Portrait of the week

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, said on a podcast: ‘I asked the question coming to Downing Street, “Well, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia?” I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was.’ Sir Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, said during questions after an annual speech: ‘I’m a little bit worried that [if] we all stay in this debate for another few days, the Russian trolls who didn’t appear to do all that much at various points over the years, they’ll be delighted they are front-page news once again.’ The Prime Minister told the House of Commons that whatever happened at RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, on 27 September was ‘almost certainly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard’.

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, said there were ‘strong indications’ that Iran played a part in the events at RAF Fairford. The United States withdrew all its bombers from Fairford, which President Donald Trump of America said had been because of ‘some threats’. A dual Iranian-British man aged 27 and a 22-year-old British national were arrested in Westminster on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts in connection with Fairford. Two Iranian nationals appeared in court charged with plotting ​acts of terrorism involving the use of a homemade bomb to attack the Jewish community in Manchester at the behest of a figure believed to be based in Iran; the court was told both men had come to Britain from Europe ​in boats.

Home Earl Spencer, the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, said in a book that the King had told him after her death: ‘We’ll forget her soon enough.’ Buckingham Palace responded: ‘The pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’ The Duke of Sussex was reported to be in talks to make a documentary about the Princess, his mother. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, flew off to New York, where he told President Donald Trump that Britain would defend the Falklands, but agreed to look again at the Chagos agreement, which Mr Trump declared ‘terrible’.

Home MPs voted against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that offered assisted suicide, by 286 to 270; in June 2025, an identical Bill was given a Third Reading by 314 to 291. Ben Delo, a British cryptocurrency billionaire, donated £36 million to Reform. The next day, the cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne (who had given Nigel Farage £5 million in 2024) gave Reform another £36 million. The government plotted retrospective legislation to stop such donations. Dan Thomas resigned as Reform’s Welsh leader, after his arrest on suspicion of assault. Piddington, an Oxfordshire village of 350, voted in a referendum by 285 to 26 to cede from the UK in protest at an asylum camp for 1,250 men coming there.

Home 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.

Home Andy Burnham made his first foreign trip as Prime Minister, to Kyiv. ‘Despite Russia’s outrageous threats to my country,’ he said, ‘we will continue our support for Ukraine.’ He said he would supply information about British-made components of the Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles to help Ukraine build its own version. Ukraine gave Britain a trove of secret battlefield intelligence. Andrey Kelin, the Russian ambassador to Britain, had, it was found, left in July and not been replaced. Iranian hackers shut down a British power station for four days. New 10p coins went into circulation, with the King’s head and a capercaillie as tails.

Home Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, began a tour of the United Kingdom, making small announcements. But on the matter of the early release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper, he said he was ‘increasingly confident’ that work to increase space in prisons would ‘prevent their early release altogether’. All 50 chief constables in the United Kingdom urged him to prevent it. Probation officers voted in favour of strike action over the early release scheme. Trains in the north-west of England were disrupted for two days after a 90-second power failure in Manchester affected a Network Rail operations centre and signalling. More regions were declared to be in drought, encompassing 45 million people, of whom 27 million are restricted in their use of water.

Home In 19 English counties 1mm or less rain fell in July. Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, said that yields of wheat and oats were ‘very, very poor’. Fire affected 375 acres of Suffolk at Dunwich Heath. Shell agreed to sell its European onshore renewables arm, including solar farms, to France’s TotalEnergies. BP’s profits rose to the highest since 2022, after the war in the Middle East pushed up oil prices. BP put its UK offshore oil and gas business up for sale. A trial by researchers at King’s College London started recruiting 220 children aged 11 to 16 to assess puberty blockers after the High Court rejected a legal challenge.

Home Police launched a murder inquiry into the death of Ann Widdecombe, the former MP, aged 78. Her body was found with head wounds at her house on Dartmoor. They arrested a 28-year-old white British man in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Counter-terrorism police took over the investigation two days later and rearrested the suspect on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Police called it a ‘targeted’ attack. She had been a minister in Sir John Major’s administration, an MEP for the Brexit Party and, since 2023, a member of Reform, serving as its immigration and justice spokesman.

Home Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, announced that he would leave parliament (by applying to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead) and then fight a by-election at Clacton. ‘It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire Establishment,’ he said. His announcement came after a report in the Sunday Times saying that he did not declare, on becoming an MP, benefits received in the preceding year from George Cottrell, 32, who spent eight months in jail in America after admitting a charge of wire fraud in 2016. The main parties and Restore said they would not put up candidates against Farage.

Home Andy Burnham, who was expected to become prime minister on 20 July, took off his tie and put on a dark T-shirt for a speech in which he said he would establish a ‘No. 10 North’ in Manchester as the ‘nerve centre of a rewired Britain’. He promised council houses, welfare reform and ‘good growth in every postcode’ by means of ‘Manchesterism’. He took no questions. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, presented the delayed defence investment plan, and said that spending would rise by £15 billion by 2030. He landed his successor with £4.7 billion of the sum being left unfunded. The Ministry of Defence would also have to find £10.7 billion in efficiency savings in the next four years.

Home Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years for the murder of Henry Nowak, 18, who was stabbed several times; the victim was handcuffed and arrested while he was telling police he had been stabbed and saying ‘I can’t breathe’. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said that he ‘felt sick’ watching bodycam footage of the incident. Nicola Sturgeon, in a remarkable interview with the BBC about the embezzlement of £400,310.65 by her now-estranged husband, Peter Murrell, said she expected ‘a legal process to recover the money from Peter’, but she emphasised that: ‘I am not guilty of that embezzlement, so nothing that belongs to me should be part of that.