almost exclusively constrain Ukrainian activity to Ukrainian soil and deny Ukraine the capabilities required to carry the fight to Russia.
They do so, arguably, and understandably, to avoid provoking Russian escalation – hence a preference for financial sanctions as opposed to Tomahawk missiles. But such choices limit Ukraine’s ability to hurt Russia in ways that might bring the war to a conclusion on acceptable terms.
In short, therefore, we continue to accept that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war on behalf of Nato that we are denying it the means to win. Reflecting on this, I worry that we forget that war is not ultimately a battle of physical exchange but a battle of human will.
Sadly, the trajectory of this war increasingly looks like one that is hurting Ukraine more than Russia. More specifically, it is hurting Ukrainian society more than Vladimir Putin. Putin appears content to incrementally grind this war towards a ceasefire that will be humiliating to Ukraine and embarrassing to western governments.
Houghton also called for higher spending on defence.
Hard investment choices have for ever been the challenge of peacetime planners, but we should not be engaged in peacetime planning. We face an outcome to the current conflict that leaves behind a humiliated Ukraine, a residually dangerous Russia and an impoverished Britain devoid of threat awareness with an unfunded SDR [strategic defence review].
Updated
