Portrait of the week | 27 August 2011

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, stood outside 10 Downing Street and commented on events in Libya. ‘This has not been our revolution,’ he said, ‘but we can be proud that we have played our part.’ He had broken off his holiday in Cornwall for a meeting of the National Security Council. He had only just resumed his holiday after having previously flown home from Tuscany for the riots in England. Of the 1,400 people to have appeared in court in connection with the riots, 157 were convicted, 327 bailed and almost 800 remanded in custody. Birmingham police released footage of some of the 11 shots fired at them during the riots. ‘The big cause’ of the riots, according to Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, in an article in the Observer, was ‘the group of alienated, disaffected youth who are outside the social mainstream and who live in a culture at odds with any canons of proper behaviour.’