The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 1 March 2003

A speedy round-up of the week's news

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, in an emergency statement to the House of Commons on Iraq, that 100 per cent co-operation by Saddam Hussein was necessary, and ‘anything less will not do’. A day’s debate followed in the Lords and Commons, where many Labour members were prepared to vote against the government. Mr Blair had visited the Pope in the company of his wife, and became the first serving prime minister to attend a papal Mass. At the General Synod of the Church of England, on the eve of the enthronment of Dr Rowan Williams as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, prayers were offered for the British Prime Minister, the President of the United States, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government. The Most Revd David Hope, the Archbishop of York, said that Ash Wednesday, 5 March, should be a day of fasting and prayer ‘for all those caught up in the crisis’; the Pope had made a similar call. The Conservatives wallowed in a crisis of confidence in their leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith. ‘You don’t look tall if you surround yourself by short grasses,’ Mr Michael Portillo said on the wireless. ‘You look tall if you surround yourself by the tallest grasses.’ In response to these controversial remarks, Mr Duncan Smith called Mr Portillo ‘self-indulgent to the point of madness’. The row had reached this pitch after Mr Duncan Smith repeatedly laughed when questioned on Today about changes of staff in the Conservative party. ‘Ha, ha, ha. Here’s the answer to everybody …this is the most uninteresting subject that I can imagine,’ he said. Abdullah El Faisal, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of soliciting the murder of Hindus, Jews and Americans; tapes of his exhortations had been put on sale.

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