Portrait of the Week – 9 November 2002

Mr Iain Duncan Smith noted that ‘a small group of my parliamentary colleagues have decided consciously to undermine my leadership’; he concluded: ‘My message is simple and stark, unite or die.’ His statement came the day after eight Tory MPs defied a three-line whip and voted in favour of a government amendment to the Adoption Bill to allow pairs of unmarried people, of which-ever sex, to adopt children jointly; the MPs were Mr Michael Portillo, Mr Kenneth Clarke, Mr Andrew Lansley, Mr Francis Maude, Mr David Curry, Miss Julie Kirkbride, Mr Andrew Mackay and Mr John Bercow (who had resigned from the shadow Cabinet the previous day on the issue). The Bill, including the amendment, passed the Commons and the Lords to become law. Mr Paul Burrell, a butler to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, was found not guilty of theft after his trial collapsed when the Queen told the Prince of Wales she had remembered something, viz: that Mr Burrell had mentioned to her that he was looking after some letters among the Princess’s property. No mention, however, was made of other items such as a ceramic kingfisher, the gift of President and Mrs Reagan. Police arrested a group of Albanians and Romanians in a carpark in Poplar, east London, and they were charged with theft and conspiracy to rob; but the police had been led to make the arrests by the News of the World, which said it had uncovered a plot to kidnap Mrs Victoria Beckham and her two little children Brooklyn and Romeo. Hospital consultants rejected a new contract presented to them by the government by a proportion of two to one, except in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where it was accepted; it had been recommended by the British Medical Association. The government proposed, in a discussion paper called Living Places, to restrict the sale of chewing-gum in areas where its jettisoning was a nuisance.