Philip Patrick

Today's World Cup draw in Washington, presided over by Fifa president Gianni Infantino with best buddie president Donald Trump at his side, is intended to whet appetites, set pulses racing and, most importantly, get fingers twitching on booking sites for tickets, flights, and hotels for next summer’s North American extravaganza. The World Cup 2026 is poised to be not just the biggest ever, but the biggest rip-off ever For those giddily contemplating the trip to North America next summer – not least we Scottish fans who have been denied a place at the party for so long – a cold, hard reality is about to bite. For the World Cup 2026 is poised to be not just the biggest ever, but the biggest rip-off ever.

The British Council, the cultural arm of the UK government, is in deep trouble. The 91-year-old organisation is struggling to repay a £200 million-pound loan from the Covid era and there is anxious talk of up to 40 centre closures and a possible 2,000 job losses. Assets are being sold off to try and keep the show on the road. There is a problem that the Council does not really know what it is for – or perhaps it knows, but does not relish, its mission ‘We really need help on that loan,' says Scott Macdonald, the Council's beleaguered chief executive. 'The government has got to turn it into something viable for us and at reasonable termsWe are selling off everything.

Japan is to have a female prime minister. Well, probably. Sanae Takaichi, the 64-year-old conservative veteran, has at the third attempt won the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – which brings with it the bonus of being prime minister. Or at least it usually does. The LDP are currently in a coalition government, so Takaichi’s appointment will need to wait a couple of weeks to be confirmed at an extraordinary session in the diet (the national legislature). You might think the Japanese, feminists especially, would make something of having their first female prime minister, but the news has elicited not much more than a shrug here. There has been little fanfare and still less rejoicing.

Here we go again. In what appears now to be an annual event, the Japanese prime minister has resigned. In a press conference on Sunday evening, Shigeru Ishiba, who had only been in the job since last October, explained that he was leaving because his continuation in post would prove divisive for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It is time, he said, for the ‘next generation’ to take over.  Ishiba had lost his party’s majority in both lower and upper house elections (he headed a minority coalition government) and is now irredeemably tainted by failure. He has no faction or support group to stand up for him and couldn’t have credibly presented himself as the man to either unite and rebuild his declining party or make any headway in solving Japan’s myriad, complex problems.

When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on what brought about her downfall as first minister, ‘Isla’ Bryson might be worth a footnote but J.K. Rowling surely merits a chapter. No one has managed to articulate the opposition case to Sturgeon with the verve, intelligence and penetrating wit of the Harry Potter author.   Rowling’s review of Frankly, Sturgeon’s recently published memoir, is in many ways as brilliant as her other mainly tweeted thrusts. It is incisive and damming, outclassing her adversary and doing so with courage humour and originality.

Relief. That was the overriding emotion in the Japanese financial markets and society at large today when, after months of speculation and discord, a trade deal was finally struck between President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s trade representative Ryosei Akazawa. The Japanese envoy, who has made eight trips to Washington in pursuit of an agreement, finally pulled it off just a week before the 1 August deadline (after which a hefty 25 per cent levy would have been imposed on all Japanese goods to the US). With the deal, that will be reduced to a probably manageable and reciprocal 15 per cent. Included in the package was an agreement that Japan would invest $550 billion in the US (details to be announced).