Portrait of the Week – 7 March 2019

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Two 17-year-olds were stabbed to death in London and Manchester, bringing the number of teenagers killed in knife crime this year to ten. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that there was ‘no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers’. Next day, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said: ‘There is some link between violent crime on the streets obviously and police numbers, of course there is.’ The owners of Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner are to close 27 of their 87 restaurants. The family that has owned the British sports-car maker Morgan for 110 years is selling it to an Italian venture capitalist firm, Investindustrial. The philosopher A.C. Grayling won £20,000 libel damages against a Twitter user called Peter North, who made false allegations in a tweet saying: ‘I’d bet good money that A.C. Grayling has a hard drive full of underage botty sex videos.’ The government said that perhaps by 2020 it would stop low-level letter boxes being fitted in new houses.

Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, and Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, were sent off to Brussels to bring back some proof that the Irish backstop was not to be eternal, in order to sway a vote in the Commons on Tuesday. George Eustice resigned as environment minister over May’s promise to allow MPs a vote
on delaying Brexit. The Prime Minister promised £1.6 billion (over six years) to areas doing badly economically; the offer was derided by some as an attempt to bribe Labour MPs to vote for her Brexit deal. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found he had buoyant tax receipts from January as he prepared for the spring statement. The Independent Group of 11 MPs had talks with the Electoral Commission about setting up as a new party.