Portrait of the week

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.

Home Two British men were charged with immigration offences after the rescue by night of 18 Albanian migrants, two of them children, from an inflatable boat off Dymchurch, Kent. ‘We don’t want the English Channel turning into the Mediterranean with fleets of small boats coming over,’ said Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons and a campaigner for Britain to leave the EU.

Home The government published a Treasury analysis warning that an exit from the EU would plunge Britain into a year-long recession and could cost 820,000 jobs. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, speaking with George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at B&Q’s head office in Hampshire, said that leaving ‘would be like surviving a fall then running straight back to the cliff edge. It is the self-destruct option.’ Downing Street said that leaving the EU would make an average holiday for four people to the EU £230 more expensive. Gillian Duffy of Rochdale, the nemesis of Gordon Brown, the former Labour leader, spoke in favour of the Leave campaign.

Home In the Queen’s Speech, the government made provision for bills against extremism and in favour of driverless cars, drones, commercial space travel and adoption. It proposed turning all prisons into academies or something similar and consolidating British rights while reducing the power of the House of Lords. The watchword was ‘life chances’. Boris Johnson MP said that the EU was an attempt to recover the continent’s lost ‘golden age’, under the Romans: ‘Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically.’ For his part, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that in the event of Britain leaving the EU, ‘Putin would be happy. I suspect al-Baghdadi [leader of the Islamic State] would be happy.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a speech in the British Museum warning of war if Britain left the European Union: ‘And if things go wrong in Europe, let’s not pretend we can be immune from the consequences.’ George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that if Britain left, house prices would go down. The government changed its policy, announced during the budget, of turning all schools into academies. The government changed its policy of denying admission from Europe of unaccompanied children originating in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. Mr Cameron was heard on television to say to the Queen at Buckingham Palace: ‘We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.

Home Naz Shah MP was suspended from the Labour Party after the blogger Guido Fawkes revealed that in 2014, nine months before she beat George Galloway to win the seat of Bradford West, she had posted on Facebook a proposal to ‘relocate Israel into the United States’, adding the comment: ‘Problem solved and save you bank charges for the £3bn you transfer yearly.’ Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said: ‘It’s not a crisis. There’s no crisis.’ Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, said on the wireless: ‘When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism — this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.

Home Junior doctors went on strike for two days, refusing to provide even emergency treatment. The 96 Liverpool fans who died in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 were unlawfully killed, an inquest jury found. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, contemplated British forces being sent to Libya, but said ‘if there were ever any question of a British combat role in any form — ground, sea or air — that would go to the House of Commons’. Big Ben is to be silenced for months while its clock and tower are restored.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that if Britain left the European Union, households would be on average £4,300 a year worse off. He quoted a Treasury analysis that said the British economy would be 6 per cent smaller outside the EU by 2030 than it would have been. ‘Remain’ campaigners were treating voters ‘like children who can be frightened into obedience’, Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, said, and declared that Britain could be part of the European free trade zone but ‘free from EU regulation which costs us billions of pounds a year’. Kenneth Clarke, the former Chancellor, said that David Cameron ‘wouldn’t last 30 seconds if he lost the referendum’.