Portrait of the week

Home Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a far-reaching ‘fiscal event’ (ineligible to be called a Budget), said to have cut more tax than any measure since 1972. The markets’ immediate response was to sell pounds, and sterling fell to $1.07 (though the euro also continued in its own decline against the dollar

Home Queen Elizabeth was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, beside her husband and father, after a funeral at Westminster Abbey. In the ten days of mourning, six days were devoted to a lying-in-state at Westminster Hall, for which the public queued around the clock, often for more than five miles and ten hours.

Home The body of Queen Elizabeth lay in state at Westminster Hall, in a coffin draped in the royal standard on which were placed the orb and sceptre, before her funeral in Westminster Abbey on 19 September, declared a bank holiday. She had died at Balmoral on the afternoon of 8 September, two days after

Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being

Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted temptations to say what she would do about the national energy price crisis. But she was said to have in her pocket licences for new drilling in the North Sea. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor of

Home Inflation would reach 18.6 per cent by January and the energy price cap £5,816 in April, according to a forecast by Citi, the investment bank. An annual National Grid exercise simulating a gas supply emergency has been extended from two days to four in September. Workers at Felixstowe, Suffolk, Britain’s biggest container port, handling

Home The annual rate of inflation rose to 10.1 per cent, its highest since 1982. Average wages rose by 4.7 per cent between April and June, but inflation in that quarter left average workers 3 per cent less well-off than before. The supermarket Iceland was to offer customers interest-free loans of between £25 and £100,

Home Energy bills will be £4,266 for a typical household by January, according to the consultancy Cornwall Insight, which had put the sum at £3,616 only a week earlier. Ofgem had decided since then to shorten the period over which suppliers can recover their costs. Gordon Brown, prime minister 2007-10, declared that Boris Johnson, the

Home BP reported quarterly profits of £6.9 billion, its biggest for 14 years, after oil and gas prices rose steeply. Typical domestic energy bills were forecast by the consultancy Cornwall Insight to go above £3,600 a year in the coming winter. Under the family scheme for visas, 31,300 Ukrainians had arrived in the United Kingdom,

Home In a television debate between the two contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party (and hence the prime ministership), Rishi Sunak said it would be irresponsible to put the country in even more debt by cutting taxes and Liz Truss said that the tax rises he approved would put Britain into a recession.

Home In the contest for the leadership of the Conservative party, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi were the first of the eight contenders to be eliminated, followed by Suella Braverman, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch. After two televised debates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, the frontrunners, refused to take part in a third, which was

Home The Conservatives began the process of finding a new leader, which involves balloting MPs and then sending two names for party members to choose between. Eight candidates initially qualified for the process set out by the 1922 Committee, by gaining nominations from 20 MPs: Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak,

Home Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post of Chancellor and Steve Barclay, the PM’s chief of staff, Health Secretary.) The resignations came five days after Chris Pincher, aged 52, the MP for Tamworth, resigned as deputy chief whip the morning after he

Home Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said that military spending had to increase. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, reacted to the loss of two by-elections by saying ‘I’ve got to listen to what people are saying’, but did not resign. Oliver Dowden said ‘Somebody must take responsibility’, and resigned as a co-chairman of the Conservative

Home A rail strike on three alternate days, bringing the system to a standstill for a week, was organised by the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union. On the first day, the London Underground came out too. Tram drivers in south London arranged a strike of their own. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, instructed

Home Boris Johnson won a vote of confidence in him as prime minister among Conservative MPs by 211 votes to 148 (58.8 per cent in favour, compared with 63 per cent in favour of Theresa May in 2018). No more such votes are allowed for a year. Workmen had still been dismantling the staging in

Home The Jubilee for the Queen’s 70 years on the throne was marked by two days of public holiday, 16,000 street parties, a service at St Paul’s, Trooping the Colour, late pub opening, beacons, bells, and anxiety about the Queen’s health. After Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in parliament that he had

Home Sue Gray starched and ironed her report for publication after the Metropolitan Police wound up its own enquiries into breaches of coronavirus laws in and around Downing Street, with 126 fixed penalty notices being issued, only one to Boris Johnson. Meanwhile the nation contemplated photographs published by ITV News of the Prime Minister raising