Portrait of the Week – 15 January 2005

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jolly annoyed when Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided not to step down in his favour last year after all, according to a new book by Mr Robert Peston; ‘There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe,’ Mr Brown reportedly said to Mr Blair. During a heated meeting between Labour backbenchers — displeased with the wrangling — and Mr Blair and Mr Brown, Lord Campbell-Savours asked Mr Brown either to deny the attributed quotation or rescind it, lest the Tories use it in the election campaign. The confirmed number of British people killed by the great wave in the Indian Ocean was 51, with 416 presumed dead and 701 unaccounted for. Mr Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said that the Provisional IRA was responsible for the theft of £26.5 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast in December. Mr Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach of Ireland, agreed. Mr Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, told the Commons: ‘I cannot forecast with certainty when it will prove possible to re-establish an inclusive power-sharing executive.’ Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, the former Ulster Defence Association terrorist, was released from Maghaberry prison in Antrim and flown to Manchester and then taken to Bolton to avoid death threats and to be reunited with his wife and children, although one, Jonathan ‘Mad Pup’ Adair, is in jail for conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine. A destitute migrant worker, homeless since losing her job before Christmas, had both legs amputated after being found suffering frostbite on New Year’s day on the streets of Coleraine, County Londonderry. More than 30,000 people in Northern Ireland were left without electricity when heavy rain caused floods, and Carlisle was cut off from the world after nine inches of rain fell in Cumbria in three days; gales followed.