Portrait of the week | 9 January 2014

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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made it clear in a speech that he intended to cut £25 billion after the next election, with about half of the savings coming from cuts in welfare payments. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister, said that the means proposed were ‘unrealistic and unfair’ and showed that the Conservatives wanted to ‘remorselessly pare back the state for ideological reasons’. Nick Clegg told the Commons that official estimates suggest that more than 1,500 Syrians had entered Britain last year through the asylum system. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said that Mr Clegg had ‘a very important ceremonial function as David Cameron’s lapdog-cum-prophylactic protection device’.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that for the next parliament he would preserve the ‘triple lock’ that ensures state pensions go up by whichever is higher — inflation, wages or 2.5 per cent. It was quite right for Britain to pay child allowance to children in Poland belonging to parents in Britain, according to the Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, better known in Britain by the diminutive of his Christian name, Radek. ‘If Britain gets our taxpayers, shouldn’t it also pay their benefits?’ he said, developing his argument on Twitter. A man from South Shields and a woman from Newcastle pleaded guilty to sending menacing tweets to Caroline Criado-Perez, who campaigned for the image of Jane Austen to appear on banknotes.

Hundreds of flood warnings and alerts were issued as high seas broke over coastal areas and inland rivers burst their banks. All buildings along the promenade at Aberystwyth were evacuated. The sea breached Chesil Bank in Dorset. The Pom Pom rock stack was toppled at Portland, and a natural rock arch at Porthcothan Bay, Cornwall, was destroyed.