Portrait of the week | 31 August 2017

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Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, announced a change in Labour’s policy by saying that he wanted Britain to stay in the single market and customs union during a transition period after Brexit, which could be ‘as short as possible but as long as necessary’. The French government denied that senior French diplomats had said they wanted to see Brexit talks make progress by proceeding to questions of trade. ‘We need you to take positions on all separation issues,’ said Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator. British sources denounced M. Barnier’s ‘inconsistent, ill- judged and ill-considered comments’. Then Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, joined in, saying that he had read the papers submitted by the British government and ‘none of those is satisfactory’. A Polish lorry driver was charged with eight counts of causing death by careless driving while over the prescribed alcohol limit after two lorries and a minibus crashed on the M1 near Newport Pagnell; another lorry driver will appear in court this month.