Portrait of the week | 2 October 2010

The Spectator’s portrait of the week

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Ed Miliband, aged 40, was elected leader of the Labour party by 50.65 per cent of the vote, to 49.35 per cent for his brother David, aged 45. Ed Miliband had gained 15.522 per cent from MPs, 15.198 from party members — both lower figures than his brother, but 19.934 from unions. His speech to the Labour party conference used the words ‘new generation’ 15 times but invoked without apparent irony ‘the optimism of Harold Wilson and the white heat of technology’. David Miliband repeatedly called his brother ‘special’, but, during the passage in the speech disowning the Iraq war, he said to Harriet Harman next to him: ‘You voted for it. Why are you clapping?’

The International Monetary Fund said the British economy was ‘on the mend’ and described the coalition government’s plans to cut spending as ‘essential’. A leaked letter to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, from Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, said that he refused to back any substantial reduction to the Armed Forces. A leaked letter dated 26 August, by Francis Maude, a Cabinet Office minister, suggested that 180 quangos would be abolished, 124 merged, 338 retained; and 100 more were yet to be decided upon. Among those to go would be the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Churches Conservation Trust. Jimi Heselden, 62, the owner of the company that makes the Segway motorised scooter, died after crashing one off a cliff at home at Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.

A survey of 450,000 people by the Office for National Statistics found that 1 per cent said they were homosexual; half of 1 per cent that they were bisexual. The names and addresses of 5,300 people thought by a law firm, ACS:Law, to be infringing copyright by sharing pornographic films were leaked without its knowledge on to the internet.