Portrait of the week: Williamson resigns, nurses strike and Norwegian royal quits

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Sir Gavin Williamson resigned from the cabinet as minister without portfolio following publication of texts he had sent (annoyed at not being invited to the Queen’s funeral) to the chief whip Wendy Morton, full of swear words. ‘There is a price for everything.’ A former civil servant said that Sir Gavin had told him to slit his throat, which he denied. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, agreed with Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, £35 billion of tax cuts and £25 billion of tax rises, in time for the Office for Budget Responsibility to peruse the proposals before the Autumn Statement next Thursday. The Bank of England had raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent. The government came up with a scheme to import liquefied natural gas from America to get through the winter. Plans for a £250 million national flagship to promote Britain abroad, to succeed the royal yacht Britannia, were shelved. Downing Street said that talks were in their ‘final stages’ on an unspecified agreement with France over migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

Nurses voted on strike action. Members of the Univ ersity and College Union decided to go on strike this month. The BBC was to blame for ‘significant editorial failings’ in reporting an anti-Semitic attack on Jewish students in Oxford Street on 29 November 2021, Ofcom found. Police made arrests when members of Just Stop Oil brought the M25 to a standstill three mornings running; on the third day two lorries crashed and a policeman was injured. The number of people testing positive for Covid was steady in England and Scotland at about one in 35, according to the Office for National Statistics. Sir David Butler, the psephologist, died aged 98. Leslie Phillips, the actor who appeared for 17 years in the radio comedy The Navy Lark, died aged 98.

The Manchester Arena inquiry into the bombing of 22 May 2017 found that at least two more people might have survived had it not been for ‘very significant’ failings by the police, ‘very substantial problems’ with the ambulance service and a ‘risk averse’ approach from the fire service. The police judged the political motives of a man who killed himself after throwing fire bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, declaring it a terrorist incident.

Abroad

Unless western countries supplied more air defences to Ukraine, Russia was likely to use the same devastating bombing techniques it used in Syria, the Royal United Services Institute warned. Russia struck at electricity supplies with mass-produced Iranian Shahed-136 explosive-laden drones. At the ruined and Russian-occupied city of Mariupol, more than 1,500 new graves have been dug at a mass burial site, according to analysis of new satellite images carried out for the BBC. Syria and Russia were accused of killing nine civilians in strikes on camps in Idlib province on Sunday.

The Republicans made gains in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections while the Senate trembled between control by them or the ruling Democrats. Imran Khan, former prime minister of Pakistan, was shot in the leg in Wazirabad during a protest calling for elections. Some 110 world leaders, including the British prime minister, gathered at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt to talk about climate change at Cop27. Some, led by Pakistan, wanted money from richer countries for the ‘loss and damage’ to less developed countries from climate change. Mr Sunak said that Britain was fulfilling its commitment of £11.6 billion in climate finance. Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, made a speech on his own account.

Italy, where 85,000 migrants have landed via small boats this year, refused entry for a week to 89 people picked up by a charity rescue ship, until at last they disembarked at Reggio Calabria. Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, aged 78, the retired Archbishop of Bordeaux, admitted to abusing a 14-year-old girl 35 years ago and said he would withdraw from his duties. Elon Musk, who completed his takeover of Twitter last month, laid off half its workforce and said that users could acquire a blue tick of authenticity on the platform for $7.99 month. Apple warned of product delays after a Covid lockdown closed the world’s largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China. Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, whose boyfriend says he is a shaman, relinquished her royal duties to focus on her alternative medicine business. CSH