Portrait of the Week – 15 August 2019

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Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, proposed an extra 10,000 prison places and the expansion of stop-and-search powers. PC Stuart Outten, 28, was cut in the head with a machete after he stopped a van in Leyton, east London, in the early hours; Muhammed Rodwan, 56, of Luton, was charged with attempted murder. While trying to make an arrest, PC Gareth Phillips, 42, was run over in Moseley, Birmingham, by someone driving his own car; Mubashar Hussain, 29, was charged with attempted murder. The RAF is to allow recruits to wear beards.

John Bercow, the Speaker, said that he thought parliament could stop Britain leaving the EU without an agreement. Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, said that he was confident that parliament had the means it needed, because a no-deal Brexit would be ‘just as much a betrayal of the referendum result as not leaving at all’. Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, suggested an ‘emergency cabinet’ of ten women could meet to try to stop a no-deal Brexit: ‘Women tend to be less tribal,’ she said. Jean-Marc Puissesseau, the president of Port Boulogne Calais, dismissed warnings of chaos in trade between Dover and Calais, saying: ‘Basically, c’est la bullshit.’ After meeting Boris Johnson at No. 10, John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, said that Britain would be ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with America. Nearly a million people were affected by a power cut in the Midlands, the South East, South West and North East of England and Wales after a failure of supply from the gas-fired station at Little Barford in Bedfordshire and from Hornsea offshore wind farm. Passengers were trapped with no ventilation in trains that drivers had no way of restarting when the current was restored.