The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 June 2014

issue 28 June 2014

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, fought a last-ditch battle against the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Union. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, declared that to be ‘isolated’ could be the ‘right thing’. Attention was diverted by an opinion of Mr Cameron’s negotiating skills in Europe, given in a private conversation, secretly recorded along with several others leaked to the Polish press, by Radoslaw Sikorski, the foreign minister. Mr Sikorski, once, like Mr Cameron, a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, spoke of ‘a kind of incompetence in European affairs. Remember? He fucked up the fiscal pact. He fucked it up. Simple as that.’ The Queen, on a visit to Northern Ireland, was shown around the disused Crumlin Road jail in north Belfast, now a tourist attraction, by Peter Robinson, the first minister, and Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister and former IRA commander.

Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, later head of communications at 10 Downing Street, was found guilty by a jury at the Old Bailey of conspiring to intercept voicemails.

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