Portrait of the week | 19 November 2011

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The crisis in the eurozone was ‘an opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests’, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said in his Mansion House speech. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a television interview: ‘There’s got to be more integration — the kind of thing actually that Britain would not tolerate and is one of the reasons we didn’t go in the euro.’ Unemployment among those aged 16-24 rose above a million. Inflation fell by 0.2 percentage points, to 5 per cent (measured by the CPI) and 5.4 (by the RPI). Mr Cameron threw a fork at a mouse during dinner at his Downing Street flat, but missed.

In a wrangle involving Theresa May, the Home Secretary, about the monitoring of immigrants, Brodie Clark, until recently the head of UK Border Agency’s ‘border force’, told the Commons Home Affairs Committee: ‘I introduced no additions to the Home Secretary’s trial, neither did I extend it or alter it in any way whatsoever.’ Fingerprinting, it was explained, was a separate matter. He said that his reputation in a 40-year career had been destroyed in two days ‘largely because of the contribution made by the Home Secretary’. Earlier, Aldershot was reported to be under financial pressure because almost 10 per cent of its population was now Nepalese, through an influx of retired Gurkhas. Westminster Abbey sought £12 million to open to the public the triforium above its north and south aisles.

The British Medical Association called for the criminalisation of smoking in a car, even when the driver is alone. Police held 172 supporters of the English defence League in the Red Lion pub, Whitehall, to prevent them from moving upon the protestors’ encampment outside St Paul’s; the Corporation of London resumed legal action to clear the site.