Portrait of the week

January Britain crept out of recession, with 0.1 per cent growth in the previous three months. Full-body scanners were to be introduced at British airports after a man tried to blow up a plane with explosives hidden in his underpants. Snow swept the land with the temperature falling to minus 22.3°C. An earthquake killed tens of thousands in Haiti and perhaps 1.5 million were made homeless. Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from prison in Turkey. Ali Hassan al-Majid, ‘Chemical Ali’, was hanged in Iraq. A British citizen was executed in China for smuggling 9lb of heroin. China said it had become the world’s biggest exporter. February Labour unveiled the slogan ‘A future fair for all’.

Home The Office for Budget Responsibility said it thought economic growth for 2010 would be 1.8 per cent, not 1.2 per cent as it had previously predicted. It expected 330,000 public sector workers to lose their jobs over the next four years, not the 490,000 it forecast in June; 1.1 million jobs would be created in the private sector. ‘The bulk of this revision results from the action we have taken to cut welfare bills rather than cut public services,’ George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the Commons. A lower 10 per cent rate of corporation tax would be levied from April 2013 on the profits of hi-tech firms from newly commercialised patents. Tax on beers stronger than 7.5 per cent is to increase from the autumn of 2011.

Home The engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton was announced. The Prince proposed last month in Kenya and gave his fiancée the engagement ring belonging to his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. The wedding is to take place next year. Britain must ‘sort out’ its economy if it wants to ‘carry weight in the world’, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet. Mr Cameron decided after all against employing a personal photographer at public expense. Legal aid will no longer be available in divorce, welfare benefit and school exclusion appeals, Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, announced, in plans to save £350 million.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited China with four Cabinet ministers and 43 business leaders. He said he hoped for ‘greater political opening’ in the country. A £750 million order for Rolls-Royce engines and a £45 million order for pigs were announced during the trip. A Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld an appeal by Abu Hamza, who is in jail, against an attempt to remove his British citizenship. There were three nights of rioting at Moorland prison, south Yorkshire. The bishops of Fulham, Ebbsfleet and Richborough, and two retired bishops, announced that they were joining the Catholic Church as members of an ordinariate allowing the use of ‘liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition’.

Home A bomb was found at East Midlands airport. Home A bomb was found at East Midlands airport. It was in a parcelled computer toner cartridge filled with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), the high explosive found in the underpants of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a flight to Detroit last Christmas day. A similar parcel was found in Dubai. Both parcels were sent from Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, and addressed to synagogues in Chicago, though British authorities said the bomb discovered in the East Midlands was intended to explode in the air. Both bombs had spent some time in the holds of passenger planes. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said the bombs had been made by the organisation known as al-Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Home The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom was 0.8 per cent greater in the third quarter of the year than in the previous quarter, which had seen a growth of 1.2 per cent; the new figure was higher than expected. A Sovereign Support Grant will replace the Civil List from 2013, derived from part of the income of the Crown Estate, perhaps limited to £30 million a year. Switzerland agreed to withhold from British savers an amount representing the tax they would have paid at home. Investment in building wind turbines would bring 70,000 jobs by 2020, the government said. The owners of the Independent, which sells for a pound, launched a thin newspaper called i, selling for 20p. London firemen said they would go on strike on 5 November.

Home The coalition government announced cuts under the Comprehensive Spending Review of £23.1 billion, or 3.3 per cent of total government spending, over four years. The schools budget joined the NHS and international aid in being protected from cuts. This will be paid for by deeper cuts in welfare spending. Spending on infrastructure was revised upwards. The social housing budget will be heavily cut. George Osborne claimed he was cutting non-protected departments by 19 per cent, less than the 20 per cent Labour had planned. The Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast a loss of 490,000 jobs due to the reduction in the public sector by 2014–15, offset by 1.5 million more private-sector jobs over the period.

Universities in England should be able to charge unlimited fees, according to a report by Lord Browne of Madingley; students would start repaying loans when their earnings reached £21,000. Home Universities in England should be able to charge unlimited fees, according to a report by Lord Browne of Madingley; students would start repaying loans when their earnings reached £21,000. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said the coalition was considering a maximum fee of £7,000. Sir Philip Green, asked to investigate Whitehall efficiency by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, found that paper was being bought too dearly. The rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index was unchanged at 3.1 per cent; on the Retail Price Index, it fell a smidgin from 4.7 to 4.

Home At the beginning of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on the radio that from 2013 child benefits would be withdrawn from any family where one parent earns more than about £44,000 a year. Home At the beginning of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on the radio that from 2013 child benefits would be withdrawn from any family where one parent earns more than about £44,000 a year. He also told the conference that the maximum amount of benefits any family could claim would be about £26,000, the amount ‘the average family gets for going out to work’.

The Spectator's portrait of the week Home Ed Miliband, aged 40, was elected leader of the Labour party by 50.65 per cent of the vote, to 49.35 per cent for his brother David, aged 45. Ed Miliband had gained 15.522 per cent from MPs, 15.198 from party members — both lower figures than his brother, but 19.934 from unions. His speech to the Labour party conference used the words ‘new generation’ 15 times but invoked without apparent irony ‘the optimism of Harold Wilson and the white heat of technology’. David Miliband repeatedly called his brother ‘special’, but, during the passage in the speech disowning the Iraq war, he said to Harriet Harman next to him: ‘You voted for it. Why are you clapping?

Home Pope Benedict XVI was expected to conclude a four-day state visit to Britain with the beatification of Cardinal Newman in Birmingham, after addressing Parliament at Westminster Hall and meeting the Queen in Edinburgh. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, called the visit ‘incredibly important and historic’. The Queen’s Speech, outlining the government programme of legislation, which was expected in the autumn of 2011, has been delayed until spring 2012. Derek Barnett, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said that austerity is likely to lead to ‘disaffection, social and industrial tensions’. Unions at the BBC planned two 48-hour strikes, affecting coverage of the Conservative party conference.

Nearly six million people began to receive letters from HM Revenue & Customs telling them they had paid the wrong amount of tax. About £2 billion has been underpaid, at an average of £1,380 per person, and £1.8 billion overpaid, averaging £420 per person. Connaught, the social housing maintenance company, which employs 10,000 people, went into administration. As his special adviser resigned, Mr William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, issued a statement saying: ‘Any suggestion that his appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship with any man.’ He said that they had occasionally shared hotel rooms with twin beds while campaigning.

Mr Tony Blair, the former prime minister, published his political memoir, A Journey, in which he said that Mr Gordon Brown drove him to drink, but not an ‘excessively excessive’ amount: ‘The curse of Gordon was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. Mr Tony Blair, the former prime minister, published his political memoir, A Journey, in which he said that Mr Gordon Brown drove him to drink, but not an ‘excessively excessive’ amount: ‘The curse of Gordon was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others ... it was more like a cult than a kirk.’ He did not sack Mr Brown lest he became ‘the figurehead of a far more damaging force well to the left’.