Portrait of the Week – 22 October 2005

Conservative MPs got down to selecting the two candidates for the leadership of the party between whom members at large will be asked to choose; they did not include Mr Kenneth Clarke, who came last in the first ballot. Miss Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, confirmed that, if avian influenza communicable between human beings visited Britain, then perhaps a quarter of the population might be infected and 50,000 might die. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, in a speech to Progress, a Labour party organisation, said, ‘What we must not do is fall for some modern version of the old Left delusion: that the problem with the progressive government is that it is not Left enough and if only its leadership rediscovered its true principles, all would be well.’ A Bill to enable the introduction of identity cards was given its third reading in the Commons, although the government majority was halved. The government agreed to allow serving public-sector workers to continue to retire at 60 while new employees must work till 65. Mr Shaun Woodward, the British minister responsible for health in Northern Ireland, announced that the government would impose a complete ban there on smoking in bars and enclosed public places. Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sir John Gieve, permanent under-secretary at the Home Office since 2001, is to replace Sir Andrew Large as deputy governor of the Bank of England in January. Standard Life, Europe’s largest mutual life assurance enterprise, pressed ahead with demutualisation and a flotation on the Stock Exchange. Mr Bob Kiley, the head of Transport for London, said the French engineering company Alstom should lose its £429 million 20-year maintenance contract for Underground trains after services on the Northern line were suspended for three days because of problems with their braking tripcocks.