Portrait of the Week

7 November 2009

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.

President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic signed the Lisbon Treaty shortly after the Czech constitutional court ruled that it was not inconsistent with the country’s constitution; he said of the court ruling: ‘I fundamentally disagree with its content and justification.’ In Brussels, before an EU summit, Mr Gordon Brown said: ‘We, the British government, believe that Tony Blair would be an excellent candidate and an excellent person to hold the job of president of the [European] council.’ Enthusiasm for Mr Blair’s candidature immediately slumped, but attention turned to Mr David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, as a possible candidate for the EU’s new equivalent post. Mr Hamid Karzai was declared President of Afghanistan, after his rival Mr Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from a second round of elections. The first round was mired in fraud. ‘Our government has been seriously discredited by administrative corruption,’ Mr Karzai said. ‘We will try to remove this stigma.’ Mr Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, visited Kabul on the eve of the decision. ‘There has been speculation that the United Nations will evacuate Afghanistan,’ he said, in reference to a bomb that had killed six UN workers and six others in Kabul the week before. ‘We will not be deterred.’ The shooting by an Aghan policeman of five British soldiers brought the number of British serviceman to die in Afghanistan to 229; US fatalities reached 911. President Barack Obama of the United States continued to ponder whether he should send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. On the first anniversary of his election, the Democrats lost elections in Virginia to the Republicans, and Mr Michael Bloomberg was re-elected Mayor of New York. Meanwhile, the US debated whether Mr Obama was getting too thin. ‘Just ’cause I’m skinny doesn’t mean I’m not tough,’ he said in a speech in Miami. ‘I don’t rattle.’ Simon Mann, sentenced in July last year to 34 years’ imprisonment for attempting a coup in Equatorial Guinea, was freed on grounds of health. André Agassi recounted in his memoirs how his brother helped him piece together his mullet-shaped hairpiece with 20 clips, the night before the French Open final in 1990, which he won. CSH