Portrait of the week | 20 October 2016

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Steven Woolfe, the MEP who spent three days in hospital after an altercation at a Ukip meeting, said he was resigning from the party, which was in a ‘death spiral’. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, told its annual conference that an independence referendum bill would be published for consultation this week. A decision on airport expansion in England was postponed again, and Downing Street said that ministers would be allowed to express their personal opinions. Olympic athletes in a parade in Manchester were joined on an open-topped bus by two young impostors wearing Team GB tracksuits and plastic medals.

The annual rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Prices Index rose to 1 per cent in September from 0.6 per cent in August, reflecting a fall in fuel prices a year earlier; by the Retail Prices Index, the rise was to 2, from 1.8 per cent. The annual increase in house prices rose to 8.4 per cent, with the average price in Kensington and Chelsea reaching £1.3 million and that in Burnley £77,000. NatWest gave notice of withdrawal of banking facilities from the Russian state-run broadcaster RT, but reviewed the decision when Russia took it badly. Ecuador cut off access to the internet for Julian Assange, who has been living in its embassy in London since 2012. Unemployment rose 10,000, to 1.66 million. Jean Alexander, who played Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street for 23 years, died aged 90. The Dean of York Minster sacked all of its 30 volunteer bellringers.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, apologised to Field Marshal Lord Bramall, aged 92, whose house had been searched by 20 officers at dawn over false allegations of paedophilia, and whose wife died without knowing that months earlier police had realised there was no case against him.