Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
From our UK edition
Corbynterpretation [n]: The inevitable process of debate, after Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed, over what he actually meant. Does the Labour leader believe the killing of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy, or not believe this? Would he like Britain to negotiate with Daesh or would he be opposed to that happening? Would he, or would
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Apparently, according to a variety of relatively reliable sources that include the man himself, the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, is in the habit of accepting money from a paparazzi agency in exchange for advising them how they might best snap pap pictures of the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk. Is this not
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One of the strangest and, in a weird way, best things to have happened to me in the past year was the emergence of a firm conviction among a quite large collection of internet weirdos that I spent my youth fighting for an elite unit of the Israeli army. It started after a boozy pre-Christmas
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The Prince of Wales is right, and I appreciate that this isn’t something people say very often. Now and again, certainly, Prince Charles does turn out to be right about things, such as the need for interfaith dialogue or the horrors of some modern architecture, but the manner in which he tends to be right
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What a useless shower the Labour party is right now. What a snivelling dance of fools. And I don’t just mean the new lot, under Jeremy Corbyn, although his ongoing decision to surround himself with a team of people who seem to have each been tasked, individually, with emphasising a different bad thing about him
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Hollywood got there first, of course. Back in 1983, before most of us even learned — then forgot again — what a modem was, Matthew Broderick starred in the seminal and brilliant WarGames. He played a computer hacker; a teenager who goes hunting for games on the global computer network that isn’t quite called the
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It’s early days, I know, but the Outers have convinced me. Britain will not collapse into chaos and penury if we leave the European Union. The Inners, meanwhile, have convinced me, too: there is no great, looming danger if we stay. Thus I have a question. What are we going to spend the next 18
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I’m enchanted by the news that Playboy magazine is to stop publishing pictures of naked women, because it can’t compete with the internet. ‘You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free,’ said the CEO, Scott Flanders. ‘And so it’s just passé at this juncture.’ By that logic, though, shouldn’t they also ditch the famous articles?
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One of my favourite things about Jeremy Corbyn, beyond the beard (I do like beards) and the way he was photographed in the Times the other day unabashedly wearing sandals with socks (spunky; no quarter given) is his embrace of dissent as a virtue. Which is a virtue born of necessity, obviously, on account of
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The new leader walks across a bridge, in the dark, while the journalist asks him questions. He’s not shouting, this journalist; not like Michael Crick would be, all smug of face while shrieking ‘Isn’t it true you’re a terrible dickhead?’ None of that. Even so, the leader says not a word. He stares ahead, face
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‘Gefilte fish,’ emailed Hillary Clinton to a pair of aides in March 2010, ‘where are we on this?’ That was it. Two words in the subject line, five more in the body. Nobody really knows what she was on about. Maybe it was code, maybe it was a reference to a new Israeli import duty
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I’m not aware of knowing many bisexual people. Or indeed, off the top of my head, any bisexual people. Which is odd, really, because back in my student days you couldn’t move for them. Being bisexual was quite the thing. Or, at least, claiming to be was. The girls really dug it. This was back
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People keep asking me if I think Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic. I don’t. Or at least I think it’s vanishingly unlikely. Why would he be? For all his political unorthodoxy in various directions, his antipathy towards bigotry seems wholly genuine. Indeed, it seems the whole point. I don’t see how it could have such a
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What, if anything, should a moral, liberal-minded person think about the hacking of the infidelity website Ashley Madison? And by ‘liberal-minded’, please note, I do not mean ‘Liberal Democrat-minded’, for such a person would perhaps merely think ‘Can I still join?’ and ‘I wonder if my wife is already a member, though?’ and ‘But will
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Heathrow. The whole British story is there. Reading up around that debacle last week, I came across the eye-watering — and I think true — claim that, over the course of the second world war, Britain built 444 airfields. Four hundred and forty four. Although not all in the United Kingdom, probably. Some will have
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All hail Taylor Swift. How she must give baby boomers the fear. Not just baby boomers. Also those who came next, the Generation Xers, who seemed to define themselves culturally mainly via goatees, apathy and heroin. And my own rather listless, half-generation thereafter, with our bigger beards and binge-drinking. Taylor Swift makes us all look
From our UK edition
All hail Taylor Swift. How she must give baby boomers the fear. Not just baby boomers. Also those who came next, the Generation Xers, who seemed to define themselves culturally mainly via goatees, apathy and heroin. And my own rather listless, half-generation thereafter, with our bigger beards and binge-drinking. Taylor Swift makes us all look
From our UK edition
Call me petulant, but I’m not sure Britain is getting enough credit for our fine, fine work in Libya. The Islamic State, so recently present only in the semi-mythical lands of Syria and Iraq — places you see on the news, but don’t really have to believe in — has now set up residence a
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I suppose, if you could look deep into the mind of somebody who was passionately keen that Britain should leave the European Union then, in among things like old episodes of Dad’s Army and unassailable convictions that Cornwall produces some perfectly good vintages, and so on, you might also spot a vision of the future.
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Keep an eye on the government’s ban on legal highs. The Conservative manifesto pledged to outlaw all the horrible chemicals kids smoke and snort for fun these days, on account of them being easier to get hold of than the straightforward, honest illegal narcotics we had when I were a lad. Certainly they’re worth banning,
