Portrait of the week

Police raided the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, long suspected to have terrorist links. Seven people were arrested and a stun gun and a CS gas canister were seized. The government dispatched 30,000 troops and 120 Challenger tanks to the Gulf in preparation for an invasion of Iraq, but insisted that war was not inevitable. Half of the soldiers have bought their own boots, a Ministry of Defence survey revealed, because they didn't like the ones with which they had been issued. The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, proposed to allow universities to charge their students up to £3,000 in tuition fees.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference: 'If there is a breach of the existing UN resolution I have no doubt at all that the right thing to do in those circumstances is disarm Saddam by force.' He also said: 'If there is a breach we would expect the United Nations to honour the undertakings that were given.' The Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer followed the same line in a sudden flurry of interviews. A policeman was stabbed to death and four others wounded after they arrested three men at Crumpsall, north Manchester, in connection with the discovery of traces of ricin poison in north London. In a related operation, police arrested five men and a woman in Bournemouth.

The aircraft-carrier Ark Royal set sail for the Gulf and 1,500 reservists were called up. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech to a conference of more than 100 British ambassadors that Britain should remain the closest ally of the United States. 'The price of British influence is not, as some would have it, that we have, obediently, to do what the US asks,' he said. 'But the price of influence is that we do not leave the US to face the tricky issues alone.' He thought that the United States should listen to opinions on the Middle East, global poverty, global warming and the United Nations.

A third of families entitled to working family tax credits are not claiming them; 604,000 low-income families are missing out on £1.4 billion, an average of £42 a week each. The Tories are looking for ways to cut taxes, according to Mr Howard Flight, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury; 'It could be up to 20 per cent,' he said. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and his family returned to Sharm el Sheikh, in Egypt, for an end-of-year holiday; they are paying for the holiday instead of letting the Egyptian government do so, as it did last year. There was an argument about who should decide if the England cricket team should play in Zimbabwe.

January. Twelve countries of the European Union adopted the euro as their common currency. Lord Birt was asked by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, to draw up a report on transport. Rail fares went up and drivers went on strike. Connex South-East found it could get more passengers on trains by abolishing lavatories. Peggy Lee, the singer, died, aged 81. America flew al-Qa'eda and Taleban prisoners to a camp at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. India and Pakistan stood on the brink of war. A Home Office report found that in London (where 8 per cent are black) 70 per cent of mobile-telephone thefts were carried out by blacks. February.

The purchase by Miss Cherie Booth, Mrs Tony Blair, for a total of just over half a million pounds of two flats in Bristol, one for her son Euan to use when attending university, set off a lively game of hunt the issue. Someone called Mr Peter Foster was found to have acted on her behalf in the deal, and he turned out to be a convicted conman, specialising in unreliable slimming remedies and awaiting deportation to Australia; he exchanged many emails with Mrs Blair, one of his saying: 'Your pleasure is my purpose'. The Prime Minister's spokesman had earlier denied Mr Foster's part in buying the flats. He is the boyfriend of Miss Carole Caplin, who, it emerged, as Mrs Blair's 'lifestyle guru' interested her in ridding herself of 'toxins' in a shower.

The government announced that 700 health workers and servicemen would be vaccinated against smallpox, and that it was buying more vaccine so that the whole population could be vaccinated if necessary; the action was said by the Prime Minister's spokesman not to be in response to any specific threat. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, agreed with his French counterpart that Britain should take 1,000 Iraqis and 200 Afghans from the Sangatte Red Cross camp near Calais, which is to close on 30 December; the migrants began arriving immediately. The Fire Brigades Union cancelled an eight-day strike that was to have started last Wednesday, and their dispute was taken to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service.

The Fire Brigades Union and employers' representatives agreed to a deal on a 16 per cent pay rise, in the early hours of the morning on which an eight-day strike was to begin. But the office of Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said nothing could be done till 9 a.m., and in any case, since no details were available on reformed working practices (called 'modernisation' by the government), no commitment to funding the deal could be given. So the strike went ahead and Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, broadcast to the nation, saying, 'This is a strike they can't win. It would not be a defeat for the government, it would be a defeat for the country.' Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his autumn statement, said that he would have to borrow billions of pounds.

Three men of north African origin were arrested under the Terrorism Act, and some newspapers said that a plot to spread poison gas in the London Underground had been foiled. The government denied this was so; Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said: 'If there is a specific threat against a specific target, we of course will warn people.' The Fire Brigades Union held 'very constructive' talks with Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister. But Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in the Commons: 'This is exactly the wrong time, with exactly the wrong claim, pursuing the wrong methods to demand wage rises so much higher than inflation.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, said that 'hardly a day goes by without some new piece of intelligence coming via our security services about a threat to UK interests'; 'This is a new type of war, fought in a different way by different means,' he said. 'The dilemma is warning people without alarming them, taking preventive measures without destroying normal life.' The level of alert was raised at seaports; Mr David Osler, the industrial editor of Lloyd's List, said: 'The threat seems to have taken the shape of a lorry loaded with explosives.

Mr Iain Duncan Smith noted that 'a small group of my parliamentary colleagues have decided consciously to undermine my leadership'; he concluded: 'My message is simple and stark, unite or die.' His statement came the day after eight Tory MPs defied a three-line whip and voted in favour of a government amendment to the Adoption Bill to allow pairs of unmarried people, of which-ever sex, to adopt children jointly; the MPs were Mr Michael Portillo, Mr Kenneth Clarke, Mr Andrew Lansley, Mr Francis Maude, Mr David Curry, Miss Julie Kirkbride, Mr Andrew Mackay and Mr John Bercow (who had resigned from the shadow Cabinet the previous day on the issue). The Bill, including the amendment, passed the Commons and the Lords to become law.

Miss Estelle Morris resigned as Secretary of State for Education, saying she was not up to running a big department. She was replaced by Mr Charles Clarke, who was replaced as Labour party chairman by Mr John Reid, who was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Mr Paul Murphy, who was replaced as Welsh Secretary by Mr Peter Hain, who was replaced as Minister for Europe by Mr Denis MacShane. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had an argument at the end of the European Union summit in Brussels, which led President Jacques Chirac of France to say: 'You have been very rude and I have never been spoken to like this before.

The Fire Brigades Union announced a 48-hour national strike from 29 October, the first of a series of stoppages in pursuit of a 40 per cent pay rise. About 19,000 servicemen were put on alert to fill in for the firemen, with the help of 827 Green Goddess fire engines. Mr Bob Crow, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said that if absence of firemen meant that Underground stations would be more dangerous, his men would consider not working on strike days. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, made a speech in Belfast in the wake of the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, asking the Irish Republican Army for 'acts of completion'. 'We cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process,' he said.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons: 'Some say that we should fight terrorism alone and that issues to do with WMD [weapons of mass destruction] are a distraction. I reject that entirely.' The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended and government of the province was resumed by Westminster a week after three men connected with Sinn Fein were charged with offences to do with the Irish Republican Army spying on the Northern Ireland Office. An inquiry by Mr Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, found that 1,945 A-level candidates had been unjustly deprived of the grades they deserved and more than 150 had lost places at their preferred universities because the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA board had arbitrarily lowered grades.

Police raided the offices of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly building at Stormont and several private addresses before charging Sinn Fein's head of administration at Stormont with passing on documents that could be 'useful to terrorists in planning or carrying out acts of violence'; two others were also charged. The action came after a year's investigation of spying by the Irish Republican Army at the Northern Ireland Office; transcripts of conversations between Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and President George Bush of the United States were said to have been copied. Mr David Trimble, First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, flew to London for talks with Mr Blair.

Mrs Edwina Currie, the former Conservative minister, revealed that she had had a four-year affair from 1984 with Mr John Major, the former Conservative prime minister. The Chestnut Grove School in Balham, south-west London, began to offer the morning-after pill to 11-year-olds. After thousands of A-level students' results were found to have been manipulated, Sir William Stubbs was forced by Miss Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, to resign as chairman of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; he suggested she should consider her own position.

The government published its long-awaited dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It claimed that he has the capability to launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes and could have a nuclear weapon within two years. Parliament was recalled to discuss the Iraq question. The Prime Minister said, 'Disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction is the demand. One way or other, it must be acceded to.' Sixty-four MPs, including 56 Labour members, voted against the government on a technical motion, but Cabinet opposition to war, namely from Robin Cook and Clare Short, appeared to wither.

The House of Commons was recalled for a day's debate on 24 September on the approaching war against Iraq, but no substantive vote will be allowed. Dr George Carey, in his last address as Archbishop of Canterbury to the Anglican Consultative Council, warned that unilateral action 'by dioceses and individual bishops' over homosexuality was driving the Anglican Church 'towards serious fragmentation and the real possibility of two (or, more likely, many more) distinct Anglican bodies emerging'. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said that children of immigrant parents should talk to their mothers at home 'in English as well as in their historic mother tongue'.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, lent his support to President George Bush of the United States in preparing for war against Iraq. Mr Blair flew to Camp David in Maryland for a three-hour meeting with Mr Bush to agree their strategy. On his return he took up an engagement to visit the Queen at Balmoral. In a message for 11 September to the British in New York the Queen said: 'We honour the courage and determination of those in our armed forces and others who are striving to bring those responsible for this outrage to justice and to prevent similar atrocities in the future. Right must and will prevail.' A list of 67 Britons killed that day was released by the Foreign Office. A service at St Paul's Cathedral attended by the Prince of Wales remembered all who had died.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference in Sedgefield that a dossier on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons development would be published. 'I hate war. Anyone with any sense hates war,' he said. 'We are in absolute agreement that Iraq poses a real and an unique threat to the security of the region and the rest of the world.' In new procedures imposed by the government, the Criminal Records Bureau still had 7,000 school staff to vet when the autumn term began, and many children had to be sent home.