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Portrait of the Week – 27 September 2018

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, held a special cabinet to retrieve something from the wreckage of the Brexit policy she had imposed at Chequers this summer. Mrs May had shown surprise at a summit in Salzburg four days earlier when the EU rejected her proposals. ‘The suggested framework for economic cooperation will not work,’ said Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council. He then posted a picture on Instagram of himself and Mrs May with a cakestand and the caption: ‘A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.’ Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, said that this was ‘insulting the British people’. The next day, Mrs May had made a special broadcast from Downing Street to say: ‘Throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same.’ The cabinet agreed that people from the EU should face the same immigration rules as those from elsewhere. Mrs May, on her way to a UN meeting in America, said that a Canada-style deal with the EU would be no good if it broke up the United Kingdom. The Institute of Economic Affairs published its own plan, supported by such keen Brexiteers as Jacob Rees-Mogg. A Beluga whale was spotted in the Thames at East Tilbury.

At the Labour conference in Liverpool, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, promised Labour would, over a decade, take 10 per cent of shares from companies employing more than 250 people and put them in a workers’ fund. He said the water industry in England would be renationalised, which would see salaries capped for executives and control handed to workers, local councils and customers. Labour would consider another referendum on Brexit, but it would not include the option of staying in the EU; Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary said that it might.

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