Portrait of the week | 29 November 2003

In the Queen’s Speech the government announced plans to remove hereditary peers; take failed asylum-seekers’ children into ‘care’; let universities charge fees of £3,000 a year; make sellers of houses produce ‘information packs’; prosecute wife-beaters; control firemen; impose identity cards; introduce ‘gay marriages’; but not to ban hunting. The government let it be known that it was prepared to see negotiations for a European constitution fail.