Portrait of the week | 1 September 2016

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Britain rejected a call by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France who hopes to return to power next year, ‘for the opening of a centre in England to process asylum requests for all those who are in Calais’. More than 9,000 migrants camp at the so-called Jungle near Calais; it was Mr Sarkozy who in 2003 helped implement the bilateral treaty that allowed Britain to place border officials on the French side of the Channel. Southern Rail reinstated 119 of the 341 daily services it cut in July. Katrina Percy resigned as the chief executive of the Southern Health NHS Trust following criticism that the deaths of people with mental illness or deficiencies had not been examined properly. People with hidden disabilities or poor health were offered badges by Transport for London reading: ‘Please offer me a seat.’

Theresa May, the Prime Minister, summoned ministers concerned with the process of leaving the European Union. She was reported to have been told by legal advisers that Parliament’s consent is not required before invoking Article 50 and that she might ‘consider asserting Royal Prerogative’. Lord O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary, said that, with changes in the European Union: ‘It might be that the broader, more loosely aligned group is something that the UK is happy being a member of.’ He also said that Theresa May would be ‘politically unwise’ not to allow MPs a say in the negotiations. David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, was photographed sitting barefoot on a car-park wall in Cornwall, eating chips out of a plastic container.

Foreign companies made a record 2,213 investments in Britain in the year ending April 2016 — 11 per cent more than the previous year. The last 22 BHS shops closed.