Portrait of the week | 5 January 2017

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Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, resigned; he had been expected to play an important part in talks on Brexit. In a lengthy email to staff he said: ‘Free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities.’ He referred to ‘ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking’ and noted that we do not know the ‘negotiating objectives for the UK’s relationship with the EU’. Southern railways advised hundreds of thousands of commuters not to try to travel during a three-day strike by train drivers, due to begin on Monday. China began a direct freight rail service to Barking in London. Len McCluskey, the head of the Unite union, said that if in 2019 opinion polls were ‘still awful’, Jeremy Corbyn would consider his position as leader of the Labour party, with the help of John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, because: ‘These two are not egomaniacs, they are not desperate to cling on to power for power’s sake.’