The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 August 2018

issue 25 August 2018

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Government finances were in surplus by £2 billion in July. Public sector net debt rose to £1,777.5 billion, equal to 84.3 per cent of GDP, £17.5 billion more than a year before, but less as a proportion of GDP than last year’s 86 per cent. Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, flew to Washington and made a speech urging the European Union to take stronger sanctions against Russia. President Vladimir Putin of Russia danced with Karin Kneissl, the new foreign minister of Austria, at her wedding, and then met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at the Meseberg Palace near Berlin.

The government took over the management of Birmingham prison from G4S midway through its contract after Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, described it as the worst prison he had ever been to. Inspectors found blood, vomit and rat droppings on the floor, with cockroaches and an overpowering smell of drugs. Staff were found asleep or locked away from prisoners for fear. Sir Norman Bettison, formerly of South Yorkshire Police, had the four charges against him of misconduct in a public office, arising from the Hillsborough disaster, dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, which said there was insufficient evidence and no real prospect of securing a conviction. Shoppers and staff had to leave Sainsbury’s store in Ripon, North Yorkshire, after a sinkhole opened up in an alley next to it.

Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, and Michel Barnier, the chief EU negotiator, said that Brexit talks would now be held ‘continuously’ somehow. The government decided to publish the first bunch of dozens of technical notices that countenanced leaving the European Union without a deal. Mr Raab said that Britain would ‘move swiftly’ to safeguard the future of EU citizens if there was no deal.

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