Portrait of the week: Cummings goes, Corbyn returns and pigeon sells for £1.4m

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Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, left Downing Street after a week in which the public learnt that Lee Cain was the director of communications at No. 10, and that he had resigned after his appointment as chief of staff was withdrawn. The imbroglio directed focus on the performance of the Prime Minister and gave an opportunity for politicians to air their grievances. Mr Johnson then went into 14 days of quarantine, having been contacted by the national Test and Trace system after breakfasting with Covid-ridden Lee Anderson, MP for Ashfield. Mr Johnson’s own Covid test proved negative. He had intended to set out his ‘personal ambition’ for the country (such as making it carbon neutral by 2050). He also had to consider a report into allegations that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, bullied staff and to deal with the last-minute negotiations on a Brexit trade agreement.

A new vaccine against Covid-19 developed by the US company Moderna is nearly 95 per cent effective, the company’s early data showed. The UK hoped that by the spring it would have bought enough to vaccinate 2.5 million people. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 15 November, total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 51,766 including 2,878 in the past week, compared with 2,333 the week before. This year, excess deaths above a five-year average were 70,839. Scotland imposed its harshest restrictions, Tier Four, on 2.3 million people out of a population of 5.5 million. Conservative MPs responded with alarm to a suggestion from Dr Susan Hopkins, a medical adviser to NHS Test and Trace, to tighten the less severe restriction tiers for England after 2 December.