Portrait of the week | 21 August 2014

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, writing of the Islamic State in northern Iraq, said: ‘If we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.’ Anyone waving an Islamic State flag in Britain would be arrested, he said. He invoked Britain’s ‘military prowess’ but later said: ‘We are not going to be putting boots on the ground.’ British C-130 transport planes were used to drop aid; Tornados were used for surveillance in addition to a Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft; and Chinook helicopters remained on standby. A raider who attacked a jeweller’s in Oxford covered market with smoke grenades and a sledgehammer was arrested by passers-by and died under their weight.

A curious piece of television footage was aired by the BBC which covered by helicopter the searching of a flat owned by Sir Cliff Richard by police responding to a complaint that a boy aged under 16 had been assaulted at an event in which the singer took part in 1985. South Yorkshire Police later said it had been contacted weeks earlier by a BBC reporter ‘who made it clear he knew of the existence of an investigation’ and ‘it was agreed that the reporter would be notified of the date of the house search’. Lord Rennard was reinstated as a member of the Liberal Democrats. John Bercow, the Speaker, nominated Carol Mills, nicknamed the Canberra Caterer, the secretary of the department of parliamentary services in Australia, as the successor to Sir Robert Rogers as clerk of the Commons.

A man was found dead among 35 Sikhs from Afghanistan in a container from Belgium opened at Tilbury docks. A man was arrested in Banbridge, Co.