Portrait of the week

Home An air of crisis hung over the government. Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, was told to fly back immediately from Africa after a series of secret meetings with Israeli political figures was revealed. Sir Michael Fallon had already gone as Defence Secretary, to be replaced by someone called Gavin Williamson, an MP since 2010 and Chief Whip since last year. Sir Michael’s departure followed a complaint that Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House, was said to have made to the Prime Minister about a remark some years ago — when she had said she had cold hands, he said: ‘I know where you can put them to warm them up.

Home A great ferment of accusations of sexual impropriety was made against people in Parliament and out of it. Bex Bailey, a Labour party worker, said she was raped, not by an MP, at a party event in 2011 and a senior Labour official discouraged her from reporting it. Jared O’Mara MP had the Labour whip withdrawn while claims were investigated that he had called a woman he met ‘an ugly bitch’. Tulip Siddiq, a Labour MP, said that cases of sexual misconduct cases at Westminster could run into hundreds. Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, was even driven to apologise publicly for putting his hand on the knee of Julia Hartley-Brewer during dinner 15 years ago, although she said that she had not been ‘remotely upset or distressed’.

Home  Of perhaps 400 Britons returned from the former territory of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, those who ‘do not justify prosecution’ should be reintegrated, Max Hill, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the BBC. Rory Stewart MP, asked about foreigners fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, said that ‘the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them’. Jared O’Mara MP resigned from the Commons equalities committee after attention was directed to remarks he made online in 2004, such as that Michelle McManus had only won Pop Idol ‘because she was fat’.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, went to Brussels and had dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier. They came up with a joint statement that ‘efforts should accelerate over the months to come’. But by this week’s meeting of the European Council, Britain was deemed not to have done enough about the price it would pay to allow the EU to discuss trade matters. No great hope was held out that it would be any better by the next meeting in December. Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, said: ‘There is no way we would vote for a no deal.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, when asked by Iain Dale in an interview on LBC: ‘If there was a Brexit vote now, would you vote Brexit?’ repeatedly refused to say. Earlier, briefing the House of Commons on Brexit, she said that the country must prepare for ‘every eventuality’. The government published two papers on trade and customs arrangements that envisaged ways by which Britain could thrive as an ‘independent trading nation’ even if no trade deal were reached with Brussels. Mrs May admitted that during a transitional period, the European Court of Justice would retain jurisdiction.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like them, to ‘do our duty by Britain’. She said the government planned to make it easier for local authorities to build council houses. On the eve of the conference, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in an interview with the Sun sketched out four ‘red lines’ that he said should apply to Brexit. These included a transition period that must not last ‘a second more’ than two years. His stipulations went beyond anything agreed by the government, but Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether he was ‘unsackable’.

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, told the party conference that Labour was ‘on the threshold of power’. The party had been ‘war-game-type scenario-planning’ for things like ‘a run on the pound’, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said at a fringe meeting. Mr McDonnell had delighted conference-goers by denouncing Private Finance Initiatives: ‘We will bring existing PFI contracts back in-house. We’re bringing them back! We’re bringing them back!’ But next day, Jon Ashworth, the shadow health spokesman, said: ‘It’s only a handful which are causing hospital trusts across the country a significant problem.’ Mr McDonnell also promised to renationalise rail, water, energy and the Royal Mail.

Home Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, issued a manifesto for a ‘glorious future’ for Britain outside the European Union as ‘the greatest country on Earth’. This was seen as a challenge to Theresa May, the Prime Minister. People like Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, and Kenneth Clarke, the Tory arch-Remainer, said he should have been sacked. Mr Johnson’s lengthy piece in the Daily Telegraph came six days before a big speech on the subject promised by Mrs May, in Florence, before the next round of Brexit negotiations. He declared that Britain should pay nothing for access to the EU single market. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, went on television and accused him of ‘back-seat driving’.

Home The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill was given a second reading by 326 votes to 290, with seven Labour MPs rebelling against the whip. Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, said it would be quite all right for Britain to stay in the European Union after all, with agreed adjustments to the free movement of people. Jeremy Corbyn, the current Labour leader, said that it was ‘open for discussion’ whether Britain remained in the EU single market, though Labour’s policy is for Britain to stay in the single market after March 2019 for a temporary period. Sir Peter Hall, the founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a former director of the National Theatre, died aged 86.

Home On being asked if she meant to lead the Conservatives into the next election, due in 2022, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Yes. I’m in this for the long term.’ Echoing Peter Mandelson’s remark in 2001, she said: ‘I’m not a quitter.’ Research by Conservative Home found that 52 per cent of Conservative party members wanted her gone before 2022. A memo from Lynton Crosby sent in April, before Mrs May called an early election, turned up in the Mail on Sunday: ‘Clearly a lot of risk involved with holding an early election, and there is a real need to nail down the “why” for doing so now.’ The Duchess of Cambridge announced that she was expecting her third child.

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, announced a change in Labour’s policy by saying that he wanted Britain to stay in the single market and customs union during a transition period after Brexit, which could be ‘as short as possible but as long as necessary’. The French government denied that senior French diplomats had said they wanted to see Brexit talks make progress by proceeding to questions of trade. ‘We need you to take positions on all separation issues,’ said Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator. British sources denounced M. Barnier’s ‘inconsistent, ill- judged and ill-considered comments’.

Home Big Ben ceased sounding for a planned period of four years, thanks to a decision by the Speaker and two Commons committees. The silence was attributed to the need to protect the hearing of workmen restoring the Elizabeth Tower, though experts on the bell and on previous restorations saw no reason for it. A game of hunt-the-issue was begun when Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, was obliged to resign as shadow minister for women and equalities after writing a piece for the Sun that began: ‘Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.

Home Regulated rail fares will rise by 3.6 per cent in January, bringing the price of annual tickets from Oxford, Colchester or Hastings to more than £5,000. The rise depended on the annual rate of inflation in July as measured by the Retail Prices Index, which had risen to 3.6 per cent; as measured by the Consumer Prices Index it remained unchanged at 2.6 per cent. A passenger train was derailed near Waterloo station but none of the 23 on board was injured. A train from Royston hit the buffers at King’s Cross. Richard Gordon, the author of Doctor in the House, died aged 95. The landlord of the Mallard in Scunthorpe became the third person at the pub to win £1 million in the National Lottery.

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared to wrest control of plans for Brexit from cabinet rivals, while Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was in Italy and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was in Australia. Mr Hammond foresaw a ‘transitional deal’ ending by June 2022, when the next general election is due. He said it would be ‘some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the UK and the European Union’. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, insisted that the cabinet had not agreed to a three-year transition. Mr Johnson said he was unaware that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, had announced a year-long inquiry about the costs and benefits of EU migration.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, invited the media to take a photograph of her beginning a holiday with her husband Philip at Lake Garda before pressing on to Switzerland for some walking. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, resisted demands by Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament Brexit negotiator, that the European Court of Justice should retain jurisdiction over EU migrants in Britain. BMW said a fully electric Mini is to be built at Cowley in Oxford, with motors made in Germany and shipped over for assembly. The government announced plans to ban new diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040. The number of people over 90 with a driving licence reached 100,000.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told MPs before the summer recess: ‘No backbiting, no carping. The choice is me or Jeremy Corbyn. Nobody wants that.’ Her remarks followed a spate of leaks and negative briefings from cabinet ministers. It was said that Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had called public-sector workers ‘overpaid’. He responded by warning cabinet colleagues against leaking, but maintained a 10 per cent pay disparity was a ‘simple fact’.

Home In her first big speech since the general election, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I say to the other parties in the House of Commons… come forward with your own views and ideas.’ She was responding to a government-commissioned review of modern working practices by Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, and a former adviser to Tony Blair. The report was hostile to payment in cash and suggested that immigrant visas might insist on non-cash payment for work. Unemployment fell by 64,000 to 1.49 million. A leading article in the Evening Standard, edited by one of Mrs May’s enemies, George Osborne, commented on the position of David Davis: ‘For the first time in his political career he is trying to be loyal.

Home Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged colleagues to make the case for ‘sound money’; he said, ‘We must hold our nerve,’ as he came under pressure to end the public-sector pay cap of a 1 per cent rise a year. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, thought that pay rises could be awarded in ‘a responsible way’; Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, did not think that taxes would need to increase to accommodate pay rises. Firemen boasted of a 2 per cent pay rise. The government won the vote on the Queen’s Speech by 323 to 309 after heading off an amendment by the Labour MP Stella Creasy, by suddenly announcing that women in Northern Ireland (where abortion is illegal) would be able to have free abortions on the NHS in England.

Home In preparation for the vote on the Queen’s Speech, the Government, after weeks of negotiations, bought the support of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons by promising to spend a billion or two pounds in Northern Ireland on broadband and other good things. In reply to expostulations from the Opposition, Nigel Dodds, the parliamentary leader of the DUP, told the Commons: ‘We might publish all the correspondence and conversations we had in 2010 with Labour front-benchers, and in 2015 with Labour front-benchers, and indeed also the Scottish National party, because some of the faux outrage we have heard is hypocrisy.