Portrait of the Week – 11 September 2004

Mr Andrew Smith resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This added interest to a Cabinet reshuffle by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and provoked reheated speculation about his rivalry with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Queen gave a donation for the people of Beslan, through the British Red Cross. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said of the murders by terrorists at Beslan: ‘There are some things which happen amongst human kind which are almost inexplicable according to any basic moral norms — Nazism was and this is.’ Mr Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the editor of the al-Arabiya satellite network, said on BBC radio that the majority of terrorists in the world today are Muslim; in response Mr Straw said: ‘At the moment, it is principally those of the Islamic faith that claim in a totally perverted way to justify their actions by reference to the faith.’