Portrait of the week

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to the Gulf to sell Typhoon jets to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. On the border of Jordan with Syria he said he shared a ‘goal of a Syria without Assad’. Mr Cameron appointed Mrs Justice Macur to examine the treatment of allegations of sexual abuse at children’s homes in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. Someone abused at that period accused a former Conservative politician. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced a new police inquiry into the abuse. A text message from Rebekah Brooks to Mr Cameron was published by the Mail on Sunday: ‘Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love “working together”.

Home Hitachi bought Horizon Nuclear Power for £700 million, giving it rights to build nuclear power stations in Anglesey and Gloucestershire. John Hayes, the energy minister, said that Britain was ‘peppered’ with onshore wind turbines, and ‘enough is enough’. HM Revenue and Customs wrote to families with at least one member earning more than £50,000 telling them they are no longer entitled to the full amount of child benefit. Some 100,000 ash trees had been burnt in an attempt to halt the spread of Chalara fraxinea, a fungus deadly to them, David Heath, the environment minister, told parliament, as import of the trees was banned.

Home Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative chief whip, resigned, still denying that he referred to police as ‘plebs’ for refusing to allow him to cycle through the main gate to Downing Street three weeks ago. The Chancellor, George Osborne, was caught in a first-class carriage with a standard-class ticket. One of his aides paid £160 for an upgrade, saying that the Chancellor couldn’t possibly travel in standard class. The Prime Minister said that energy companies would be put under a duty to make sure that their customers were on the lowest-possible tariff, but the plan lasted only three hours. The working population rose by 212,000 to just under 30 million, the highest number ever recorded.

Home Theresa May, the Home Secretary, blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States, where he is suspected of having hacked into government computers. She told the Commons there was no doubt he had Asperger’s syndrome and suffered from depressive illness, and that there was a risk of suicide. Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, blocked the release of private letters that the Prince of Wales had sent to seven government departments. The Territorial Army would be renamed the Army Reserve and become an ‘integral part’ of the Army, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary said. Five Royal Marines were charged with murder over an incident in Afghanistan in 2011 that concerned an insurgent but no civilians.

Home ‘Unless we take difficult, painful decisions,’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told the Conservative party conference, ‘Britain may not be in the future what it has been in the past.’ He said that it was ‘an hour of reckoning for countries like ours. Sink or swim, do or decline.’ Earlier he had said that a referendum on the terms of EU membership is the ‘cleanest, neatest and simplest’ solution, though a general election would count as an alternative.

Home In a well-received 65-minute speech without notes to the party conference, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, presented himself as a human being and concluded: ‘This is who I am. This is what I believe. This is my faith.’ Mr Miliband presented Labour as a One Nation party. He also said that if banks do not separate their retail and investment arms, a future Labour government would ‘break them up’. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said that 100,000 houses should be built with the £4 billion raised from the sale of the 4G mobile phone spectrum. Dave Prentis, of the union Unison, criticised Mr Miliband and Mr Balls for supporting a freeze on public-sector workers’ pay.

Home The European Court of Human Rights approved the extradition of Abu Hamza al-Masri, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz to the United States, where they are wanted on suspicion of terrorism. The BBC then had to write to the Queen to apologise for Frank Gardner, its security correspondent, reporting what he said she had told him in a private conversation about her anxieties over Abu Hamza before his arrest. A 49-year-old man, transferred to a London hospital by air ambulance from Qatar, was found to be suffering from a viral disease similar to Sars; another man with the disease died in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of houses were flooded, and England was cut off from Scotland by the east coast rail line. The streets of Aberdeen were filled with sea foam.

Home The government gave a commercial company, Capita, a contract to find and remove more than 150,000 migrants who have overstayed their visas. A French court prohibited a magazine from republishing pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge topless, or distributing them. After appearing in the French magazine, the pictures had been printed in the Irish Daily Star. The Duke and Duchess continued their Jubilee year tour, taking in the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. In a freedom of information case brought by a Guardian journalist, an appeal court ruled that correspondence between Prince Charles and the government should be made public. Derek Jameson, a former editor of the Daily Star, died, aged 82. Lord Stevens of Ludgate, a former chairman of United Newspapers, joined Ukip.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said the autumn statement would be on 5 December, and commentators said he would confront the dwindling chance of meeting debt targets set for 2015. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said the government would set up a ‘business bank’ to lend to companies. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said a £1.4 billion Regional Growth Fund set up in April last year had created only 2,442 jobs. Delegates to the Trades Union Congress voted to support co-ordinated strikes against a public sector pay freeze. Tories from the right of the party started a group called Conservative Voice.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, shuffled the Cabinet a little, with Sir George Young being replaced as Leader of the House by Andrew Lansley, who was replaced as Health Secretary by Jeremy Hunt, who was replaced as Culture Secretary by Maria Miller. Justine Greening was replaced as Transport Secretary by Patrick McLoughlin, who was replaced as Chief Whip by Andrew Mitchell, who was replaced as International Development Secretary by Justine Greening, whose move, according to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, showed that the government wanted to ‘ditch its promises and send yet more planes over central London’. Caroline Spelman was replaced as Environment Secretary by Owen Paterson, who was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Theresa Villiers.

Home After being granted asylum by Ecuador, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, addressed a crowd of supporters from a balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy, to which he had fled in June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over allegations of sexual assault. The Foreign Office had annoyed Ecuador by drawing attention to the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, which might allow police to enter the embassy to arrest Mr Assange. George Galloway, the Respect party MP, said that what Mr Assange was accused of ‘might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape’. Asil Nadir was found guilty on three counts of theft totalling £5.

Home The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, watched by an average of 22.9 million people in Britain, included a mixed choir of deaf and not-deaf children singing: ‘Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try’; Pete Townshend (67) and Roger Daltrey (68) singing ‘My Generation’, omitting the line ‘Hope I die before I get old’; and Eric Idle, surrounded by Welsh women in national dress, Scottish pipers and rollerskating nuns, singing: ‘Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it.’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the primary school curriculum would in future include competitive sport; but requirements for schools to provide stipulated space for playing fields were relaxed.

Home The Olympic Games dominated national life. Eight of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s first 22 gold medals (outdoing its 19 golds in Beijing in 2008) were in cycling. Sir Chris Hoy brought the total of gold medals in his Olympic career to six, outdoing Sir Steve Redgrave’s record. Bradley Wiggins added an Olympic gold in the road time trial to his victory in this year’s Tour de France. There were four golds in rowing, four in athletics (Jessica Ennis winning the heptathlon, Alistair Brownlee the triathlon, Mo Farah the 10,000 metres and Greg Rutherford the long jump), and one in sailing (Ben Ainslie), tennis (Andy Murray beating Roger Federer, who had beaten him in the Wimbledon championship final), team showjumping, team dressage, shooting and canoeing.

Home After an opening ceremony going on into the early hours, directed by Danny Boyle and watched at one point by 26.9 million viewers in Britain, the Olympic Games in the Lea valley settled down to its sporting business, with only marginal complaints about empty seats, food queues, over-protective branding and the loss of the keys to Wembley stadium. The locks were changed. Two hundred and four copper petals attached to steel tubes had risen into the air without a hitch to form an Olympic cauldron of flame, to the designs of Thomas Heatherwick. The Queen had co-operated in making a jokey film sequence with Daniel Craig in the character of James Bond, during which she pretended to parachute into the stadium. Predictions of medal numbers for Britain seemed initially over-optimistic.

Home The nation was divided between those who moaned about the Olympic Games and those who didn’t. Some immigration staff decided to hold a strike, then called it off an hour before the government was due to go to court to seek an injunction against it. Another 1,200 troops joined the 3,500 deployed to cover security deficiencies. Campanologists agreed to ring bells across the land at 8.12 a.m. on 27 July. Boris Johnson recited an ode composed in ancient Greek that in English ended: ‘Now welcome to this sea­-girt land,/ With London’s Mayor and Co at hand./ Good luck to all who strive to win:/ Applaud, and let the Games begin!’ Bradley Wiggins became the first Englishman to win the Tour de France bicycle race.

Home The Armed Forces were called upon to supply 3,500 men to look after security for the Olympic Games after GS4, a security company, failed to recruit enough staff. Nick Buckles, its chief executive, agreed before a Commons committee that it had been a ‘humiliating shambles’ but said that the company would keep its £57 million management fee. The UK Border Agency had laid off 1,000 more workers than it intended, the National Audit Office found. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, appearing at a rail depot in Smethwick with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said that he was ‘even more committed’ to the coalition, and announced new rail schemes costing £4.

Home The government cancelled a vote setting a timetable for a Bill to reform the House of Lords after dozens of Conservative MPs were ready to rebel. The Bill, which gained a second reading thanks to Labour, was brought in at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats. Six men from the West Midlands were charged with terrorism. President François Hollande of France visited David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, who, standing next to the 5ft 7in leader, said: ‘We both want to stand tall in the world.’ The unseeded Jonathan Marray of Britain and Frederik Nielsen of Denmark won the Wimbledon men’s doubles. Roger Federer of Switzerland won the men’s title, beating Andy Murray, the first British finalist since Bunny Austin in 1938.

Home  Bob Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays a day after he said he wasn’t resigning. Marcus Agius resigned as chairman of Barclays, and a day later was appointed ‘full-time chairman’ to seek a replacement for Mr Diamond. The imbroglio followed a £290 million fine (£59.5 million by the British Financial Services Authority and the rest by American authorities) for Barclays’ having filed false information on its borrowings in connection with the setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).

Home A computer failure left millions of customers of RBS and NatWest without access to their money for days; a man was held in jail over the weekend because his bail payment could not be traced, and other customers feared that their credit ratings would suffer because of missed payments for mortgages and regular direct debits. Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, launched the campaign against Scottish independence called Better Together. England was knocked out of Euro 2012 in a penalty shootout with Italy. ••• The government introduced, at the instigation of the Liberal Democrats, a bill for a reformed, mostly elected House of Lords.

Home Europe faced ‘perpetual stagnation’ unless leaders acted to resolve the euro crisis, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said at the G20 summit of leading economies in Mexico. He also said that he would ‘welcome more French businesses to Britain’, where they would pay tax at a lower rate than that imposed by the Socialist government. David Lidington, the Europe Minister, insisted that a proposal by European Union ministers to reduce the British budget rebate was pointless, as Britain would not accept it. Workers paid less than £13,000 a year will no longer be able to claim working tax credits when they are on strike, the government said.