Portrait of the week: back to the backstop, PC Harper’s death and the wrong kind of lightning

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Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, saying: ‘The backstop cannot form part of an agreed withdrawal agreement. That is a fact that we must both acknowledge.’ Mr Tusk said that those who opposed the Irish backstop ‘in fact support re-establishing a border. Even if they do not admit it’. Mr Johnson, after an hour of failing to agree with Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach, on the telephone, prepared for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France. An atmosphere of plotting hung over prospects of an election on a date close to 31 October, when the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said that his party would do ‘everything we can’ to prevent Brexit without a withdrawal agreement. He envisaged the Conservative government being defeated in a vote of no confidence and himself heading an administration.