Portrait of the week | 19 May 2012

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The Bank of England decided against more quantitative easing, after creating £325 billion in three years. Steve Hilton, the Downing Street director of strategy, left proposals for cuts of £25 billion from welfare spending as he headed off for an academic post in California. Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary said that business leaders were whingeing, and ‘large businesses are sitting on a pretty large pile of cash’. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.’ Unemployment fell by 45,000 to 2.63 million. Thousands of civil servants are to be asked to work from home during the period of the Olympic Games, from 21 July to 9 September. The government said it would bring forward from 2014 the recruitment of 70 border staff to prevent long queues at Heathrow airport after the Olympics. Bankers were found to employ more staff (44,500) in Canary Wharf than in the City of London (43,300). Manchester City won the Premier League cup, pipping Manchester United at the post with two goals in injury time of a match against Queens Park Rangers.

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Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, put the left-winger Jon Cruddas (replacing Liam Byrne) in charge of the policy review designed to form the basis of the party’s next manifesto. Peter Hain resigned as shadow Welsh secretary to spend more time with the proposed Severn barrage. Caroline Lucas is stepping down as leader of the Green party after four years. The Dalai Lama was given the £1.1 million Templeton prize at St Paul’s cathedral. In a press conference he blamed England’s riots last year on young people ‘being brought up to believe that life was just easy. Life is not easy. If you take for granted that life will be easy, then anger develops, frustration, and riots.’