Portrait of the week | 21 August 2010

Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, got no further than Buckingham-shire on his summer holiday before Mr Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, cast doubts on replacing Trident. ‘It’s going to be difficult for someone who is going to receive less housing benefit,’ he said, if the government spent ‘huge, huge amounts of money in a hurry on replacing Trident in full’. Dr Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for Defence, had suggested that the numbers of civil servants and senior officers in the armed forces would be notably reduced. Mr Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, was said to have had a ‘blazing, shouting, grade-A row’ with Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, over the funding of his welfare reforms. The Treasury confirmed that universal benefits such as winter fuel payments and child benefit were being reconsidered in the October spending review. Mr Osborne said in a speech that it was wrong to claim ‘that in setting out our decisive plans to deal with the deficit we have taken a gamble with Britain’s economy’. Mr Alistair Darling, the former chancellor, blamed Labour’s election defeat on the party’s failure to talk openly about the size of the deficit. The annual rate of inflation according to the Consumer Price Index fell from 3.2 to 3.1 per cent; according to the Retail Prices Index, from 5 to 4.8 per cent. Lending to small companies under the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme fell to £186 million in the first quarter of 2010 from £254 million a year earlier. Mr Paul Jones, from Rochdale, Lancashire, brought back 200 bangers on an aeroplane from the United States, only being challenged when he reached Heathrow.

Most popular

Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

Mr Tony Blair, the former prime minister, said he would give the advance, reported to be £4 million, and the royalties for his forthcoming book, A Journey, to the Royal British Legion for a centre for wounded soldiers.