Portrait of the week | 22 June 2016

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One week before the United Kingdom voted in a referendum on membership of the European Union, Jo Cox, a Labour MP and married mother of two, aged 41, died after being shot and stabbed at Birstall, West Yorkshire, on her way to a constituency surgery. A passer-by, Bernard Kenny, a retired miner aged 77, tried to protect her and was wounded. A constituent, Thomas Mair, aged 52, was charged with her murder and, on being asked his name in a magistrates’ court, said: ‘Death to traitors. Freedom for Britain.’ Parliament was recalled the following Monday so that tributes could be made.

The Crown Prosecution Service said that Sir Cliff Richard would face no further action over allegations of historical sex abuse, because of ‘insufficient evidence to prosecute’. ‘I was named before I was even interviewed and for me that was like being hung out like live bait,’ the singer said. ‘I cannot understand why it has taken so long to get to this point.’ The BBC, which had broadcast film from a helicopter of a police search on Sir Cliff’s house in his absence in 2014, said it was sorry he had thereby ‘suffered distress’. A man died after suffering severe burns at the Glastonbury Festival. A 29-year-old man about to fly to Saudi Arabia from Heathrow airport was arrested on suspicion of possessing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism. The average time to sell a house fell to 57 days. A Buckinghamshire accountant, Norman Murray Pringle, won a claim to the baronetcy of Stichill in Roxburghshire after showing by DNA that a previous baronet, who succeeded in 1919, was illegitimate.

Members of the RMT union working for ScotRail and Southern railways went on a 24-hour strike while train guards continued to take days of sick leave that caused cancellations on Southern, which is in a dispute over the introduction of driver-only trains.