Gus Carter

Gus Carter

Gus Carter is The Spectator’s deputy features editor.

Are you man enough to eat raw offal?

The dominant wolf gets the liver, at least according to the American podcaster Joe Rogan. In one episode, a bodybuilder called ‘CarnivoreMD’ (real name Paul Saladino) tells him: ‘If you eat liver, you get to be an alpha male… or alpha female.’ Offal has taken a markedly macho turn in recent years. No longer resigned

The cult of the daffodil

Spring is the season of supermarket daffodils. At a pound a bunch, you can deck out your home like Elton John and still have change from a fiver. From January until April, daffodils burst from village greens and quiet churchyards. The wild daffodil found across Britain is the Narcissus pseudonarcissus, known also as the ‘Lent

How much trouble is Boris Johnson in?

Just how bad is it for Boris Johnson? In some ways it’s difficult to tell, this is a prime minister who seems almost unable to exist without a crisis.  But last night’s new Covid rules — mixed up with the unending stories about Downing Street parties in the depths of lockdown — seem to have ushered in

It’s Harry, not Meghan, who’s the real problem

Who or what drove Harry and Meghan to leave the royal bosom for the land of slebs on the other side of the Atlantic? That’s one of the central questions of a new two-part documentary, The Princes and the Press, that aired on the BBC last night. The obvious suspect is the dreaded British media

Terror threat level raised to ‘severe’

The Home Secretary Priti Patel has just announced that the terror threat level has been raised to ‘severe’ meaning that another attack is now considered ‘highly likely’. The move comes after yesterday’s explosion in Liverpool was declared to be a ‘terrorist incident’. Speaking after a Cobra meeting, Patel confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre had raised

Gus Carter

Liverpool terror attack: what we know so far

Britain has been subjected to another terror attack, just as the nation fell silent for yesterday’s annual Remembrance Sunday memorial. An explosion occurred in a taxi outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning, killing the passenger and leaving the driver in hospital. Police have now confirmed that the incident is being treated as a terror

Are banking apps luring young people into debt?

Last month, my bicycle got a flat tyre. ‘Both of those tyres are gonna need replacing and you’ve knackered your sprockets,’ huffed the bike man. The bill came to £230. It’s the kind of irritating expense that means I run out of beer money a week before payday. I’ve always assumed I’m a reasonably normal

MPs vote to overhaul their own watchdog

MPs have voted in favour of overhauling their own watchdog after its decision to ban a senior Tory backbencher from the House of Commons. The committee on standards found that former minister Owen Paterson had breached lobbying rules and recommended he be suspended from the House for 30 days. However, the government backed an amendment to

How Raab plans to fix the law

How do you solve a problem like Britain’s creaking criminal justice system? To the newly appointed Secretary of State, the answer involves ripping up the Human Rights Act, rolling out more electronic tags for convicts and pumping cash into preventative projects. At a Spectator event this morning, held at Tory Party Conference, Dominic Raab explained

Richard Tice is a rebel without a cause

The vaccines make you magnetic, didn’t you know? And Covid is a form of biological warfare, released by the Chinese to weaken the West. New 5G technology is melting people’s brains and the Bank of England is owned by the Rothschilds. I am listening to three delegates from Reform UK’s first party conference, held in

My strange night in a sensory deprivation tank

Hidden below St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall, down the road from a now defunct gay sauna, is Floatworks, a wellness centre that offers ‘floatation therapy’. Sensory deprivation tanks can be found in most British cities — in bohemian towns like Bristol and Brighton, but also in Birmingham and Belfast. The concept is simple enough: people

Travel quarantine scrapped for double-jabbed

International travel rules will be relaxed on 19 June as part of the wider scrapping of social distancing rules and masks. Transport secretary Grant Shapps told the House of Commons that those entering England from green and amber nations will not be expected to self-isolate — provided they are fully vaccinated. In practice, what this means is that

The humble heroes of London’s Watts Memorial

Folajimi Olubunmi-Adewole died last weekend saving a woman’s life. Hearing her cries as she fell into the Thames from London Bridge, the 20-year-old, known as Jimi, handed his phone to a friend, told him to call the police, and with another passer-by dived into the river. The other man and the woman were rescued. Jimi

The shoddy cynicism of Cameron’s lobbying

Call me naively cynical, but when reports of David Cameron’s lobbying larks emerged, I gave a little shrug. ‘Ex-politician uses contacts to make money’ sounds like a description of our political culture rather than a hard-hitting news headline. Perhaps it is a little grubbier when a former prime minister is caught lining his pockets —

Sturgeon ‘misled’ Holyrood

The Scottish First Minister misled Holyrood. That is the conclusion of the Scottish parliamentary committee investigating her government’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Alex Salmond.  Nicola Sturgeon gave an ‘inaccurate’ account of a meeting with her predecessor when she gave evidence to the committee earlier this month, according to the investigating body. MSPs voted five

MPs question Johnson’s plan for Global Britain

Boris Johnson still has a journalist’s ear for snappy phrases — levelling up, an oven-ready Brexit, Global Britain. The PM attempted to flesh out one of those headlines on Tuesday with his integrated review — so called because it ties together foreign and defence policy alongside trade and international aid.  The 100-page document — designed

Now we’re talking: mouth-watering meat boxes to order in

If you’re sick to death of Deliveroo, it’s time to take a look at the meat box. Forget vegan meats and plant-based pretenders. It’s dark and wet and we’re all stuck indoors — there’s no point making ourselves any more miserable. Steakhouses and brasseries have been moving their menus online and into cardboard boxes, with

The key moments from Sturgeon’s evidence

There have been inquiries, committees, multiple court cases and conflicting reports — the Salmond affair is as slippery as it is fishy. But the fundamental question is this: was there a conspiracy to take down Alex Salmond?  Having been acquitted of 13 counts of sexual assault last year, the former first minister has alleged that

Inside the Tory party’s China split

Back in 2005, Boris Johnson wrote that among geopolitical gloomsters, China was becoming the ‘fashionable new dread’. They were obsessed with the idea that this ‘incubator of strange diseases’ was angling to become ‘the next world superpower’ — ‘China will not dominate the globe’ he concluded. The China question is now the most fashionable new

China hawks suffer a setback

The House of Commons was due to vote on the so-called ‘genocide amendment’ to the Trade Bill later today. The proposal gives British courts the right to decide if a country is committing genocide and was on course to trigger a major Tory rebellion — with China hawks ready to take a stand. However, that plan has been