Portrait of the week | 11 July 2019

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Sir Kim Darroch resigned as British ambassador to Washington after the Mail on Sunday published disobliging emails he had sent between 2017 and now, which said things like: ‘We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.’ In response President Donald Trump said: ‘We’re not big fans of that man.’ Next day, Trump added that he had told Theresa May, the Prime Minister, how to manage Brexit, ‘but she went her own foolish way — was unable to get it done. A disaster!’. As Conservative party members posted their votes, bookmakers put the chance of Boris Johnson becoming party leader at 95 per cent and of Jeremy Hunt at 5 per cent. Sir John Major, a former prime minister, said he would seek a judicial review if a prime minister tried to prorogue parliament to secure Brexit. Ocado said a fire at its Andover warehouse in February cost it £110 million.

Lord Triesman, Lord Darzi and Lord Turnberg resigned from the Labour party, accusing it of anti-Semitism. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said that, in another referendum on Brexit, his party ‘would campaign for Remain against either no deal or a Tory deal that does not protect the economy and jobs’. Sheffield city council, which in 2016 announced a 60-year billion-pound agreement with the Sichuan Guodong construction firm in China, admitted that the deal was ‘dead’, having spent £40,000 on trips connected with it. Among Labour MPs who said they would not contest the next election were Kate Hoey, 73, MP for Vauxhall since 1989; Geoffrey Robinson, 81, MP for Coventry North West since 1976; and Stephen Pound, 71, MP for Ealing North since 1997.