Portrait of the Week – 15 November 2018

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, defended a 500-page technical draft of the agreement on withdrawal from the European Union. She met immediate opposition from the Democratic Unionists, from Jacob Rees-Mogg and from Boris Johnson. Mr Johnson’s brother Jo (a Remainer) had earlier resigned as a minister, calling Mrs May’s handling of Brexit a ‘failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis’. The BBC reported that several cabinet ministers had expressed doubts about her Chequers plan back in July. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, insisted that Brexit could not be stopped, but Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, said the option of a new referendum was still ‘on the table’. Premier Foods put its Ambrosia creamed rice business up for sale as it began to spend £10 million to prepare for Brexit. The Prince of Wales celebrated his 70th birthday.

The nation had spent a weekend solemnly marking the centenary of the Armistice. Big Ben was allowed to strike 11. The Queen closed her eyes in prayer and the Prince of Wales laid a wreath at the Cenotaph. Some people criticised Jeremy Corbyn, for wearing an anorak and a red tie there. Bells rang; poppy petals fell; large engravings of individuals who had died in the first world war were made on beaches and washed away by the tide; silhouettes of the fallen were placed in churches. The government was said to oppose the granting of asylum to Asia Bibi (a Christian acquitted of blasphemy after eight years on death row in Pakistan) for fear of community unrest. Lord Lester of Herne Hill should be suspended from sitting in the Lords until 2022, its Privileges and Conduct Committee said, after he was found to have offered a woman ‘corrupt inducements to sleep with him’ in 2006 by promising her a peerage; he denied the allegations.