Portrait of the week | 2 February 2017

Trump news

Theresa May, the Prime Minister, let it be known that she was ‘very happy’ about having extended an invitation from the Queen to Donald Trump to make a state visit to Britain. An online petition calling for its cancellation had attracted more than 1.7 million signatures and a rival petition supporting it also gained enough signatures to warrant a Commons debate, scheduled for 20 February. Mrs May had left Washington in a brief interlude of happy achievement after being the first head of government to meet President Trump formally at the White House. The day before, in Philadelphia, she made a well-regarded speech on foreign policy to Republican congressmen, in which she said: ‘The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over.’ At a press conference with Mr Trump she announced that he was 100 per cent behind Nato and he said that, although he thought torture worked, he would defer to James Mattis, his defence secretary, who opposed it.