The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 14 June 2003

A speedy round-up of the week's news

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told Parliament that only one of the five economic tests that would allow Britain to join the eurozone had been met; this was whether the City of London would remain Europe’s leading financial centre. But Mr Brown said that at the next Budget he would ‘consider the extent of progress and determine whether on the basis of the five economic tests which – if positive next year – would allow us at that time to put the issue before the British people in a referendum’. A Bill, stating the question to be asked, will be published this autumn. Mr Brown showed dissatisfaction with the rarity of fixed-rate mortgages and did not rule out using stamp duty and capital-gains tax to meddle with the market. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said, ‘It would be better if we hadn’t published that dossier’ – the so-called ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq in January, part of which was lifted from a 12-year-old thesis. Mr Alastair Campbell, the director of communications at the Prime Minister’s office, wrote to Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, apologising for using intelligence in the dossier in the way that it had been. The Commons health committee reported that it was ‘appalled by the crisis in sexual health’ which has seen syphilis increasing fivefold in six years. Ian Huntley, awaiting trial for the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, took an overdose of anti-depressant pills in prison but was saved from death. Mr Mark Amory, the literary editor of The Spectator, and Mrs Hilary Spurling, the biographer, shared the £20,000 Heywood Hill literary prize. Mr T.J. Binyon won the £30,000 Samuel Johnson prize for his biography of Pushkin. The Farm Animal Welfare Council, a government-appointed advisory body, called for the criminalisation of Jewish and Muslim methods of slaughtering animals.

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