Portrait of the week: A bombshell by-election, Scotland bans Mancunians and China staffs its space station

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The government contemplated its promised Planning Bill, blamed for contributing to the astonishing victory for the Liberal Democrat Sarah Green in the Chesham and Amersham by-election. She had gained 21,517 votes to transform the former Conservative majority of 16,223 into one of 8,028. Labour did worse than in any by-election before, securing only 622 votes, 1.6 per cent of the total. John Bercow, the former Speaker, joined the Labour party. Clayton Dubilier & Rice, an American private equity company, offered to buy Morrisons, the supermarket chain, for £5.5 billion. White working-class pupils in England have been failed by decades of neglect, the Education Select Committee found in a report. A Unesco committee recommended Liverpool should lose its World Heritage status because new developments meant ‘irreversible loss’.