Portrait of the week

Home The government funnelled three dozen bills into the King’s Speech, highlighting one to make a specific offence of spiking a drink, which is already illegal. But backbenchers and Labour in Scotland failed in efforts to remove the cap of two children for the payment of child benefit. A new state-owned energy company would be

Home A general election shook the nation’s political snowglobe. Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, was able to stop stunts for the camera after making a bungee jump at Eastbourne. Before the election, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister for the time being, commented on Channel 4 footage of a Reform UK supporter talking of

Home The Conservative party withdrew its support from two parliamentary candidates, Craig Williams (who was parliamentary private secretary to the Prime Minister) and Laura Saunders, both of whom the Gambling Commission had been investigating after allegations that bets had been placed on the date of the election. Two Conservative party workers and six policemen were

Home The electorate mulled over the words of Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary: ‘You don’t want to have somebody receive a supermajority.’ A question that lodged in the election campaign was put by Beth Rigby of Sky News to Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, asking whether he had meant it when he said his

Home The Conservatives promised to reduce National Insurance from 8 per cent to 6 per cent (and abolish it for most of the self-employed by 2029) in their 76-page election manifesto. Despite other tax cuts already announced, the tax burden would continue to rise steadily. The Tories also promised to halve migration. In its manifesto,

Home Nigel Farage took over leadership of the Reform party from Richard Tice and is standing for parliament in Clacton. This came as news on Monday to Tice, and to Reform’s candidate for Clacton, Tony Mack. Outside the Wetherspoons pub where he launched his campaign, Farage had a McDonald’s banana milkshake thrown over him. Farage

Home Parliament was dissolved, leaving no MPs until the general election on 4 July. With hours to go, Diane Abbott had the Labour whip restored to her, and Lucy Allan MP was suspended from the Conservative party for endorsing the Reform UK candidate for Telford. Among bills that were lost was one prohibiting the sale of

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology’ for a ‘decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life’, as described in the report by Sir Brian Langstaff from the Infected Blood Inquiry, which found that successive governments and the NHS had let patients catch HIV

Home The parliamentary Labour party shook itself uneasily after Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, crossed the floor of the Commons and joined it, because she found the Conservatives too left wing. Monty Panesar, the former England cricketer, left George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain a week after being announced as a parliamentary candidate. Some

Home The local elections proved dreadful for the Conservatives but not quite perfect for Labour. The Conservatives lost 474 of the council wards in contention, ending up with 515; Labour gained an extra 186 to reach 1,158. Independents and others, some standing on the issue of Gaza, increased their councillors by 93 to 228, and

Home Humza Yousaf resigned as the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National party, posts he had held since the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon last year. He had precipitated confidence votes by terminating an arrangement with the seven Scottish Green MSPs. Royal Mail stopped imposing £5 penalties on letters with stamps deemed

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that within 12 weeks asylum-seekers could be flown to Rwanda. This followed the passing of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill. Five out of 110 people in a small inflatable boat died near the French coast. A BBC correspondent had watched French police trying to stop

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that British fighter jets had shot down ‘a number of drones’ fired at Israel from Iran. Additional RAF jets were deployed over Iraq and Syria, where Britain was already taking part in Operation Shader against the Islamic State group. Some people decided not to attend the annual Downing

Home The review by Dr Hilary Cass of gender-identity services for people under 18 called for an end to prescribing powerful hormone drugs; warned that children who change gender may regret it; and found that many had experienced trauma, neglect and abuse. More than 150,000 patients had to wait more than 24 hours in A&E

Home The Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into effect in Scotland, making it a crime to communicate or behave in a manner ‘that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive’, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. The

Home Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, told parliament that China was behind a cyber attack on the Electoral Commission in August 2021, getting access to 40 million voters’ details. Three MPs, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Stewart McDonald and Tim Loughton, said they had been hacked and harassed by China. The government sanctioned two individuals and

Home Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said that if Labour were elected it would aim to borrow only for investment. Annual inflation fell to 3.4 per cent in February, from 4 per cent in January. Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, said that only a ‘small minority of MPs’ were talking about getting rid of Rishi Sunak

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that Britain needed to build new gas-fired power stations to ensure energy security. GDP grew by 0.2 per cent in January. The number of people of working age classed as economically inactive rose to 9.25 million, compared with 8.55 million in February 2020, according to the Office for National

Home In the Budget, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke of ‘long-term growth’. He cut National Insurance by 2p in the pound, saving the average worker £450 a year but pensioners nothing. A new ‘British Isa’ would allow an extra £5,000 a year tax-free investment. Tax arrangements for non-doms would be changed. The