Portrait of the week

Home Inflation would reach 18.6 per cent by January and the energy price cap £5,816 in April, according to a forecast by Citi, the investment bank. An annual National Grid exercise simulating a gas supply emergency has been extended from two days to four in September. Workers at Felixstowe, Suffolk, Britain’s biggest container port, handling 48 per cent of traffic, went on strike for eight days. Strikes by Scottish dustmen spread from Edinburgh. Barristers belonging to the Criminal Bar Association voted to go on an indefinite strike in England and Wales after their demand for a 25 per cent increase in pay for legal aid work was denied. A man was charged with the murder of Rico Burton (a cousin of the boxer Tyson Fury), who was stabbed to death in Altrincham at 3 a.m.

Home The annual rate of inflation rose to 10.1 per cent, its highest since 1982. Average wages rose by 4.7 per cent between April and June, but inflation in that quarter left average workers 3 per cent less well-off than before. The supermarket Iceland was to offer customers interest-free loans of between £25 and £100, repayable at £10 a week, to help them buy food. Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, called for £29 billion to be spent on freezing energy prices for six months for all consumers, rich and poor, partly to be paid for by extending the windfall tax on oil and gas. Railway workers belonging to the RMT union went on strike for another two days.

Home Energy bills will be £4,266 for a typical household by January, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight, which had put the sum at £3,616 only a week earlier. Ofgem had decided since then to shorten the period over which suppliers can recover their costs. Gordon Brown, prime minister 2007-10, declared that Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, competitors to succeed him, must hold an emergency Budget to deal with the ‘financial timebomb’ of energy prices. ‘If they do not,’ he said, ‘parliament should be recalled to force them to do so.

Home BP reported quarterly profits of £6.9 billion, its biggest for 14 years, after oil and gas prices rose steeply. Typical domestic energy bills were forecast by the consultancy Cornwall Insight to go above £3,600 a year in the coming winter. Under the family scheme for visas, 31,300 Ukrainians had arrived in the United Kingdom, and 72,700 under the sponsorship scheme. British Airways suspended new ticket sales for short-haul flights from Heathrow until at least 15 August, to meet the airport’s limit on the number of passengers departing each day of 100,000. On 1 August, 696 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats; in July the total was 3,683, and more than 17,000 so far in 2022.

Home In a television debate between the two contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party (and hence the prime ministership), Rishi Sunak said it would be irresponsible to put the country in even more debt by cutting taxes and Liz Truss said that the tax rises he approved would put Britain into a recession. Mr Sunak was criticised for interrupting. A later proposal he made to cut VAT when the price cap on energy bills rose above £3,000 only brought accusations of a U-turn. He agreed to be interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4, but Ms Truss didn’t. Opinion polls put Ms Truss well ahead among Conservative voters; Labour voters preferred Mr Sunak.

Home In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were the first of the eight contenders to be eliminated, followed by Suella Braverman, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch. After two televised debates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the frontrunners, refused to take part in a third, which was cancelled. The debates were bitter and accompanied by negative briefings. Lord Frost said he had ‘grave reservations’ about Penny Mordaunt, and had ‘had to ask the PM to move her on’ when she was his junior during Brexit negotiations. After parliament rose for the summer two names were to be put before party members in a postal ballot.

Home The Conservatives began the process of finding a new leader, which involves balloting MPs and then sending two names for party members to choose between. Eight candidates initially qualified for the process set out by the 1922 Committee, by gaining nominations from 20 MPs: Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi. Grant Shapps, Rehman Chishti and Sajid Javid withdrew before the off. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, a fancied contender, had decided not to stand, as had Steve Baker, who was not widely fancied. Michael Gove (whom Downing Street had denounced a week earlier as a ‘snake’ when the Prime Minister, attempting to hold on to power, sacked him) did not stand, and nor did Priti Patel.

Home Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post of Chancellor and Steve Barclay, the PM’s chief of staff, Health Secretary.) The resignations came five days after Chris Pincher, aged 52, the MP for Tamworth, resigned as deputy chief whip the morning after he ‘drank far too much’ at the Carlton Club where he was alleged to have groped two men. Then began questions of what Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, knew and when. Mr Pincher had the whip removed as a member of the parliamentary Conservative party, and said: ‘I will benefit from professional medical support.

Home Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said that military spending had to increase. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, reacted to the loss of two by-elections by saying ‘I’ve got to listen to what people are saying’, but did not resign. Oliver Dowden said ‘Somebody must take responsibility’, and resigned as a co-chairman of the Conservative party. Later Mr Johnson joked to reporters in Kigali, Rwanda, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting: ‘I’m thinking actively about the third term.’ The Liberal Democrats won Tiverton and Honiton with a swing of 29.9 per cent from the Conservatives; the Conservative majority of 24,239 from the 2019 general election was the largest ever overturned in a by-election.

Home A rail strike on three alternate days, bringing the system to a standstill for a week, was organised by the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union. On the first day, the London Underground came out too. Tram drivers in south London arranged a strike of their own. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, instructed his frontbenchers not to join strikers’ picket lines, but some did. EasyJet announced plans to cut 7 per cent of its 160,000 flights scheduled between July and September after Gatwick, easyJet’s main airport, said it would reduce the number of flights taking off. Flights carrying up to 5,000 passengers were cancelled at Heathrow airport on one day because of trouble with baggage-handling.

Home Boris Johnson won a vote of confidence in him as prime minister among Conservative MPs by 211 votes to 148 (58.8 per cent in favour, compared with 63 per cent in favour of Theresa May in 2018). No more such votes are allowed for a year. Workmen had still been dismantling the staging in front of Buckingham Palace from the Jubilee celebrations when Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, announced that, as at least 54 MPs had written letters requesting it, there would be a secret ballot on the question. Boris Johnson had been booed by people in the crowd as he walked up the steps of St Paul’s with his wife Carrie for the service of thanksgiving for the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.

Home The Jubilee for the Queen’s 70 years on the throne was marked by two days of public holiday, 16,000 street parties, a service at St Paul’s, Trooping the Colour, late pub opening, beacons, bells, and anxiety about the Queen’s health. After Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in parliament that he had added £15 billion of public money to the £9 billion allocated in the spring statement to relieving energy bills, the nation questioned what it meant for their pockets and for Conservative politics. The government would get some of the money for the plan from a windfall tax, or ‘energy profits levy’, of 25 per cent on the profits of oil and gas producers, expected to yield £5 billion this year.

Home Sue Gray starched and ironed her report for publication after the Metropolitan Police wound up its own enquiries into breaches of coronavirus laws in and around Downing Street, with 126 fixed penalty notices being issued, only one to Boris Johnson. Meanwhile the nation contemplated photographs published by ITV News of the Prime Minister raising a glass at Downing Street on 13 November 2020. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said in an interview: ‘I would want to see Moldova equipped to Nato standard. This is a discussion we’re having with our allies.’ A ballot of 40,000 members prepared the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union for a national strike. ScotRail cut a third of trains from its timetable in a dispute with Aslef, the train-drivers’ union.

Home The annual rate of inflation, impelled by energy costs, rose to 9 per cent, its highest since 1982. Unemployment fell to 1.2 million, 3.7 per cent, its lowest since 1974 and below the number of vacancies of 1.3 million. Britain said it wanted to do something about the Northern Ireland Protocol, but the EU said it couldn’t. The Democratic Unionist party said it would not take part in the power-sharing executive of Northern Ireland unless Britain did. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, told the Commons that a new law would adjust Northern Ireland’s trading status. Maros Sefcovic, vice-president of the European Commission, said the EU would ‘respond with all measures at its disposal’.

Home The Prince of Wales delivered the Queen’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament sitting on a throne next to the crown put on a table by Lord Cholmondeley. Prince Charles acted with the Duke of Cambridge as counsellors of state under the Regency Act 1937, since the Queen cannot walk easily; the other two counsellors, the Duke of York and Duke of Sussex, are not seen as fit to act in the role. The Speech mentioned 38 laws to level up, regenerate, bring safety online, secure ‘Brexit freedoms’ in the amending of legislation, regulate railways and ferries, promote heat pumps, prohibit protestors glueing themselves to buildings, deter puppy smuggling and enforce school registers, but nothing to stop the import of fur or foie gras.

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced £300 million more in military aid for Ukraine. Speaking by video to the Ukrainian parliament, he said: ‘This is Ukraine’s finest hour, that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.’ BP lost $24.4 billion by withdrawing from its shareholding in the Russian energy giant Rosneft, but would have otherwise made a profit of $6.2 billion in the first quarter of this year. Only 27,100 refugees from Ukraine had arrived in Britain by 27 April, the latest figures available, though 86,100 visas had been issued. At least 254 non-Ukrainian migrants were brought ashore from small craft in the Channel on 1 May, when the weather had improved after 11 days, and 293 the next day; more than 7,000 had arrived in 2022.

Home Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said Britain assessed that 15,000 Russians had been killed in the war against Ukraine and at least 530 Russian tanks, 530 armoured personnel carriers and 560 infantry fighting vehicles had been lost or captured. Sixty Russian helicopters and fighter jets had also been lost. He told the House of Commons that Britain was sending to Ukraine some Stormer armoured vehicles, with launchers for Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, called for aircraft to be sent too. In the seven days up to 23 April, 2,207 people had died with coronavirus, bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 173,693. In the previous week 1,289 had died.

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, travelled to Kyiv in secret and joined President Volodymyr Zelensky for the cameras in his office and in empty streets. He was given a pottery cock by local people. He said: ‘We are stepping up our own military and economic support.’ Mr Zelensky said: ‘It is time to impose a complete embargo on Russian energy resources.’ Britain would send 120 armoured vehicles, Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, 800 anti-tank missiles and anti-ship missile systems. Supporters of Extinction Rebellion sat down in the road at Oxford Circus in London. The tyres of 100 SUVs were let down in Edinburgh by campaigners who left notes saying ‘Your gas-guzzler kills’.