Portrait of the week | 13 November 2014

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The government, expecting a backbench rebellion over the European Arrest Warrant, did not present it for a separate vote in the Commons, which enraged backbenchers all the more. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, tabled a procedural motion, forcing David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to hurry from the Lord Mayor’s banquet in white tie to vote amid angry scenes. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, came back from Brussels claiming that Britain would now only have to pay half of a £1.7 billion bill that the European Union had presented; but critics said that he was merely counting a future rebate that Britain was owed in any case. A recording emerged of a telephone conversation in 1983 between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan after the United States had invaded Grenada, which he begins by saying: ‘If I were there, Margaret, I’d throw my hat in the door before I came in.’