Portrait of the week | 25 October 2003

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was taken to hospital after complaining of pain in his chest; he is thought to have been suffering from supraventricular tachycardia, an over-rapid heartbeat, or, some said, atrial fibrillation, which was adjusted with electrical treatment. After a day’s rest he flew to Northern Ireland and confirmed that elections to the Assembly there, suspended for a year, would take place on 26 November. But a breakthrough in peace negotiations collapsed when the IRA and Sinn Fein refused to let General John de Chastelain, head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, or the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, give details of arms the IRA had put out of use; this prevented the Unionists from accepting the gesture. Earlier Mr Blair had ruled out a referendum on the European Union constitution; ‘There will not be a referendum,’ he said. ‘The reason for this is that the constitution does not fundamentally change the relationship between the UK and the EU.’ Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife Sarah named their new baby, born weighing 8lb 1oz, John. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, expected ‘a huge crisis’ when New Hampshire goes ahead with plans to consecrate a practising homosexual as bishop on 2 November, despite a joint statement by 38 Anglican primates meeting at Lambeth which said that ‘the future of the Communion itself will be put in jeopardy’ by such an act. Mr Paul Burrell, the former butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, is to reproduce a letter from her in a book he has coming out; he said she had sent it to him in 1996, a year before her fatal car crash, and part of it reads: ‘–— is planning “an accident’’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry.’