Portrait of the week: Scottish independence, striking lawyers and the end of Roe vs Wade

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Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said that military spending had to increase. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, reacted to the loss of two by-elections by saying ‘I’ve got to listen to what people are saying’, but did not resign. Oliver Dowden said ‘Somebody must take responsibility’, and resigned as a co-chairman of the Conservative party. Later Mr Johnson joked to reporters in Kigali, Rwanda, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting: ‘I’m thinking actively about the third term.’ The Liberal Democrats won Tiverton and Honiton with a swing of 29.9 per cent from the Conservatives; the Conservative majority of 24,239 from the 2019 general election was the largest ever overturned in a by-election. On the same day, Labour regained Wakefield with a majority of 4,925 and a swing of 12.7 per cent from the Tories. As soon as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act came into effect, police seized the sound equipment of the Stop Brexit Man, Steve Bray, familiar for his protests outside parliament.

Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, announced that she would hold another Scottish independence referendum on 19 October 2023, and ask the Supreme Court to rule it lawful. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, to allow the government to override some of its provisions, had its second reading. The percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus rose to one in 40 in England and one in 20 in Scotland (from one in 50 and one in 30 a week earlier). Five small boats with 231 migrants crossed the Channel on 24 June, bringing the total for the week to 837. The population of England and Wales went up to 59,597,300 by 2021, 6.3 per cent higher than in 2011, bringing the population of the United Kingdom to 66,966,400.