Portrait of the week | 17 May 2018

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Wages rose quicker than inflation in the first quarter of 2018, at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent, against 2.7 per cent rate for inflation. Unemployment fell to 1.42 million — at 4.2 per cent the lowest level since 1975. BT said it would cut 13,000 jobs over three years, about 12 per cent of its workforce, to save £1.5 billion. Network Rail surveyed 10 million trees by drone to see how many it might cut down. Plans were approved for a Silvertown road tunnel linking the Royal Docks north of the Thames with the Greenwich peninsula south of the river. Meghan Markle’s father, a bankrupt living in Mexico, felt unwell on the eve of her wedding to Prince Harry.

The government said it would publish a white paper on Brexit before the EU summit next month. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, invited all the Conservative backbenchers to No. 10 Downing Street in batches to see a slide-show about two options on which the cabinet was split: a customs partnership with the EU or maximum facilitation (max fac) replacing border checks with technological monitoring. The chief of staff at No. 10, Gavin Barwell, told them neither would work ‘in its current form’. Standing on a platform in a rice factory in Rainham, Essex, David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, Sir Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader, and Nicky Morgan, the former Conservative minister, urged Parliament to keep Britain in a customs union and the EU’s single market. WHSmith apologised for selling toothpaste normally priced at £2.49 for £7.99 at a hospital in Wakefield, Yorkshire.

The government went back on its promise in last year’s manifesto to remove the cap that stops faith-based free schools allocating more than 50 per cent of places on grounds of religion.