Portrait of the week | 28 August 2014

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Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that Britons who went to Syria or Iraq to fight could be stripped of their citizenship, if they had dual nationality or were naturalised. Her words came during a search for the identity of the British man in a video of the beheading of the American journalist James Foley. David Cameron had returned to London from his holiday in Cornwall to confer with security officials, but decided against recalling Parliament. In revenge the Daily Mail carried photographs of him in a wetsuit, which gave him a phocine look. Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, suggested Britain should deal with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘That would poison what we are trying to achieve.’ Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said that ‘the law needs a swift and minor change so that there is a “rebuttable presumption” (which shifts the burden of proof on to the defendant) that all those visiting war areas without notifying the authorities have done so for a terrorist purpose’.