Gus Carter

Gus Carter

Gus Carter is The Spectator’s deputy features editor.

Why I’ve fallen out of love with my Brompton

In the darkest depths of lockdown, trapped in a subterranean flat in South London, I struck upon an idea: I would buy a bike. I’d had one at university and remembered enjoying the meditative effects of gliding through parks and down streets. It would mean something to do other than fighting over who got to

The colourful history of the green man

All hail our pagan King! The time has come to lay down your crosses and take up the bough of oak. Britain is to return to the old ways – at least if you are to believe the conspiracy theorists, who were distressed to see, on the bottom of the coronation invitation sent out last

Sexual politics is damaging young men

Masculinity has been in crisis for as long as anyone can remember. The usual explanation is that post-industrial society doesn’t much care for brawn. We’re all office dwellers now, mutely churning out spreadsheets for other spreadsheet producers. The theory makes sense as far as it goes. But something else has changed much more recently: a

The madness of the lockdown trials

I think we can now admit that Covid sent us all a little loopy. Matt Hancock certainly seems it, handing over more than 100,000 highly sensitive texts to a hostile journalist. Today’s revelations show Hancock telling colleagues ‘we are going to have to get heavy with the police’. While everyone gets excited about the lockdown

Does Britain need bison?

The Blean is just north of Canterbury. It’s ancient woodland – mentioned by a couple of Chaucer’s pilgrims – now managed by a conglomerate of well-meaning wildlife trusts and charities. Drive through a small industrial estate and past a garage and you’ll reach the visitors’ centre. Beyond that is bison country. Four wild European bison

The paradox of Alan Watts

There’s an advert for cruise holidays on television at the moment. It’s all dolphins and dining halls and laughing women flashing their teeth. Above the tinkly swelling music is a familiar voice. It’s the kind of clear English accent that might remind you of a compelling history teacher or vicar. ‘I wonder, I wonder, what

Kemi Badenoch: ‘I’m Brexit fatigued’

Liz Truss wants growth at 2.5 per cent. That figure will allow the UK to pay off the huge cost of her energy subsidy – predicted at around £40 billion – while also putting the public finances on a more sustainable footing. The problem is that growth is elusive. Between the financial crash and the

In defence of Warhammer

Warhammer is a tabletop battle game. Players build and paint little models of aliens, tanks and killer robots and then set their armies against one another on a miniature battlefield. It’s a hobby that lights up the obsessive bits of the male brain: collecting, DIY, military uniforms, hierarchy and complex calculation – all in the

Boris 2029!

OK, it might sound a little fanciful, but hear me out. I think there could just be a way for Boris to scrape back in to power. Some Johnson loyalists in Westminster think that whoever replaces him will implode, that there could be another leadership race before the 2024 election and that Boris could run and

The rise of the neo-Luddites

Yesterday, a pair of Just Stop Oil protesters glued themselves to a John Constable painting in the National Gallery, covering The Hay Wain with a printout of an alternative vision of England. The cart crossing the River Stour in Suffolk is perhaps Constable’s most famous painting. But instead of a bucolic, biscuit tin Albion, Just

In defence of ‘Stop Brexit Man’ Steve Bray

It is a great and ancient right of all freeborn Englishmen, stretching back far beyond the reaches of our recorded history. From Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, it has been woven into each of the defining constitutional moments of the British story, a principle bled and died for on the battlefields of Europe. It

Are the Abraham Accords working?

Two years ago, UAE citizens were barred from entering Israel. No longer. The inaugural Emirates flight touched down in Tel Aviv last week, a Boeing 777 carrying 335 passengers. For much of the 20th century, the only thing that the Middle East could agree on was the destruction of the Jewish state. But attitudes are

Zelensky’s peculiar Glastonbury appearance

Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t quite make it onto the Glastonbury line-up posters. Perhaps Michael Eavis, the owner of ever-so Worthy Farm, had last-minute difficulties with the Ukrainian President’s booking agent. No matter. An eight-foot-high image of President Zelensky’s face graced the Pyramid Stage on Friday, right before ageing indie rockers The Libertines belted out their two-decades-old

Is Britain heading into a wage-price spiral?

Are wages about to spiral out of control? Boris Johnson certainly thinks there’s a risk. Last week he warned that the economy was ‘steering into the wind’ and that the UK could be entering a 1970s-style malaise. With inflation shooting up to 9 per cent – and expected to go higher still – rail workers

What’s the alternative to the Rwanda plan?

Last night, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to fly 130 asylum seekers to Rwanda returned to Spain without a single passenger on board. Throughout the day, the number of people planned for that flight had been whittled down by multiple legal challenges. Then, minutes before take-off, the European Court of Human Rights made an

Why is Apple getting into lending?

It’s the highest form of flattery, but is Apple really trying to copy Klarna? That’s the allegation made by the Swedish firm, which has led the way with so-called ‘buy now, pay later’ credit. Last week Apple announced that it too would be offering deferred payments via Apple Pay, as well as the option to

Dinner parties are dying

I don’t get invited to that many dinner parties. I hope it’s not a problem with me, although I can’t rule it out. Instead, I have a feeling that the era of nibbles, laying the table and stressing about the starters is over. When I asked my friends how many invites they get, there was

The dreary truth about partygate

I’m starting to get a bit annoyed about partygate. Well no, that’s a lie. I’m angry in theory. On paper I’m fuming. In real life? Meh. This whole saga has trundled on for so long now I’ve just stopped caring. I’m probably annoyed about something else. Train timetables or maybe the fact that broccoli is

Sadiq Khan shows why London doesn’t need a mayor

Sadiq Khan doesn’t seem to know what his job is. The Mayor of London announced on Thursday morning that he was setting up a review to examine whether cannabis should be legalised. Just a few hours later, the Home Secretary Priti Patel reminded him that ‘the mayor has no powers to legalise drugs’. Duh. Labour

Don’t make war in Ukraine about Putin’s mental health

There was a time when supposedly serious commentators on world affairs used to at least feign historical knowledge. They might quote Bismarck or Castlereagh. Now, international relations punditry, like almost everything else, has succumbed to the language of pop psychology. Vladimir Putin is ‘gaslighting’ the Russian people, we are told, motivated by his ‘hypermasculinity’. His