Portrait of the week: Brexit approaches, Extinction Rebellion protests and Donald Trump tweets

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After a telephone conversation between Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, a Downing Street spokesman said she had made clear that a withdrawal agreement with the EU was ‘overwhelmingly unlikely’; Mrs Merkel had insisted on Northern Ireland staying in the Customs Union, which the Democratic Unionist party called ‘beyond crazy’. Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, tweeted that Mr Johnson was playing a ‘stupid blame game’.There was great excitement over a message sent to James Forsyth of The Spectator, generally thought to have come from Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser. ‘We’ll either leave with no deal on 31 October or there will be an election and then we will leave with no deal,’ it said. The government would make it clear to the EU that ‘parliament is asking for a delay but official government policy remains that delay is an atrocious idea’. The Court of Session in Scotland ruled that there was no need for ‘coercive orders’ against the Prime Minister to comply with the Benn Act. The government had assured the court that Johnson recognised ‘he cannot act so as to prevent the letter requesting the specified extension in the act from being sent’. In an appeal to the Inner House of the Court of Session, the court was asked to use its nobile officium powers to meet the demands of the Benn Act if the Prime Minister failed to. Parliament was prorogued on the 90th birthday of the former Speaker Lady Boothroyd. The State Opening of parliament was set for 14 October. Ginger Baker, the former drummer of Cream, died aged 80.