00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Tuesday. My name's
00:04Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our newly appointed Westminster
00:09correspondent Andrew Quinn for the first time. Welcome Andrew.
00:13Hi Dale, thank you. It's great to be here, great to be on the bulletin for the first
00:18time and great to be started with the Scotsman in my first week.
00:22Andrew, it's a busy start for you. We'll bring up a copy of today's front page of the Scotsman
00:27and we splashed on John Swinney flying to the US in a fresh push for lower whiskey tariffs.
00:34We know Mr Swinney met in person with Donald Trump while the US President was here to attend
00:41and visit a couple of his golf courses, including the opening of the new course up in Aberdeenshire.
00:47There was a mixture of criticism and some welcoming the contact between the First Minister and
00:54Donald Trump at the time. There were some loose suggestions that there might have been
00:57positive gains, at least diplomatically or vocally made about whiskey tariffs. We know John Swinney
01:04brought that up, but there was no concrete outcome. So John Swinney has flown across to
01:10the US to see what more can be done. Andrew, can you just talk us through why Swinney's going
01:17across the year and what the initial reaction is so far to that?
01:21Yeah, so he's going over with the hope of getting a better trade deal for whiskey, obviously. Donald
01:28Trump's even bigger than the tariffs for everyone across the world and the kind of base rate is 10%.
01:33The UK is affected by that. So whiskey's impacted by it. Now the US is the biggest market for whiskey.
01:42So that's a huge impact, 10% levy on it. So the First Minister's really going there and trying to get a
01:51reduction on that, perhaps get a special exemption on it and try and play up to Trump's Scottish roots.
01:58It's interesting. It's hard to see how much success that will have, partly because Trump's so
02:04unpredictable. He changes his mind quite often. But yes, Swinney will be going there with the hope
02:11that he's able to get something. He's generally not been that critical of Trump since he's come in,
02:18but the problem is that some folk in his party have been. And that's where some of the reaction
02:25is quite interesting because he's been accused of hypocrisy by Scottish Labour because his
02:32SNP Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, he had had a real goal at Keir Starmer when he was in the White
02:40House. Mr Flynn had said that the Prime Minister should get up off his knees and revoke the state visit
02:48because of how Donald Trump had treated the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. So yeah,
02:55it seems a wee bit hypocritical for some folk in the SNP to really be criticising the Prime Minister
03:02when he goes and visits Donald Trump. But then they're okay for their leader and for the First
03:07Minister to go and do it. And I think it really points to the reality is for the UK, the US is our
03:14one of our biggest allies. It's the biggest country that we're close with. Huge for trading,
03:22particularly for whisky. So you need to remain in dialogue anyway, even though lots of politicians
03:28will disagree with things that Donald Trump says or does.
03:32I suspect, Andrew, if there was an outcome on whisky, some of that criticism may disappear reasonably
03:38quickly. Just on another point, I said it was a busy first week in the chair for you. The reassembled
03:44cabinet under Sir Keir Starmer meets for the first time today. We know there's been some contentious
03:50changes. We know Angela Rayne has gone from the Deputy Prime Ministerial role and there'll need to be a
03:56new replacement coming. What do you think will be discussed around that table today at that first meeting,
04:03Andrew? Yeah, I mean, well, so we've got a new Deputy Prime Minister. That's David Lammy. But we're
04:08looking, there's going to be a new, there's going to be a Deputy Leadership contest for Labour, which is
04:13going to be very interesting. Now, that won't be getting discussed so much. I guess it will be,
04:18there'll be a lot of kind of, not introductions because they all know each other, but there'll be a
04:24lot of kind of discussed about, yeah, who's new. There's been a lot of changes or whatever. And
04:31yeah, so they'll also, I imagine, be discussing how they're going to deal with issues like
04:38immigration. And that's really the big one. I mean, there was a meeting of the Parliamentary
04:42Labour Party last night and that was discussed there.
04:51The Prime Minister was saying that after the reshuffle. So yeah, immigration is the big thing
04:57that they're focusing on at the moment. I mean, what was interesting is this is the first Cabinet
05:01since Labour's come in that Ian Murray wasn't at. He was sacked as Scottish Secretary and replaced
05:07with Douglas Alexander. That's caused a lot of problems within Scottish Labour. A lot of people
05:13were very loyal to Ian Murray. He had been in the 2015 and 2019 elections. He was the only Scottish Labour MP
05:19elected. So he'd been through very difficult times. He'd been the shadow Scotland Secretary for
05:26for four years. And then after just a year, he was booted out. And because of the uproar,
05:32he was actually given a junior ministerial gig in the culture department as well. So yeah, there's
05:38there's been a lot going on this week. There's been a lot of briefing and newspapers from allies of
05:44Murray, allies of Douglas Alexander, or perhaps other people. So it really looks like in Scottish Labour at
05:51the moment, there's a bit of a civil war. And even we had a piece today where no Scottish Labour MP is
05:57publicly welcomed Douglas Alexander. And that may be partly they feel bad for Ian Murray. Or there's been some
06:06suggestions. It's that they're not great fans of Douglas Alexander either. So yeah, it's gearing up for
06:11a very interesting time. And obviously, we have we have the conferences coming up as well. So it's a
06:17very interesting time for Labour. And just a couple of weeks away from Labour's main conference, I would
06:24think that there'll be plenty happening there and plenty to write about. I know you'll be there in person,
06:28Andrew, to bring us all the latest. You can read some of those stories, including how people within
06:35Scottish Labour, the MPs are reacting or not reacting to Douglas Alexander's appointment
06:41as Scottish Secretary at scotsman.com. And to get all your latest around Westminster, please follow us
06:47on social media channels, Facebook, X and other platforms and go out and pick up a copy of the
06:54Scotsman in print tomorrow. We'll have all the very latest, including what has initially come out of
07:01that Cabinet Media taking place today. Andrew, thanks to you. And thanks to everyone else for joining us.
07:06Cheers, Dale.
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