Portrait of the Week – 2 November 2017

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A great ferment of accusations of sexual impropriety was made against people in Parliament and out of it. Bex Bailey, a Labour party worker, said she was raped, not by an MP, at a party event in 2011 and a senior Labour official discouraged her from reporting it. Jared O’Mara MP had the Labour whip withdrawn while claims were investigated that he had called a woman he met ‘an ugly bitch’. Tulip Siddiq, a Labour MP, said that cases of sexual misconduct cases at Westminster could run into hundreds. Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, was even driven to apologise publicly for putting his hand on the knee of Julia Hartley-Brewer during dinner 15 years ago, although she said that she had not been ‘remotely upset or distressed’. Anthony Rapp, an actor, said that in 1986, when he was 14, the actor Kevin Spacey (then 26) had, after a party, lifted him on to a bed and climbed on top of him, Mr Spacey said: ‘I honestly do not remember the encounter … But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology.’ Netflix halted production of the House of Cards series in which he starred. Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford, denied accusations by two women that he had raped them in France in 2009 and 2012. A dolphin, or perhaps a harbour porpoise, was filmed in the Thames at Putney Bridge.

The Bank of England said 75,000 jobs could be lost in financial services following Brexit. The EU’s European Investment Bank said it would not fully repay UK holdings after Brexit until 2054. The government proposed giving people in serious debt six weeks’ breathing space from further interest charges.