Portrait of the week

Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year. Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year. ‘Efficiencies’ promised in some departments still left total borrowing at much the same level. In a pre-emptive strike, Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, attacked a ‘culture of excess’ among higher earners in the public sector, and promised to cut the salaries of senior civil servants.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced that Britain would send an extra 500 troops to Afghanistan, bringing its strength there to 10,000. Earlier he had criticised Pakistan for not making ‘more progress in taking out’ the leader of al-Qa’eda: ‘We have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden.’ The High Court ruled that two men in prison accused of being al-Qa’eda terrorists, who cannot be named, have the right to hear the secret evidence against them or be released. Lady Warsi, the opposition spokesman on community cohesion, was pelted with eggs by Muslim protesters when she visited Luton.

Floods swept Cumbria after 12.4 inches of rain fell in 24 hours (at Seathwaite), the most ever recorded in Britain. Main Street in Cockermouth was more than waist deep in water. Some 1,300 houses were affected, and insurance claims were expected to reach £100 million. PC Bill Baker died in the collapse of the Northside bridge at Workington, away from which he was directing traffic. Six bridges were washed away, and all 1,800 in the county were to be checked, with the Calva bridge at Workington being condemned, separating the town by a 20-mile drive. The floods arrived a day after the government announced in the Queen’s Speech that ‘legislation will be introduced to protect communities against flooding’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, visited the area.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Brown also decided that next year would be a good time to apologise for the deportation in past decades of 130,000 orphans to Australia.

Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said that British forces would be fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan until at least 2014, by which date the Afghan National Army would ‘be able to take the lead on security across the country’. Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said that British forces would be fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan until at least 2014, by which date the Afghan National Army would ‘be able to take the lead on security across the country’. In a ComRes opinion poll, 63 per cent said they wanted British troops withdrawn as soon as possible. Sections of the press criticised Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, for orthographic errors in a letter of condolence to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, had to explain why a ‘cast iron guarantee’ by the Conservatives to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would no longer be possible, now it had been ratified. Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, had to explain why a ‘cast iron guarantee’ by the Conservatives to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would no longer be possible, now it had been ratified. The Royal Bank of Scotland will sell 318 branches and the Lloyds banking group more than 600 in a move demanded by the European Commission to avoid a breach of competition rules. Lloyds announced a £13.5 billion rights issue, the biggest ever attempted in Britain, in an attempt to free itself from the government’s asset protection scheme.

Mr Gordon Brown is prepared to campaign actively for Mr Tony Blair, whom he replaced as Prime Minister, to be the first permanent president of the European Council of the European Union, Downing Street said. Mr David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, had said earlier that Mr Blair would be a good candidate because ‘we need someone who, when he or she lands in Beijing or Washington or Moscow, the traffic does need to stop’. Sir Christopher Kelly, the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, told party leaders the outline of his report on MPs’ expenses, to be published next week, and shortly afterwards there was a leak of his recommendations that MPs should no longer be able to claim for mortgage payments on second homes or to employ spouses as secretaries.

On the brink of a planned national postal strike, Royal Mail announced it was recruiting 30,000 temporary staff to deal with the existing backlog and the normal Christmas rush, twice the number usually taken on. The Financial Services Authority published rules to make mortgage lenders assess strictly the ability of borrowers to make repayments, and to ban ‘self-certification’, which had allowed a million borrowers to take up mortgages without providing evidence of income. Five prison managers faced charges of gross misconduct after the Chief Inspector of Prisons found that prisoners at Wandsworth and Pentonville had been switched on the eve of inspections.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, is to pay back £12,415.10p that he claimed in expenses between 2004 and 2008 Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, is to pay back £12,415.10p that he claimed in expenses between 2004 and 2008; he had received a letter, along with all other MPs, on the day Parliament returned from its summer recess, from Sir Thomas Legg, aged 74, a retired permanent secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s Department appointed by the Members Estimate Committee as an independent auditor. More than £10,000 of Mr Brown’s repayment relate to cleaning bills. Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, was asked by Sir Thomas to explain why he had needed to repay £218.96p in interest on the mortgage on his constituency home in Oxfordshire.

Mrs Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, said that she had signed without asking any questions a form that her husband, Mr David Mills, used to gain a mortgage for a house, which he repaid a month later with an alleged bribe of £340,000 from Mr Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy. Mr Mills denies receiving such a payment; an Italian prosecutor is investigating the allegation. Mr Ken Livingstone was suspended for four weeks as Mayor of London by the Adjudication Panel for England when it found that he had brought his office into disrepute by saying to a reporter who had told him he was Jewish and worked for the London Evening Standard, ‘Actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You are just doing it because you are paid to, aren’t you?

A clause to criminalise the ‘glorification’ of terrorism, which had been removed from the Terrorism Bill by the Lords, was reinstated when the Bill was passed in the Commons by a majority of 38, with only 17 Labour MPs voting against the government. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said after the vote, ‘The type of demonstrations that we saw a couple of weeks ago, where I think there were placards and images that people in this country felt were totally offensive, the law will allow us to deal with those people and say, “Look, we have free speech in this country, but don't abuse it”.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, began speaking about all sorts of things outside his ministerial responsibility: security, identity cards, patriotism, a proposed Veterans’ Day each 27 June. The phrase ‘dual premiership’ came up in a question put by the Observer to Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary; in answer to which he said, ‘That’s what Tony would always want, what Gordon should do.

Mustafa Kemal Mustafa, known as Abu Hamza, the hook-handed Muslim cleric, aged 47, was sentenced to seven years in jail on six charges of soliciting to murder, two charges of ‘using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred’, a charge of possessing video and audio recordings intended for distribution to stir up racial hatred, and a charge under the Terrorism Act 2000 of possessing a document, the Encyclopaedia of the Afghani Jihad, containing information ‘of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. He was acquitted on three other charges of soliciting to murder and one of stirring up racial hatred.

The government was twice defeated in the Commons in votes on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, making its provisions less broad. The government produced a form with a box to tick for people who wanted to prevent life-saving treatment being given them in future; this was according to the Mental Capacity Act, 2004, which comes into effect in 2007. A White Paper on health proposed treating more people outside large hospitals; but a question of funding remained. Mr David Blunkett, the disgraced former Cabinet minister, said his ‘sense is that there is a new understanding’ between Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Mr Gordon Brown about the latter replacing the former; ‘So good on them,’ Mr Blunkett said.

Mr Mark Oaten withdrew his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats and then resigned as its Home Affairs spokesman after the News of the World publicised repeated visits to a 23-year-old rent boy. Mr Sven-Goran Eriksson agreed with the Football Association to resign as the England football manager after the World Cup, and to take a £2.5 million pay-off. The News of the World reported that he had said to a journalist in disguise in Dubai that he was considering his future after the World Cup; Mr Eriksson also had talks with the FA’s so-called compliance unit because the paper had said he had named three unnamed premiership clubs as being involved in corruption.

Miss Ruth Kelly resisted pressure to resign as the Secretary of State for Education after it was learnt that a minister had approved the employment in a school of a man who had been put on the sex offenders register after being cautioned by police for gaining access to child pornography on the internet. Other examples emerged, and it became clear that the categorisation of offenders and the clearing of them for work in schools was complicated and uneven. One man, aged 59, who was allowed to teach at a boys’ school by Miss Kelly, had been convicted for the indecent assault of a 15-year-old girl in 1980; he said, ‘I am not a paedophile. I am not a risk to children.

Mr Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, called a press conference and said, ‘Over the past 18 months, I’ve been coming to terms with, and seeking to cope with, a drinking problem.... I’ve not had a drink for the past two months and I don’t intend to in the future.’ He invited rivals to stand against him for the leadership in an election by the party’s 73,000 members. But two days later, after 25 MPs had said they would not serve with him, he resigned, and Sir Menzies Campbell, 64, rapidly put his name forward, to be followed by Mr Mark Oaten, 41, while Mr Simon Hughes, 54, hesitated. The results will be known by 2 March.

The cost of domestic gas and electricity was expected to rise by 15 per cent in the spring, an increase of 50 per cent in three years. Among the New Year’s honours, knighthoods went to Tom Jones, the singer; John Dankworth, the jazz musician; Arnold Wesker, the playwright; and Lord Coe, the Olympics organiser; damehoods went to Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer; Liz Forgan, of the Heritage Lottery Fund; Susie Leather, of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The whole of the England cricket squad involved in the Ashes series and the Beverley Sisters — Babs, Joy and Teddie — were appointed MBE.