Portrait of the week | 3 August 2017

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Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appeared to wrest control of plans for Brexit from cabinet rivals, while Theresa May, the Prime Minister, was in Italy and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was in Australia. Mr Hammond foresaw a ‘transitional deal’ ending by June 2022, when the next general election is due. He said it would be ‘some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the UK and the European Union’. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, insisted that the cabinet had not agreed to a three-year transition. Mr Johnson said he was unaware that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, had announced a year-long inquiry about the costs and benefits of EU migration. Mrs May joined in the singing of ‘God Save the Queen’ in the bar of the Villa Cortine Palace Hotel in Lombardy, Italy.

Export orders rose in July at the fastest pace since April 2010, according to the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index. British Gas is to increase electricity prices by 12.5 per cent from 15 September, affecting more than three million customers. The AA sacked its executive chairman, Bob Mackenzie, on grounds of ‘gross misconduct’. Riot officers were sent for two days running to the Mount prison in Hertfordshire, where armed prisoners had taken over a wing. Rubbish piled up in the streets of Birmingham, where dustmen were on strike. There was chaos at Heathrow and Gatwick airports when a British Airways system failed again. The Duke of Edinburgh, aged 96, carried out his last solo public engagement.

The Prince of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Prime Minister attended ceremonies at Tyne Cot cemetery, Ypres, to mark the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele. Police warned British heroin users to be ‘extra careful’ after the drug fentanyl was found in some samples of heroin; fentanyl has been blamed for the death of at least 60 people in the past eight months.