Portrait of the week | 7 July 2012

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Bob Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays a day after he said he wasn’t resigning. Marcus Agius resigned as chairman of Barclays, and a day later was appointed ‘full-time chairman’ to seek a replacement for Mr Diamond. The imbroglio followed a £290 million fine (£59.5 million by the British Financial Services Authority and the rest by American authorities) for Barclays’ having filed false information on its borrowings in connection with the setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). Barclays said that, in a telephone call in 2008, Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, had passed on to Mr Diamond queries from Whitehall about why Barclays’ Libor submissions were so high; Barclays said that the enquiry was interpreted by Jerry del Missier, its chief operating officer, as an instruction from the Bank of England not to keep Libors so high. Mr del Missier resigned this week. David Beckham was not selected to represent Great Britain in the Olympic football competition.

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David Cameron set out his ideas about a referendum on the European Union: ‘Just as I believe it would be wrong to have an immediate in-out referendum, so it would also be wrong to rule out any type of referendum for the future.’ Liam Fox, the former defence secretary, said: ‘Life outside the EU holds no terror.’ Ian Brady, 74, the Moors Murderer, who has been tube-fed for the past 12 years after refusing food, was taken to hospital after a seizure. Two RAF Tornado jets crashed in the Moray Firth, with the loss of a pilot and navigator. June proved the wettest since records began in 1910. The East and West Coast rail lines were mended after being cut off by landslides.