Portrait of the week | 10 November 2016

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said she still expected to start talks on leaving the EU as planned by the end of March, despite a High Court judgment that Parliament must decide on the invoking of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that would set Brexit in train. Opinion was divided over whether the High Court had required an Act of Parliament or a vote on a resolution. The government appealed to the Supreme Court, which is to hear the case from 5 December. The judgment set off a confused game of hunt the issue. One issue was whether the press is allowed to be rude about judges. The Daily Mail’s headline had been ‘Enemies of the people’ and the Daily Telegraph’s ‘The judges versus the people’. On her way to India for a trade visit, Mrs May said: ‘I believe in and value the independence of our judiciary. I also value the freedom of our press.’ A snail from Nottingham with a left-spiralling shell was paired with another from Ipswich with a view to their mating.

Prince Harry objected to the ‘smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls’ about Meghan Markle, his girlfriend ‘a few months into a relationship’ , who is an American actress with a black mother. Sir Richard Henriques’ independent inquiry found that Operation Midland, Scotland Yard’s investigation into allegations of paedophilia by famous people, should have been abandoned ‘much earlier’ and entailed ‘grave’ errors; Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police commissioner said: ‘I am today issuing a public apology to Lord Bramall, Lady Brittan and Harvey Proctor.’ More than 200 prisoners in Bedford jail rioted and started fires.