Portrait of the week | 23 July 2015

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Parents would be able to have their children’s passports removed if they were suspected of planning to travel abroad to join a radical group, under provisions outlined by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to deal with Islamist extremism. It emerged that five British pilots embedded with allied forces had been taking part in air strikes over Syria, which Parliament had voted against in 2013. Julian Lewis, the Conservative chairman of the Defence Select Committee, accused Mr Cameron of making up policy ‘on the hoof’. Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said that in order to defeat the Islamic State, ‘tanks would have to roll and there’s going to have to be boots on the ground’. A man was charged with the murder of Don Lock, aged 79, who was stabbed at Findon, West Sussex, after a minor collision.

Forty-eight Labour members, including 18 new MPs, defied Harriet Harman the acting leader and the whip, and voted against the government’s Welfare Bill, which passed by 308 to 124. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked for savings of between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 from government departments not protected from cuts. Footage from a home movie from 1933, showing the Queen as a little girl playing outdoors with her mother and uncle and making a Hitler salute, was published by the Sun. Tim Farron beat Norman Lamb in an election by party members to become leader of the Liberal Democrats. Four people were killed in an explosion and fire at a wood mill at Bosley, Cheshire. Aberdeenshire Council ordered the Carron Fish Bar in Stonehaven to take down a banner declaring it ‘the birthplace of the world-famous deep-fried Mars bar’.