The Spectator

January. Two young black women, Letisha Shakespear and Charlene Ellis, were shot dead during a party at a hairdresser's at Aston, Birmingham. Eli Hall, a gunman surrounded by police for 15 days at a house in Hackney, was found dead after a fire. The Fire Brigades Union planned strikes. An Underground train was derailed at Chancery Lane. The FT-SE index fell to a seven-year low. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead died, aged 82; Lord Dacre, aged 89; Gianni Agnelli, aged 81; General Leopoldo Galtieri, aged 76. The Pope said: 'War cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option.' The United States built up troops in the Gulf. The Queen had an operation on her right knee. February.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found new ways of increasing taxes to cover government deficits in his pre-Budget report; but he declared that he wanted to help small enterprises. British Gas is to raise prices for its gas and electricity by 5.9 per cent from next month. Rail fares will go up by an average of 4 per cent in January, with higher examples such as the company c2c increasing by 10.3 per cent peak-time travelcards between south Essex and London, and WAGN increasing cheap day returns for journeys between Cambridge and King’s Cross by 9.1 per cent, bringing the fare to £19.10. The United States dollar fell against the pound so that it was possible to buy more than $1.74 for a pound; this was the cheapest rate since 1992.

The Democratic Unionist party became the biggest in Northern Ireland after elections for the Assembly there, which has been suspended for more than a year; 'A democrat will not sit down with armed gangsters and murderers to negotiate the future of this country,' said the Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the DUP. The DUP has 30 seats, the Ulster Unionists 27; Sinn Fein with 24 overtook the Social Democratic and Labour party with 18. More than half the Labour party's backbenchers at Westminster signed an early day motion questioning government plans to allow university top-up fees of '3,000 a year payable after graduation. A vote on the issue was delayed until the New Year, but Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said there would be 'absolutely no retreat'.

In the Queen’s Speech the government announced plans to remove hereditary peers; take failed asylum-seekers’ children into ‘care’; let universities charge fees of £3,000 a year; make sellers of houses produce ‘information packs’; prosecute wife-beaters; control firemen; impose identity cards; introduce ‘gay marriages’; but not to ban hunting. The government let it be known that it was prepared to see negotiations for a European constitution fail.

President George Bush of the United States made a state visit to Britain, accompanied by a huge entourage. ‘This is the right moment for us to stand firm with the United States in defeating terrorism, wherever it is,’ said Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britain. Over four days, police in London were to work 14,000 shifts, with 5,000 on duty on the day of a protest march that the Metropolitan Police decided to allow to cross Westminster Bridge and go up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. About 250 American secret servicemen will be allowed to carry guns under a previously unknown agreement. A security alert was raised over a possible attack, unconnected with Mr Bush’s visit, by North African operatives of al-Qa’eda.

Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, pressed for the issuing of identity cards, despite lack of enthusiasm in the Cabinet; ‘An ID card is not a luxury or a whim — it is a necessity,’ he said. Mr Michael Howard, the new leader of the Opposition, chose Maurice, Lord Saatchi, and Dr Liam Fox to take on between them the tasks of the party chairman, from which post Mrs Theresa May was removed to become shadow environment and transport secretary. In a shadow Cabinet reduced to 12, Mr Oliver Letwin got the Exchequer, Mr David Davis the Home Office, Mr Tim Yeo health and education, and Mr David Willetts policy co-ordination (writing the manifesto).

Mr Michael Howard remained the only candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party after a vote the week before of 90 to 75 against a motion of confidence in Mr Iain Duncan Smith, who later likened the event to a ‘near-death experience’. Talks between the Communication Workers Union and the Post Office ended unofficial strikes by postmen that had brought mail in London and elsewhere to a standstill. Firemen went on unofficial strike over pay rises. Mr James Murdoch was appointed chief executive of BSkyB; he is the 30-year-old son of Mr Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the company.

Twenty-five Conservative MPs wrote to the chairman of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of confidence in their leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith. The Labour party expelled Mr George Galloway, the MP for Glasgow Kelvin, on the grounds that remarks he made about Iraq ‘fighting for all the Arabs’ were in some way ‘grossly detrimental’ to the party. Mr Paul Burrell, once the butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, wrote a book, serialised for a week by the Daily Mirror, in which he gave a list of her nine close male friends, and reproduced letters to and from members of the royal family.

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was taken to hospital after complaining of pain in his chest; he is thought to have been suffering from supraventricular tachycardia, an over-rapid heartbeat, or, some said, atrial fibrillation, which was adjusted with electrical treatment. After a day’s rest he flew to Northern Ireland and confirmed that elections to the Assembly there, suspended for a year, would take place on 26 November. But a breakthrough in peace negotiations collapsed when the IRA and Sinn Fein refused to let General John de Chastelain, head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, or the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, give details of arms the IRA had put out of use; this prevented the Unionists from accepting the gesture.

At a specially reconvened hearing of the Hutton inquiry into circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, said that Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had chaired the meeting that agreed a ‘change of stance’, under which officials would confirm the scientist’s identity as the man who illicitly briefed Mr Andrew Gilligan, a BBC radio correspondent, if his name was put to them by reporters. Lord Hutton said that his report ‘might not be delivered and published before the New Year’.