Portrait of the Week – 8 November 2012

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to the Gulf to sell Typhoon jets to Dubai and Saudi Arabia. On the border of Jordan with Syria he said he shared a ‘goal of a Syria without Assad’. Mr Cameron appointed Mrs Justice Macur to examine the treatment of allegations of sexual abuse at children’s homes in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. Someone abused at that period accused a former Conservative politician. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced a new police inquiry into the abuse. A text message from Rebekah Brooks to Mr Cameron was published by the Mail on Sunday: ‘Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love “working together”.’ Denis MacShane, a former Labour minister, stepped down as an MP for falsely claiming £7,000 of expenses. A man jumped into the boot of his car as it was being stolen in Edinburgh and managed to telephone police from inside.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, discussed on television the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union. He was speaking four days after the government was defeated by 307 to 294 (with the help of 53 Tory rebels) in a vote calling for a real-terms cut in the EU budget between 2014 and 2020. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, backed a campaign for a ‘living wage’ minimum of £7.45 an hour (or £8.55 in London), compared with the legal minimum wage for those over 21 of £6.19. More than 50 per cent of mortgages in London, the south-east and the south-west were found to be interest-only loans in a survey by Moody’s. A flood siren went off accidentally in Boston, Lincolnshire, at 3 a.m. and kept townspeople awake for five hours.