Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
It didn’t occur to Cameron that White Van Man might be trying to pat him on the back Ah, the chaos there must have been on Planet Cameron every time that Dylan Jones was due for another chat. The editor of GQ writing a book about their man. Which anecdotes to tell? Which to leave
So it was 2018 and the government was in trouble. Real trouble. In newspapers and magazines, on Dame Emily Maitlis’s Newsnight and Davina McCall’s Today programme, one question was being asked. Would anybody ever vote Conservative again? At this stage, by-election disasters were not unexpected. The loss of Crewe and Nantwich had been on the
As ever, the great disappointment of Jerusalem is the lack of swivel-eyed loons wandering around believing themselves to be Jesus. Or Solomon or David or Mohammed. Or Elvis, even. You come to Jerusalem, you want to see Jerusalem Syndrome. Isn’t that part of the deal? It’s like Amsterdam without the drugs, or London without the
If a policy is in crisis, hand it to the Post Office — or the Girl Guides Well I never. You think the government has taken its eye off the ball. You think they’ve got nothing to do except rear up in the Daily Mail to tell us how lucky we all are, or pen
Gordon Brown’s moral compass is more like a dodgy satnav I often miss the glaring messages in fiction, because I am a prosaic and feeble-minded moron. Take Lyra and her altheiometer, in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy. I read it ages ago, and it only clicked the other day. It’s basically a science-powered moral compass,
Every Sunday night for the past couple of months, I have been going back in time. I have been in the early 1960s. Sharp suits, womanly curves, and hair that went one way or went the other, and damn well left a line if it changed its mind. I’ve been watching the drama Mad Men
If Scotland is to be independent, then why not London? And good luck to what’s left Here is a fun game for you. In only four words, try to sum up why anybody north of the border might fancy independence. Have a think. Something to rival the neat ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ quip of the
Gordon can barely speak English either, so why don’t we swap him for Sarkozy? Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, but he’s a feisty little tyke, isn’t he? Apparently, he put himself through an hour-long grilling on French TV last week. We’ve got our issues with the strange angry man in Downing Street, but
Political wisdom coming from Robert Mugabe is hard to swallow. Nonetheless, I think the leathery old butcher might be on to something. ‘Gordon Brown,’ he said last week, ‘is a tiny dot on this world.’ From some people, that might be mere insult. Yet, when foul Bob describes Gordon Brown as a dot on the
Nick Clegg’s sex confession shows why politicians should never try to look normal It was the 14 pints, I always thought, that ultimately did it for William Hague. That was the beginning of the end. There must have been teenagers out there in the 1970s who did, indeed, drink 14 pints a day. It’s just
It is probably blasphemy, or sacrilege, or at least very rude, but whenever I see the Dalai Lama, I think of him as speaking in the voice of the late Mike Reid, who played Frank Butcher on EastEnders. It must be the tinted specs. ‘Look, me old China,’ he croaks, pinching at the bridge of
Do you reckon they told all the royals? Seriously? All of them? Even the flaky minor ones, like Fergie? Or has she been gossiping with the Countess of Wessex and the bafflingly female Princess Michael of Kent, these past three months, wondering where Harry was, and whether this time he’d done something really bad? ‘Has
‘Sleaze’ is such a nasty word. How much nicer to call it ‘anti-parliamentary activity’ Sometimes, the answer is staring you right in the face. As the Speaker begins to wonder how he can tighten up rules on parliamentary finances without admitting that the day of the Honourable Member is past, the Guardian reports that the
Last week, in my digital dealings with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, I experienced something truly fascinating. Yes, I know. Subjective. Dangerous sentence. Bear with me. It was an epi- phany. The right time of year for it, I am told. In a few weeks’ time I have to hire a car. A few
The assumption, of course, is that Gordon Brown isn’t having much fun. That is what lurks behind the question, every time. On Monday’s Today programme, when Ed Stourton asked him if he was enjoying being Prime Minister, we all knew the presenter was not being entirely honest. He didn’t really mean ‘Are you enjoying it?’
It’s best to be upfront about this. Pretty soon, I’m going to use words like ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’. I’m going to use the word ‘peer’ and I’m not going to mean people like Lord Levy. I mention this, just so you know. Just so you don’t get halfway through and think, ‘the sneaky bastard. This
It is a weird business when stories combine, even if they only do so in the mind of the commentator. On our screens, Tony Blair is about to fret about Jesus, making him look like a loony again. In Oxford, David Irving and Nick Griffin are cast, preposterously, as defenders of free speech. And in
If he was a plumber, though, what manner of plumber would David Cameron be? The Tory leader, summoned via the Yellow Pages to fix a problem with your boiler. You would let him in, I think. Nice face, easy manner. ‘There’s a problem with your boiler,’ he would say. Indeed, you would agree. So fix
St Petersburg The first two things that grab you about Russia are the women’s clothes and the health and safety laws. Or, at least, that is what grabbed me. Wander the streets of St Petersburg, and you don’t see much of either. Wander the museums, even, and you don’t see much of either, either. In
This is a column about the reform of the House of Lords. I have a hunch it might not look like one, probably until pretty much the end, but that is what it is. Try to remember this if, at times, it appears to be about something else. ‘They should just clone ministers,’ says the