Portrait of the week: Britain sanctions Jewish settlements, Dover protests erupt and the AfD wins big

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Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, set out in the Commons new restrictions on buying goods made in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The government, he said, ‘agrees’ there is ethnic cleansing in areas of the West Bank, carried out by ‘settler terrorists’. France, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Sweden would impose similar sanctions. Israel announced as a ‘counter-measure’ the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem. Hundreds of protestors, dressed in black and wearing face coverings, blocked roads at Dover on Saturday, some chanting: ‘Stop the boats.’ The next day, 120 migrants on a single dinghy were rescued in British waters in the Channel, having been accompanied by French rescue boats for ten hours, and taken to Portsmouth, where hundreds of protestors blocked roads and clashed with police. The government called the demonstration ‘thuggish’. Both protests were encouraged by Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo. On the day of the Portsmouth landing, another 505 migrants crossed the Channel. More than 1,000 flights were cancelled because of computer failure at air traffic control. Lord Benyon, the Lord Chamberlain of the Household, wrote to lords-lieutenant to say that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ‘are no longer working members of the royal family’.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Sarah Mullally, said that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would make the NHS active in delivering death as though it were medical treatment. The government dropped plans to merge smaller councils to form larger authorities in Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. James Orr and Dan Jukes, long-standing members of Nigel Farage’s inner circle, were suspended while Reform investigated a Channel 4 programme showing negotiations over a proposed donation from the supposedly British-based son of an American, in fact undercover reporters from the investigative group Verbatim. Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, said he wanted to stand in the by-election on 8 October in Sir Keir Starmer’s old seat.

Jaguar Land Rover announced a voluntary redundancy scheme to lose 4,000 jobs. The value of the typical home fell by 0.4 per cent to £298,468 in the 12 months to August. John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a speech favouring ‘Good growth in every postcode. Hope in every heart’. (The Office for National Statistics put the number of postcodes that have only one household at 55,540 in England and Wales.) Chris Langham, the actor whose career was ruined by a six-month sentence for downloading indecent images of children, died aged 77. Dame Angela Eagle, the Environment Secretary, urged people to have enough food and water on hand to survive a few days without power or water.

Abroad

Alternative für Deutschland came first in the state elections of Saxony-Anhalt (population 2.1 million), securing 43.8 per cent of the vote, to the Christian Democrats’ 17.2 per cent. Thousands demonstrated in Spain against the handling of July’s influx of migrants from Morocco into Ceuta, where between 5,000 and 10,000 remain in makeshift camps. After 286 days at sea the US aircraft carrier the Abraham Lincoln put in at Laem Chabang in Thailand and its 5,000 crew went ashore. A boat adrift off the Canary islands was found to have 44 alive aboard and five dead, of the 127 who had set off 27 days earlier from The Gambia.

The US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv suffered more daily air raid alerts than ever – an average of ten a day since the end of August. America hit five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for Iran targeting American warships. Israel said it had struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon. Gloria Steinem, the writer about feminism, died aged 92. Holland, citing ‘increasing geopolitical unrest’, moved 27 tons of gold from the United States to London, where it now keeps 32 per cent of its 612-ton holding. An Anthropic researcher resigned, saying he feared AI ‘could kill us all by the end of the decade’.