Portrait of the week | 23 May 2013

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A senior figure in the Conservative party with strong social connections to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was reported by the Telegraph and Times to have said that Conservative constituency associations ‘are all mad swivel-eyed loons’. Lord Feldman, the party’s co-chairman, said it was not he. Mr Cameron sent an email to party activists saying: ‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’ The rumpus erupted as Conservative voters defected to the UK Independence Party, and Conservative MPs became impatient with the leadership of Mr Cameron. It followed a rebellion by 116 Conservative backbenchers, who had voted for an amendment regretting the absence from the Queen’s Speech of a bill paving the way for a referendum on the EU. It preceded a Commons votes on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, which the government won only through a deal with Labour, with 133 Tories voting against it. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted to allow actively homosexual men and women to become ministers.

Sir David Nicholson, criticised over the hospital scandal in Mid Staffordshire, is to retire as the chief executive of the NHS next year. The FTSE 100 index reached 6,803.87, its highest finish since late 1999. The annual rate of inflation, measured by the consumer prices index fell to 2.4 per cent in April from 2.8 per cent in March; as measured by the retail prices index, 2.9 per cent from 3.3 per cent. The operating profits of the Royal Mail, shortly to be privatised, rose to £403 million. The Ashmolean acquired Millais’s portrait of John Ruskin in the Trossachs, painted in 1853 when Effie Ruskin was transferring her affections to Millais.