Portrait of the week: Rioting in Cardiff, rising migration and falling inflation

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A crash in which a 15- and a 16-year-old boy riding on an electric bike were killed led to rioting, the burning of cars and attacks on police in the Ely estate in Cardiff; social media had said the deaths followed a police chase, which the police denied. But video evidence seemed to show a chase. During the riot, one of the boys’ mothers posted a Facebook message: ‘Please I beg you all to stop and let my son be moved to hospital so I can see him.’ A woman hit on 10 May by a police motorcycle escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh died. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, in a classic game of hunt-the-issue, asked his ethics adviser, Laurie Magnus, to look at the case of Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, reported to have asked a civil servant to see if she could take a speed-awareness course privately as a punishment for speeding; after being told that this was not a civil service task, she was said to have asked a special adviser to see if she could do something similar, and, when told she could not, she decided to accept penalty points. Net legal migration reached unprecedented levels. The government will bar dependants of foreign students who are not on research-based postgraduate courses.

The rate of inflation fell to 8.7 per cent from 10.1 per cent. Energy bills were expected to drop below the government price guarantee by the end of June. Together with ‘resilient demand’, this made the International Monetary Fund think that Britain would not after all go into recession. Public-sector borrowing rose in April to £25.6 billion, from £13.7 billion in April 2022. Sinn Fein won the largest number of seats in Northern Ireland council elections: 144 (39 more than in 2019).