Portrait of the week

Home The government pondered whether to accept pay-review bodies’ recommendations on rises in public sector salaries. ‘Delivering sound money is our number one focus,’ Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in his Mansion House speech. ‘That means taking responsible decisions on public finances, including public sector pay.’ Regular pay in the March to May

Home The Financial Conduct Authority questioned banks about savings rates lagging behind the rising cost of mortgages. Andrew Griffith, the City Minister, was also asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look into cases of bank customers who reported their accounts being closed because of their opinions on such things as LGBTQ+ policies. Petrol

Home Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, was ritually buried by the House of Commons voting by 354 to seven to approve the Privileges Committee report that found he had lied to parliament about observing coronavirus regulations. He would have been suspended for 90 days had he not left parliament; as it was, his pass

Home Boris Johnson (having had sight of the report by the Commons Privileges Committee on his conduct concerning Covid regulations) called it a ‘kangaroo court’ and left parliament immediately; to be disqualified as an MP he was appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough

Home The government was acquiring two barges to house 1,000 migrants in addition to one at Portland for 500. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that small-boat crossings of the Channel were down 20 per cent, and ‘our plan is starting to work’. A group of asylum-seekers, transferred to a Comfort Inn in Pimlico and

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, supported a visit to the Oxford Union by Professor Kathleen Stock, who believes that there are such things as women: ‘University should be an environment where debate is supported, not stifled,’ he said. He said in a separate announcement that he would ban companies from giving out free samples of

Home 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

Home The number of people not working due to long-term sickness rose to a record 2.5 million, many with mental sickness or back pain, according to the Office for National Statistics. Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said that income tax could be cut by 2p in the pound if Britons who had left

Home The day after the coronation, 20,000 attended a concert in Windsor Castle, including the King and Queen. ‘As my grandmother said when she was crowned, coronations are a declaration of our hopes for the future,’ said the Prince of Wales in a speech to the crowd. ‘And I know she’s up there, fondly keeping

Home Scotland sent the Stone of Scone to Westminster for the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey. The ceremony included the recognition of the King, his oath to maintain the ‘Protestant Reformed Religion established by law’, his anointing (with oil free from civet oil or ambergris from whales), investiture with orb

Home ‘China is carrying out the biggest military build-up in peacetime history,’ warned James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, in his Mansion House speech, but said ‘no significant global problem’ could be ‘solved without China’. The government borrowed £139.2 billion last year, £13 billion less than expected, bringing public debt to 99.6 per cent of GDP.

Home Nurses in England belonging to the Royal College of Nursing union rejected the government’s pay offer and hurried to go on strike over the first May bank holiday and thereafter on chosen dates till Christmas. Members of Unison voted to accept the NHS pay offer. More than 196,000 hospital appointments were cancelled because of

Home President Joe Biden of the United States visited Northern Ireland, shook hands with party leaders, talked with Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (though not about a trade agreement), and went on to the Republic of Ireland, for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael

Home Britain joined Australia, Japan and nine other countries in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the CPTPP. Kemi Badenoch, Business and Trade Secretary, said that projections of its contribution to the growth of the UK economy, of 0.08 per cent over a decade, didn’t tell the whole story. Teachers voted for

Home Humza Yousaf was elected leader of the Scottish National party, beating Kate Forbes by 52 per cent to 48 per cent after Ash Regan was eliminated; MSPs then elected him First Minister. Of 19 transgender prisoners in custody in Scotland, 12 began their transition ‘after their date of admission’, according to data obtained under

Home Boris Johnson appeared before the Privileges Committee, publishing in advance a 52-page defence of his actions while Prime Minister regarding Covid regulations. He said that ‘the House of Commons was misled by my statements’ but they were ‘not intentionally or recklessly’ misled. Before the hearing he was reselected as the Conservative candidate for the

Home Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, introduced the Illegal Migration Bill, intended to stop people crossing the Channel on small boats. It would ban those who entered Britain illegally from claiming asylum or re-entering in future, and would place a duty on the Home Secretary to deport them ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’. Writing to

Home The Northern Ireland Protocol was modified by something called the Windsor Framework, agreed between Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. He said that Stormont would be able to apply a brake to new EU goods rules; the brake would allow the UK government to