Portrait of the week: Williamson resigns, nurses strike and Norwegian royal quits

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Sir Gavin Williamson resigned from the cabinet as minister without portfolio following publication of texts he had sent (annoyed at not being invited to the Queen’s funeral) to the chief whip Wendy Morton, full of swear words. ‘There is a price for everything.’ A former civil servant said that Sir Gavin had told him to slit his throat, which he denied. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, agreed with Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, £35 billion of tax cuts and £25 billion of tax rises, in time for the Office for Budget Responsibility to peruse the proposals before the Autumn Statement next Thursday. The Bank of England had raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent. The government came up with a scheme to import liquefied natural gas from America to get through the winter. Plans for a £250 million national flagship to promote Britain abroad, to succeed the royal yacht Britannia, were shelved.