Portrait of the Week – 22 May 2004

‘The task of leadership when things are difficult is precisely not to cut and run,’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference during a visit to Turkey. ‘We have the will, we have the leadership to do it, we will get the job done,’ he said, with reference to Iraq, but also in response to speculation that he might stand down as Prime Minister. Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was observed to have spent 90 minutes in the carpark of the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar in Argyllshire with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who wants to be Prime Minister. ‘Tony Blair and I are working closely on both our spending round and the five-year departmental plans,’ Mr Brown said later in a speech. Mr Piers Morgan was sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror after the Ministry of Defence proved conclusively that the photographs the Mirror had published, purporting to show British soldiers mistreating Iraqis, were fakes.