Portrait of the week | 1 November 2003

Twenty-five Conservative MPs wrote to the chairman of the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of confidence in their leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith. The Labour party expelled Mr George Galloway, the MP for Glasgow Kelvin, on the grounds that remarks he made about Iraq ‘fighting for all the Arabs’ were in some way ‘grossly detrimental’ to the party. Mr Paul Burrell, once the butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, wrote a book, serialised for a week by the Daily Mirror, in which he gave a list of her nine close male friends, and reproduced letters to and from members of the royal family. Princes William and Harry issued a statement suggesting he was guilty of ‘cold and overt betrayal’ that was ‘deeply painful’ to them and ‘would mortify our mother if she were alive today’. Mr Burrell then said that ‘one telephone call’ from them would have stopped the book.