Portrait of the week: Boris’s shambolic CBI speech, more Covid protests and Kyle Rittenhouse is cleared

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Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, praised Peppa Pig in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry: ‘Who would’ve believed that a pig that looks like a hairdryer… has now been exported to 180 countries?’ Then he lost his place and said: ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.’ Nineteen Conservative MPs voted against the government on a clause excluding means-tested council support payments from a new £86,000 lifetime limit on social care costs; it would mean a lost inheritance for heirs of people with assets worth no more than the limit. The writer J.K. Rowling was hounded by militant trans campaigners. ‘I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them,’ she said.

Covid antibodies were present in 95.8 per cent of people over 80 in England, according to the Office for National Statistics; among 16- to 24-year-olds the percentage was 96.1. Scotland renewed a requirement to wear face masks and use vaccine passports to get into some venues. People in Northern Ireland were urged to work from home. In the seven days up to the beginning of this week, 1,031 people had died with coronavirus, bringing the total of deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 143,866. (In the previous week, deaths had been 1,092.) Numbers remaining in hospital fell from about 8,600 to about 8,000. A woman who telephoned a GP surgery in Belfast 286 times before her call was answered was then told to ring back the next day.

The government made the best it could of cancelling the HS2 rail eastern leg from the Midlands to Leeds, emphasising improvements to local routes. New homes, supermarkets and workplaces in England will be required by law to install electric vehicle charging points from next year.