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Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, spoke in the Commons of an ‘invasion on our southern coast’ by migrants in small boats. ‘Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress,’ she said. ‘The whole country knows that is not true.’ She was reacting to a crisis at a migrant processing centre in Manston, Kent, built for 1,600 but housing 4,000. David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, called it ‘really dangerous’. He said an Afghan family had lived in a marquee there for 32 days. It was made more crowded after migrants were moved following an attack with three petrol bombs on a Border Force migrant centre in Dover by a man in a car who then killed himself. On Saturday alone, 990 migrants crossed the Channel. Of the 39,898 who had followed the route this year, about 10,000 were adult men from Albania, the Home Office said. The National Union of Students dismissed its president, Shaima Dallali, after claims of anti-Semitism were investigated.

New elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly were announced by the Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris, after the parties at Stormont could not agree to restore power-sharing government. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that recruits to the police were badly vetted, letting in some with criminal records or family links to organised crime. Matt Hancock had the Tory whip removed after he decided to go to Australia to take part in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! The number of people testing positive for Covid was steady at one in 30 in England on 17 October and in Scotland at one in 35, according to the Office for National Statistics. All kept birds were ordered to be moved indoors under regulations designed to counter the worst outbreak of avian influenza ever seen.

More than 150,000 customers with smart meters had their accounts switched last year to more expensive prepayment, according to the regulator Ofgem. The supplier Octopus Energy is to buy its smaller competitor Bulb (with 1.5 million customers), which collapsed last year. The Speaker said an investigation had found no evidence of bullying during a Commons vote on fracking in October. RMT strikers stopped trains for a day in Scotland and announced strikes in England on 5, 7 and 9 November, with a strike on the London Underground on 10 November.

Abroad

Russia attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure with missiles, leading to power cuts and queues for water. Russia said that Ukraine had conducted a seaborne drone attack on its Black Sea fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, and blamed British specialists for being involved. Russia temporarily suspended an agreement to allow the export of Ukrainian grain. More than 9.3 million tons of grain and other foodstuffs had been shipped from Ukrainian ports since July. Russia said it had completed an evacuation of civilians from Kherson, a southern city it had occupied and was now the object of Ukrainian advances. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had dismantled medical facilities in Kherson, removing ‘equipment, ambulances, just everything’.

Technology companies showed a notable decline in value. Elon Musk went through with his  $44 billion takeover of Twitter, appointing himself chief executive and sole director. Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock ’n’ roll singer and piano-player, died aged 87. America sent back to Pakistan the oldest prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Saifullah Paracha, 75, arrested in 2003 but never tried. Paul Pelosi, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, had his skull broken with a hammer wielded by an intruder at his house.

In Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the far-left former president, beat the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the presidential elections. Israel’s elections favoured Benjamin Netanyahu. About 1,000 people in Tehran were charged in connection with anti-government protests. At least 154 people died when Halloween crowds were crushed in an alley in Seoul in South Korea. In India, at least 135 people died when a pedestrian bridge collapsed into the river Macchu in Morbi, Gujarat. In China, video showed a dozen workers breaking out of Apple’s largest iPhone assembly factory, at Zhengzhou, when staff were forced into a lockdown after a Covid outbreak. Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement on their borders in the Mediterranean, allowing gas exploration. Misuzulu ka Zwelithini was crowned king of the Zulus in succession to King Goodwill.      CSH

The post Portrait of the week: A migrant crisis in Manston, elections for Northern Ireland and Matt Hancock heads for the jungle appeared first on The Spectator.