Portrait of the week | 21 April 2016

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George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that if Britain left the European Union, households would be on average £4,300 a year worse off. He quoted a Treasury analysis that said the British economy would be 6 per cent smaller outside the EU by 2030 than it would have been. ‘Remain’ campaigners were treating voters ‘like children who can be frightened into obedience’, Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, said, and declared that Britain could be part of the European free trade zone but ‘free from EU regulation which costs us billions of pounds a year’. Kenneth Clarke, the former Chancellor, said that David Cameron ‘wouldn’t last 30 seconds if he lost the referendum’. Supporters of the ‘leave’ campaign took a different view. ‘He must stay, I want him to stay,’ said Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons; he was the ‘right man to take us out of the European Union,’ said Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland Secretary. The National Farmers’ Union favoured remaining. Unemployment rose by 21,000 to 1.7 million. Mars said that Dolmio Classic Basil Pesto was among its products that should not be eaten more than once a week, for health reasons, such were its fat, sugar and salt content.

The General Medical Council asked junior doctors planning to strike next week to take ‘reasonable steps to satisfy themselves’ that patients would be safe. The Court of Appeal lifted an injunction banning the media in England and Wales from reporting the identity of a married celebrity who allegedly took part in ​sexual activity with two other people at once; but the celebrity could still not be ​legally named pending a possible appeal​; since the facts had been reported in Scotland, most people who wanted to know seemed to have found out.