The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 8 November 2018

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off for St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons, from which she was to join President Emmanuel Macron to lay wreaths at Thiepval for the centenary of the Armistice. Jeff Fairburn resigned as chief executive of Persimmon, the housing company, after his £75 million bonus attracted public comment. Marks & Spencer reported falling clothing and food sales. The New Look fashion chain increased the number of shops it planned to close from 60 to 85. British Airways passengers on a flight from Orlando, Florida, scheduled to reach London eight hours later, spent 77 hours on the journey, including an opportunity to sleep on the floor at JFK airport in New York.

A plan was leaked of how the government might present a deal on Brexit to Parliament and to the public. Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, pointedly reminded Britain that ‘what the UK government has signed up to is a legally operative backstop that will apply unless and until we have a new agreement to supersede it’. He was responding to a visit to Dublin by Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, who suggested a backstop arrangement might be dropped after three months. Some British MEPs urged their colleagues in the European Parliament to lobby their governments for an extension of the Brexit deadline under Article 50.

Six men were arrested under the Public Order Act 1986 after a video was posted on social media of a cardboard model of Grenfell Tower being set alight on Guy Fawkes Day at South Norwood, London. On the same night, nearby at Tulse Hill, the fifth person to be murdered in London in six days, and the 117th this year, was stabbed to death. He was 16. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said about the murders: ‘To really make significant progress can take up to 10 years, a generation.’

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