Portrait of the week | 25 April 2019

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Theresa May, the Prime Minister, returned to parliament after the Easter recess to find backbenchers plotting to get rid of her. The 1922 Committee agonised over whether to change its rules in order to hold another vote of no confidence in her. More than 70 local Conservative association chiefs called an extraordinary general meeting of the National Conservative Convention to consider the proposition: ‘We no longer feel that Mrs May is the right person to continue as prime minister.’ A poll of Conservative councillors by Survation, for the Mail on Sunday, found that 40 per cent were planning to vote for the Brexit party in next month’s EU elections. One of the candidates for new party Change UK, which wants Britain to stay in the EU, is Rachel Johnson, the sister of MP Boris Johnson, a prominent supporter of Brexit. The government decided to let the Chinese company Huawei build part of Britain’s 5G data network.