Portrait of the week

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlined cuts of £11.5 billion from departmental spending for the tax-year beginning in 2015. David Gauke, a Treasury minister, gave a ‘firm commitment’ in a letter to backbenchers to introduce a transferable tax allowance of £750 between spouses and civil partners paying tax at the basic rate. This would benefit them by £150 a year at most, and not before the next election. Sir Mervyn King, retiring after ten years as governor of the Bank of England, was to be created a life peer. Mark Harper, the minister for immigration, broke his foot by falling off a table while dancing with his wife in a bar in Soho.

Home On the eve of the G8 summit, at a press conference with David Cameron, the Prime Minister, President Vladimir Putin of Russia bluntly opposed British proposals to aid the Syrian opposition: ‘People who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their entrails in public before the cameras. Are these the people you want to support?’ At the summit, in a golfing hotel protected by the waters of Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh, none of the leaders wore a tie. A joint statement on Syria did not call for the removal of President Assad. Before the summit, Mr Cameron made British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies agree to inform on investors to the tax authorities.

Home Six men from the West Midlands — Omar Khan, Jewel Uddin, Mohammed Hasseen, Mohammed Saud, Zohaib Ahmed and Anzal Hussain — were jailed for 18 or 19 years on terrorism charges after planning to bomb an English Defence League rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, last year. After a fire caused minor damage at the Darul Uloom Islamic boarding school in Chislehurst, Kent, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said: ‘We should not allow the murder of Lee Rigby to come between Londoners.’ Police clashed with protesters against the G8 summit who had taken possession of a house in Soho. A temporary custody centre for those arrested during the summit was built at Omagh, Co. Tyrone.

Home Patrick Mercer MP resigned the Conservative whip after being filmed in discussion with a fake Fijian firm that paid him £4,000 to ask parliamentary questions; he was in fact being investigated by BBC’s Panorama and the Daily Telegraph. Lord Cunningham and Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate were suspended by the Labour party after the Sunday Times filmed them discussing lobbying terms, and Lord Laird resigned the Ulster Unionist whip over the same matter. All the parliamentarians deny wrongdoing. Mike Hancock MP resigned the Liberal Democrat whip while he defends a civil case in which a woman constituent is alleging sexual assault.

Home Ten men were arrested in connection with the public, daylight murder of Drummer Lee Rigby near his barracks in Woolwich. The two chief suspects, Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, Britons of Nigerian descent and converts to Islam, had waited in the street after the hacking to death of the soldier until armed police arrived, and were then shot. Adebolajo had made some statements recorded on a mobile phone. The two men were taken to different hospitals with wounds said not to be life-threatening, and Adebowale was discharged into police custody after six days. MI5 was said to have previously attempted to recruit Adebolajo, who was found to have been arrested in Kenya in 2010.

Home A senior figure in the Conservative party with strong social connections to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was reported by the Telegraph and Times to have said that Conservative constituency associations ‘are all mad swivel-eyed loons’. Lord Feldman, the party’s co-chairman, said it was not he. Mr Cameron sent an email to party activists saying: ‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’ The rumpus erupted as Conservative voters defected to the UK Independence Party, and Conservative MPs became impatient with the leadership of Mr Cameron.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to Sochi, on the Black Sea, to talk with President Vladimir Putin, principally about Syria. He then flew to Washington, to support the American tour by Prince Harry and hold talks with President Barack Obama. They said that Britain and America wanted to strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria somehow. In a joint press conference, Mr Obama also said: ‘The UK’s participation in the EU is an expression of its influence.’ Mr Cameron tried to placate Tory MPs by rushing out a draft EU referendum bill, in the face of an amendment in the Queen’s Speech debate expressing regret at the absence of such a bill in the government programme. EU officials investigating price-fixing raided the London offices of BP and Shell.

Home The UK Independence Party gave the government and opposition a jolt by doing well in the elections for 34 English councils, increasing its number of councillors from eight to 147 and gaining a projected national vote share of 23 per cent (compared with 25 per cent for the Conservatives, 29 per cent for Labour and 14 per cent for the Liberal Democrats). In a parliamentary by-election at South Shields, the Lib Dems were driven into seventh place, with only 352 votes, with Labour retaining the seat with 12,493 and Ukip coming second with 5,988. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, grinned a good deal and said ‘Send in the clowns,’ throwing back at him Kenneth Clarke’s pejorative description of Ukip supporters.

Home In the run-up to local elections, Kenneth Clarke, the Minister without Portfolio, described the UK Independence Party candidates as ‘clowns’. RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, assumed control of ten Reaper drone aircraft in use over Afghanistan. Irfan Naseer, 31, from Birmingham, the ringleader of a plot to use eight suicide bombers in attacks that could have killed thousands, was sentenced to five life sentences; of ten others charged, four men who admitted an offence of travelling overseas for terrorism training were sentenced to three years, and six men to between four and 18 years. Six men from the West Midlands pleaded guilty to planning to bomb an English Defence League rally at Dewsbury; five took a homemade bomb to the rally but arrived too late.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited Glasgow to cast doubt on the probability of an independent Scotland being allowed to continue to use the pound: ‘Why would 58 million citizens give away some of their sovereignty over monetary and potentially other economic policies to five million people in another state?’ The government borrowed £120.6 billion in the financial year 2012–2013, £300 million less than in the previous year. Fitch became the second agency to downgrade Britain’s credit rating by a notch from AAA. The Co-op pulled out of buying 632 branches of Lloyds Banking Group, put up for sale to meet European competition rules. The government planned to sell its one-third stake in Urenco, the uranium enrichment company.

Home With the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the 2,300 invited to attend Lady Thatcher’s funeral in St Paul’s cathedral included the three surviving former prime ministers, members of her cabinets, the leader of the opposition, F.W. de Klerk, June Whitfield, Joan Collins, Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Terry Wogan. Mikhail Gorbachev did not attend, because of ill health, Lord Kinnock because of a previous funeral engagement, the Argentine ambassador for an unstated reason and Sally Bercow, the Speaker’s wife, because she didn’t want to. Much time had been spent discussing whether the BBC should play on its singles hit chart programme ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’, which had been downloaded by those who held the memory of Lady Thatcher in disdain.

Home Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister from 1979 to 1990, died aged 87. She had suffered a stroke while reading in her room at the Ritz hotel, where she had been staying since being discharged from hospital at the end of 2012 after a minor operation. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, cancelled talks in Paris with President François Hollande and returned to Britain. News broadcasts and newspapers were dominated by coverage of her political career. Seven policemen were injured when perhaps 200 people gathered at Easton, in Bristol, celebrating the death and setting fire to dustbins after dark. Both Houses of Parliament were recalled for a day in tribute to Lady Thatcher, a life peeress since 1992.

Home Housing benefit for council and housing association tenants was reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one spare bedroom and by 25 per cent for those with two or more spare bedrooms. Council Tax Benefit, claimed by 5.9 million families, was transformed into Council Tax Support, supplied by local authority schemes. The Financial Services Authority was replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. In the National Health Service, GP-led groups took control of local budgets and a new board called NHS England began to oversee day-to-day running of services. The introduction of a 111 health helpline throughout England was delayed after some pilot schemes proved unsatisfactory, with callers holding on for hours.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a speech designed to show that Britain was no longer to be a ‘soft touch’ for immigrants, said that people from the European Union would have to show they had a ‘genuine chance of getting work’ in order to claim UK unemployment benefits for more than six months. The UK Border Agency was to be abolished, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, told the Commons, because its performance was ‘not good enough’, and ‘the number of illegal immigrants removed does not keep up with the number of people who are here illegally’. The agency would be split up and returned to the Home Office, with one half focusing on the visa system and the other on immigration law enforcement.

Home In what he called a ‘fiscally neutral’ Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted a reduced forecast of gross domestic product for 2013 from 1.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and a further delay until 2017-18 in reducing the burden of public sector debt, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Most government departments would have to cut a further 2 per cent of their spending over the next two years, saving about £2.5 billion. Changes in state pensions, introduced a year earlier than expected, would save the Treasury almost £6 billion a year by 2016-17, some of it to be used for infrastructure spending.

Home Chris Huhne, the energy secretary until last year, and his former wife Vicky Pryce were each sentenced to eight months in jail for perverting the course of justice. Huhne’s sentence was reduced by 10 per cent as he had pleaded guilty, on the eve of his trial. Abu Qatada was returned to prison for allegedly breaching his bail conditions, which prohibit his use of mobile phones. The government went to the Court of Appeal to have a ban on his deportation to Jordan lifted. A bomb thought to have been planted by Irish republicans exploded as police responded to a call on the outskirts of Belfast, but none was hurt. Kenny Ball, the jazz-band leader who had a hit with ‘Midnight in Moscow’ in 1962, died, aged 82.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer failed to dissuade EU finance minsters in Brussels from endorsing a plan to cap bankers’ pay bonuses. City banks contemplated taking the EU to court over it. HSBC’s annual profits fell by 6 per cent to £14 billion, including a loss of £700 million made in Britain. The Royal Bank of Scotland, 81 per cent of which is owned by the government, made its fifth annual loss in a row, of £5.17 billion. Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, suggested it should be split up and sold. Lloyds Banking Group, 40 per cent of which is owned by the government, reduced its losses to £570 million, from £3.5 billion the year before. Banks reduced their lending by £2.

Home Moody’s reduced Britain’s credit rating from AAA to AA1. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.’ Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the bank of England, was outvoted on its Monetary Policy Committee when he proposed more quantitative easing in February. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor, said that negative interest rates should be considered. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, from Birmingham, were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of plotting to recruit a team of six or eight suicide bombers to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign.

Home Unemployment fell by 14,000 between August and November to 2.5 million, with the number in work rising by 154,000 to 29.7 million, meaning that 580,000 more people were in work than a year before. David Cameron toured India with an entourage of trade delegates. ‘Britain wants to be your partner of choice,’ he said. His visit came days after India suspended a £480 million contract to buy 12 Westland helicopters, following the arrest in Italy over bribery allegations of the chief executive of Finmeccanica, an Italian firm that makes AgustaWestland helicopters in Britain. The government auction of a spectrum for 4G mobile phones raised £2.34 billion; the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast £3.5 billion.

Home Findus frozen beef lasagne was found to be 100 per cent horsemeat, and Tesco frozen ‘Everyday Value’ spaghetti bolognese 60 per cent horse. French suppliers blamed a Romanian abattoir. Waitrose withdrew frozen beef meatballs in which pork was thought to be present. Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, told the food industry to publish soon the results of their own testing of meat products. He then flew to Brussels for talks. Police raided a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire that the Food Standards Agency believed had supplied horse carcasses to a meat company at Aberystwyth.