Portrait of the week: Doctors on strike, Labour on the attack and Tupperware in trouble

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President Joe Biden of the United States visited Northern Ireland, shook hands with party leaders, talked with Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (though not about a trade agreement), and went on to the Republic of Ireland, for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael resigned as auditors to the Scottish National party. Its decision coincided with a police search of the SNP’s headquarters in Edinburgh following the arrest and release without charge of Peter Murrell, the party’s former chief executive and the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, who was the SNP leader and first minister. Tony Danker was sacked as director-general of the Confederation of British Industry after ‘complaints of workplace misconduct’ against him. The main railway link between London and Oxford was expected to be closed until at least June because brickwork had crumbled at the Nuneham viaduct.

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Junior doctors in England went on strike for four days; Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, said that a 35 per cent pay rise demanded by the BMA was unrealistic. In a week 1,056 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats; of the 45,755 who arrived last year, 215 have been deported. A million smokers will be given a free vaping starter kit by the government to encourage them to give up tobacco; at the same time, it launched ‘bold new measures to combat rising levels of youth vaping’. More than 1,000 people descended on Margam, Port Talbot, for a rave on the night before Easter.

Labour posted advertisements online carrying a photograph of the Prime Minister next to a headline: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.’ It added: ‘Under the Tories 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children aged under 16 served no prison time.’