Portrait of the week

Home Steven Woolfe, the MEP who spent three days in hospital after an altercation at a Ukip meeting, said he was resigning from the party, which was in a ‘death spiral’. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, told its annual conference that an independence referendum bill would be published for consultation this week. A decision on airport expansion in England was postponed again, and Downing Street said that ministers would be allowed to express their personal opinions. Olympic athletes in a parade in Manchester were joined on an open-topped bus by two young impostors wearing Team GB tracksuits and plastic medals. The annual rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Prices Index rose to 1 per cent in September from 0.

Home The pound fell against the dollar and the euro, weakening by 19 per cent against the dollar from its level at the time of the EU referendum to lows last seen in 1985. The FTSE 100 index almost beat its highest-ever closing level. There was much unrooted talk about what votes Parliament should have on the Brexit process and when. A spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Parliament is of course going to debate and scrutinise that process as it goes on’ and would then perhaps vote on the ‘final deal’. Cuadrilla was given permission by the government to drill four shale-gas wells in Lancashire that would employ hydraulic fracturing. Wolfgang Suschitzky, the photographer, died aged 104. Some Tory MPs called for the commissioning of a new royal yacht.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said at the Conservative party conference that hers was now the party of ‘working-class’ people and would occupy the ‘new centre ground’. She announced that Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty would be invoked by next March, beginning the formal process for Britain to leave the European Union. The pound fell to a 31-year low and the FTSE 100 index rose above 7,000 to an 18-month high. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘We will no longer target a surplus at the end of this Parliament,’ as his predecessor George Osborne had promised, but would spend on housing and transport. More than 500 people were stranded on the London Eye big wheel for three hours one evening by a mechanical fault. A No.

Home Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said that Britain would oppose attempts to create an EU army, as it would ‘undermine’ Nato. Forecasts for British economic growth in 2016 collated by the Treasury were revised from 1.5 to 1.8 per cent, the level expected in June, before the EU referendum. Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, said that leaving the European Union would make Britain ‘better off than continental Europe’ within five years. Scotland began importing shale gas from the United States. Fourteen candidates are to stand in the by-election at Witney on October 20 to replace David Cameron as MP, including one from the Bus-Pass Elvis Party.

Home Theresa May was ‘quite likely’ to invoke Article 50 in January or February 2017, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said she had told him. A Brexit agreement limiting EU people’s right to work in Britain would be vetoed by Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, according to Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister. At a UN summit, Mrs May said there should be a greater distinction between refugees and people trying to enter a country for economic reasons. Diane James was elected leader of the UK Independence Party. Two men who sold tooth whitener with 110 times the legal limit of hydrogen peroxide at the Royal Welsh Show in Builth Wells were jailed for 18 months.

Home Schools in England would have the right to select pupils by ability, under plans outlined by Theresa May, the Prime Minister. New grammar schools would take quotas of poor pupils or help run other schools, a Green Paper proposed. ‘We already have selection in our school system — and it’s selection by house price, selection by wealth. That is simply unfair,’ Mrs May said in a speech. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, said the idea that poor children would benefit from a return of grammar schools was ‘tosh’. Oversubscribed Catholic schools which wished to expand would be able to choose all their additional pupils on grounds of faith.

Home David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, made his first statement to the Commons and said that if membership of a single market meant having to give up control of United Kingdom borders, ‘that makes it very improbable’. The official spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who was away in China, disagreed, claiming that Mr Davis was merely ‘setting out his opinion’. ‘Saying something is probable or improbable,’ she said, ‘I don’t think is necessarily a policy.’ Speaking in China about freedom of movement after Brexit, Mrs May said: ‘I want a system where the government is able to decide who comes into the country — I think that’s what the British people want.

Home Britain rejected a call by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France who hopes to return to power next year, ‘for the opening of a centre in England to process asylum requests for all those who are in Calais’. More than 9,000 migrants camp at the so-called Jungle near Calais; it was Mr Sarkozy who in 2003 helped implement the bilateral treaty that allowed Britain to place border officials on the French side of the Channel. Southern Rail reinstated 119 of the 341 daily services it cut in July. Katrina Percy resigned as the chief executive of the Southern Health NHS Trust following criticism that the deaths of people with mental illness or deficiencies had not been examined properly.

Home Virgin Trains released videos showing that there were seats available when Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, was filmed sitting on the floor of a railway carriage saying: ‘This is a problem that many passengers face every day, commuters and long-distance travellers. Today this train is completely ram-packed.’ He then continued his journey in a seat. The RMT union called two more days of strikes for guards on Southern. Sir Antony Jay, the co-writer of the series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, died, aged 86. British competitors returned from the Olympic Games in Rio with 67 medals, of which 27 were gold, beating their performance in the London games of 2012 and coming second in the medal table between the United States and China.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who was supposed to be on a walking holiday in Switzerland, wrote to Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, saying that she wanted to strengthen Britain’s trading relationship with China despite uncertainty over the construction of the nuclear power station at Hinkley Point. During her absence and that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer from Britain, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was the ‘senior minister on duty’, Downing Street conceded. Regulated rail fares in England and Wales and regulated peak-time fares in Scotland will rise by 1.9 per cent in January, that being the annual rate of inflation in July, as measured by the Retail Prices Index (up from 1.6 per cent the month before).

Home The government floated the idea that individuals might receive payments in areas where fracking was approved, or where housing developments gained permission. Grammar schools might also be revived, it was suggested. Failing to go ahead with the Hinkley Point nuclear power station could damage China’s relationship with Britain, its ambassador Liu Xiaoming wrote in the Financial Times. A 19-year-old Norwegian of Somali origin was arrested after the fatal stabbing of an American woman in Russell Square, London. Tanveer Ahmed, 32, from Bradford, was jailed for life or a minimum of 27 years, after admitting the murder of Asad Shah, an Ahmadi Muslim by religion, outside his shop in Glasgow, because he had ‘disrespected’ Islam.

Home The Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that four Syrian refugees living in Calais’ jungle camp could come to Britain because they had relatives here. The Appeal Court judges said that they should have claimed asylum in the first country they came to; the judgment will not affect the refugees, who are already in Britain. The High Court ruled that the NHS was wrong to say it lacked the ‘legal power to commission Prep’, or ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’ drug, which is effective in 86 per cent of cases in preventing HIV viruses from multiplying; the drug costs £400 a month and is taken by men who practise anal intercourse but do not use condoms. The number of armed police in London was to increase by 600 to 2,800.

Home The collapse of BHS after Sir Philip Green had extracted large sums and left the business on ‘life support’, with a £571 million pension deficit, was ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism,’ said a report by the Business and the Work and Pensions select committees of the House of Commons. The British economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the quarter ending in June. A man was shot dead at a commercial pool party in Headley, Surrey, organised by Summerlyn Farquharson, known as the Female Boss Krissy, and the Jamaican reggae artist Jason White, known as Braintear Spookie. HMS Ambush, a Royal Navy Astute-class nuclear-powered submarine, was in a ‘glancing collision’ with a merchant vessel while submerged off Gibraltar.

Home Theresa May made a speech in the open air in Downing Street after kissing hands with the Queen as the new Prime Minister. ‘As we leave the European Union,’ she said, ‘we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us.’ In her new cabinet Boris Johnson, the failed contender for the leadership of the party, was made Foreign Secretary, replacing Philip Hammond, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer in place of George Osborne, who was sacked. Amber Rudd became Home Secretary, replacing Mrs May, and Liz Truss became Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, replacing Michael Gove, who was sacked. She is the first female Lord Chancellor in the millennium-long history of the office.

Home Theresa May became Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party when Andrea Leadsom withdrew her candidacy for election by party members. This came after a front-page report by the Times based on an interview with Mrs Leadsom in which she said: ‘I feel being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country — a tangible stake. She [Mrs May] possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people, but I have children, who are going to have children.’ Her remarks were criticised by some fellow Conservatives, which Mrs Leadsom found ‘shattering’. Mrs May said gnomically that ‘Brexit means Brexit’.

Home Conservative MPs set about finding two candidates for the party leadership to be put to party members as rival choices. Theresa May proved the frontrunner, gaining 165 votes in the first round, with Liam Fox least fancied, being eliminated in the first round with 16 votes, and Stephen Crabb gaining 34 and throwing in the towel. Boris Johnson, having been forced out of the contest by the sudden entry of his presumed supporter Michael Gove (who attracted 48 votes in the first round), gave his backing to the next most popular woman candidate among MPs, Andrea Leadsom, who polled 66. Mrs May said that the position of British citizens in the EU and those from the EU in Britain would be an issue in the negotiations with the EU.

Home David Cameron, standing in the middle of Downing Street with his wife Samantha alone near him, announced his resignation as prime minister after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union by 17,410,742 votes (51.9 per cent) to 16,141,241 (48.1), with a turnout of 72.2 per cent. The result surprised the government. Mr Cameron said he’d stay on until a new Conservative party leader and prime minister could be chosen, before the party conference in October. In Scotland, 62 per cent of the vote was to remain and in London 59.9 per cent. The area with the highest Leave percentage was Boston, Lincolnshire, with 75.6, and the highest Remain percentage was in Lambeth, with 78.6 (apart from Gibraltar, which recorded 95.9 per cent in favour of remaining).

Home One week before the United Kingdom voted in a referendum on membership of the European Union, Jo Cox, a Labour MP and married mother of two, aged 41, died after being shot and stabbed at Birstall, West Yorkshire, on her way to a constituency surgery. A passer-by, Bernard Kenny, a retired miner aged 77, tried to protect her and was wounded. A constituent, Thomas Mair, aged 52, was charged with her murder and, on being asked his name in a magistrates’ court, said: ‘Death to traitors. Freedom for Britain.’ Parliament was recalled the following Monday so that tributes could be made.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, threatened pensioners who voted in the referendum for Britain to leave the EU: ‘If we leave, the pensioner benefits would be under threat, and the “triple lock” could no longer be guaranteed.’ He also said he might take away their ‘free bus passes and TV licences’, even though the latter are paid for by the BBC. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he would put up taxes if there was a vote to leave the EU, but 57 Tory MPs said they would vote against what they called a ‘punishment budget’. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, thanked immigrants for the ‘fantastic service’ they gave to the NHS.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, caused mild surprise by cancelling a cabinet meeting and hastily convening a press conference on the roof of Savoy Place, where he warned against ‘taking a leap in the dark’, urging voters in the referendum on EU membership to ‘listen to the experts’ about the risks of leaving. Some supporters of the Leave campaign began to think they had a chance of winning. The campaign had already taken a turn towards reciprocal accusations of dishonesty between Conservatives. Boris Johnson MP, speaking in favour of leaving the EU, said: ‘The botched bureaucratic response to the migration crisis means the Eurocrats are demanding even more of our money.