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May 9, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:38
20220509_piers-morgan-uncensored-end-of-the-monarchy
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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UK Politics in a Sorry State 00:04:12
Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan.
Uncensored, a busy show tonight, but we start with some big breaking news.
Unfortunately, it's more concerns about the health of Her Majesty the Queen.
It's just been announced she'll miss the state opening of the British Parliament tomorrow and the reading of the Queen's speech that formally sets out the government's plans for the year ahead.
The palace says she can't attend due to episodic mobility problems.
Incredibly, the last time she missed this ceremony was in 1963.
She hasn't missed it in my lifetime, and she's only ever missed it twice in her entire 70-year reign, both times due to pregnancy.
We know the Queen struggled increasingly with her health, including a bout of COVID in February, and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say I sincerely wish her the very speediest of recoveries, particularly with the Platinum Jubilee celebrations coming up fast.
We'll bring you the letters on this breaking news throughout the show, but now, my brain dump.
Well, it's apparently Victory Day in Russia, and Vladimir Putin's been flexing his supposed military muscle in a North Korea-style parade that would make even Kim Jong-un look bashful.
But the only victory that Putin's marking this year is becoming the world's biggest loser.
He lost the first major battle in Ukraine and the capital Kyiv.
He lost as many as 25,000 troops and 38 colonels on the battlefield.
He's lost the global safe havens for the blood-soaked oil billions of him and his oligarch cronies.
He's also turned Russia into the most hated country on earth.
So for him to stand there celebrating victory is a disingenuous farce.
But the most savage irony of Putin's victory day is it in fact marks Russia's triumph over Nazi Germany.
The Soviet Union lost more men to fighting fascism in World War II than any other country.
27 million Soviets died for the cause.
They fought so their grandchildren could live in peace.
But instead, Putin's chosen war.
And who are the Nazis today?
Putin's genocidal rampage has left swathes of Ukraine, a once flourishing European sovereign democracy, looking more like London in the Blitz.
Smoke choking the skylines, families huddling for refuge in metro stations, homes blasted into charred remains.
And like Hitler, Putin's a delusional dictator who thinks it's fine to invade neighbouring countries, murder journalists, rule by spreading lies and propaganda.
He even has his own six swastika.
He's not saving Ukrainians from the new Nazis, as he so outrageously claims.
Putin is the 21st century Hitler, and his bloodthirsty forces are the real new Nazis.
He's right to say though that Ukraine needs denazifying.
It does, from him.
Well, for all their spin and bluster, local elections have left both of Britain's big party leaders with a big black eye and a bloody nose and frankly they deserve it.
Leadership in UK politics is in a very sorry state.
Boris Johnson's Tories lost 487 seats and 12 councils, but despite that disastrous shellacking, party insiders say Boris is buoyant and remains an asset.
Really?
That's the kind of thing that Putin's few remaining colonels are probably saying about their beleaguered boss.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Sakir Starmer, who should have been celebrating winning 108 new seats for the Labour Party, is instead being tied up in an increasingly tight knot of his own making over breaking lockdown rules after months of taking the moral high ground against Boris Johnson for his illicit Downing Street parties.
Today, Starmer dramatically upped the ante by announcing that he will resign if police find him over the apparently illicit beer and curry soiree that he shared with his campaign staff.
It's an amazingly high stakes gamble and of course would put Johnson under huge pressure to do the same if he does have to quit.
But I suspect hypocrisy and lying might finish them both off, whatever happens.
Boris broke the rules he set for the rest of us and then repeatedly lied about it.
Starmer said that Boris must resign when police investigated.
Now the same thing's happened to him, but he hasn't resigned.
He's just committed to resigning if he gets fined.
And as the two of them squabble over this kind of nonsense and fight for their political lives, the United Kingdom is now facing the very real prospect of being slowly but surely broken up.
In a shock development in Northern Ireland, Nationalist Party Sinn Féin, which wants a united Ireland, won the biggest number of seats for the first time.
Protecting the Endangered Black Cab 00:03:06
And I fear that may be the catalyst for the slow breakdown of the entire United Kingdom, coming at the time when the Scottish National Party in Scotland is also growing in strength.
The seeds in Ireland were sown when Britain signed a Brexit deal that built a trade barrier down the Irish Sea and marked off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, having repeatedly assured us that wouldn't happen would be totally unacceptable.
It was a fudge then and a betrayal, and it was never going to stick.
And nationalists have now moved to exploit that vacuum.
If the UK is going to stay together, and I hope it does, it needs strong leaders in Westminster who earn the public's trust.
Instead, we can't trust the current crop to run a whelk stool.
If you asked me to name one of the most enduring loves of my life other than Arsenal Football Club, it would be the humble London Black Cab.
A purring, sleek, glossy emblem of Britain.
Always there when you need it.
Safe, secure, symbolic, sexy.
As iconic to the capital city as red buses, bowler hats and pot.
But it's in a different league to those cheap, inferior imposters like Uber.
Well, of course, if the busybodies get their way and they're trying now, this might be the end of the road for the black cabs as we know it.
Now, I happen to think the black cabs are not just far superior to the app rubbers, they're in a different class.
There's no flapping around on the street trying to find your driver for half an hour before he cancels on you.
No secret, spiteful little rating system.
Who wants to be rated by a cab driver?
No following the sat-nab down blind alleys.
No, black cabs show up.
You tell the cabby where you want to go and he or she will take you there on the fastest route possible.
And we don't need any fancy map app to do it.
The reason they're able to do it so efficiently is because of the knowledge.
Now for the uninitiated, the knowledge is the staggeringly difficult examination that all London black cab drivers have to pass to qualify.
It dates back 170 years, it takes about four years to complete, and it requires personal knowledge of 25,000 roads and 20,000 landmarks.
Black cab drivers don't need satellites because they've got the knowledge.
And in exchange for that knowledge, they get special privileges like being able to use bus lanes and pick customers up at the roadside.
They're not just national treasures, they're global treasures.
Without any doubt, the finest and best qualified cab drivers on the entire planet.
But now the busybodies I mentioned earlier and an influential think tank say the knowledge and all of those perks should be scrapped.
They say the revolution in consumer choice means that app-based services should get all the same entitlements to bring taxis into the modern age without any need for the knowledge.
This is nonsense.
Shameful nonsense.
It must be thwarted.
The knowledge is what makes our cab drivers the best in the world.
Black cab drivers should be deemed an official, endangered species and protected accordingly.
The campaign to save the black cab starts here.
What do black cab drivers actually do?
They drive cabs, right?
Just as a baker bakes and a funeral director directs funerals.
Saving the Iconic London Taxi 00:15:06
So what about an actor?
I mean, they act, right?
I mean, it's nearly that simple.
Only in these woke-ravaged days, it's obviously not allowed to be that simple.
The outgoing boss of the Royal Shakespeare Company says only disabled people should be able to play Richard III because the king was disabled.
This isn't the first time we've heard this virtue signalling clap trap.
Brian Cranston was flamed for playing a wheelchair-bound guy in the upside.
Eddie Redmain got hammered for playing disabled astro genius Stephen Hawking and then pressured into a grovelling apology when he played a trans character in the Danish girl.
Scaria Hansen was slammed for starring in a movie based on a Japanese manga comic because she's not Japanese, which is not a cartoon either.
And the same people enraged by these supposedly inauthentic portrayals have no problem seeing black actors playing leading roles in period dramas, even if that is historically wrong.
And they shouldn't have a problem with it because they're actors who are acting.
That's the whole point of acting.
If the wokies get their way, the next person to play Hitler in a movie will have to be a genocidal Nazi.
And that means only Vladimir Putin might qualify.
And last time I checked, as his performance as a global peacemaker shows, his thespian skills leave a lot to be desired.
But I'm sure there's one thing we can all agree on, and it's this.
This is not acting.
So I'm here to rate you on your recent visit to Aotearoa, New Zealand, in 2018.
Okay.
You'll be moderately happy to know that you scored three stars.
Three stars?
Out of what?
100.
100?
No, out of five.
Okay, very funny.
Yeah, that's privacy shy Prince Harry on TV again making his acting debut in a ridiculous New Zealand advert for his eco-travel non-profit.
Harry clearly is not just a terrible actor, he's also a terrible hypocrite, a guy who constantly preaches about the environment but uses private jets like I use black cabs.
This is like Adele lecturing us about how not to be a diva.
Well the local election result in Northern Ireland sent shockwaves through British politics.
Voters handed Republican Party Sinn Féin a historic victory and now for the first time Northern Ireland has a nationalist first minister, a first minister who wants a united Ireland and that means a disunited UK.
It's an impossible problem for the UK government and the nationalists have seized on him.
Well I'm joined now by Douglas Murray who's written extensively on Irish nationalism.
So Douglas I was going to, and I will get to this, talk to you about the campaign to cancel Winston Churchill, which you've written brilliantly about in your superb new book.
We will get to that.
But a lot of breaking news in the last 24 hours I want to sort of bring together with you if I may, because it's all sort of constitutional.
We have what's happened in Northern Ireland with Sinn Féin becoming the dominant party.
We also have the Queen cancelling the state opening of parliament indicating that she is in a very poor way in terms of her health.
That raises spectre of what happens after the Queen?
What happens to the monarchy?
What happens to the United Kingdom with what's happening in Ireland and indeed in Scotland?
What's your take on all this?
And if you're going to look forward to say 10 years time, will there be a monarchy?
Will there be a United Kingdom?
There'll be a monarchy.
I would worry about the United Kingdom in these circumstances.
As you say, Piers, I mean, the gains Sinn Féin made in the local elections, historic gains, should be troubling to anyone who is, like me, a unionist.
Sinn Féin, of course, is an Irish nationalist party and is as well, in my own view, an extremist party.
And that isn't mere rhetoric.
You know, Mary Lou MacDonald, the head of Sinn Féin, has an unbelievable track record.
I mean, just that you mentioned Nazis earlier.
You know, there's only one statue to a Nazi in Europe, and it sits in a park in Dublin.
Sean Russell, an IRA member who died on a German Nazi U-boat in 1940.
There's a statue to him in Dublin, and Sinn Féin always pay their respects there.
Mary Lou MacDonald a couple of years ago was taken there to pay her respects.
She was, as it were, bloodied by the more militant wings of Sinn Féin.
That's totally normal in Sinn Féin history.
It's not just that they were an extremist party in the past, it's that they are in the present.
It's not just that they're Irish nationalists, that they are actually extreme Irish nationalists, violent Irish nationalists, always have been and seem to continue to be.
I think it's an incredibly worrying development.
As you say, alongside the ongoing success electorally of the Scots nationalists in the north, it's certainly possible that we could see the breakup of our country.
It's something where I think everyone who recognizes that the United Kingdom's been an enormous force for good in the world should really be very worried about.
We should be very troubled by that.
You know, breaking up into these sort of mini national states within the United Kingdom, I think, would be a disaster.
And you're right, one other thing quickly.
Of course, Her Majesty, the Queen has presided over this period of peace and union.
And I worry enormously about what comes after us.
Everyone does.
Yeah, well, we'll be debating it later specifically about the future of the monarchy, but it is troubling times.
For people who believe in the United Kingdom and Great Britain under monarchy, this is a worrying time.
And there's no getting away from that.
I want to turn to your book, Donis.
It's a terrific book, The War on the West.
Specifically, I want to talk about the way we're treating historic heroes, not just Winston Churchill, who was voted the greatest Briton of all, the Queen would run him a close second, I think, but also American presidents, the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and so on.
What you're seeing is the slow chipping away of legacies of towering figures who I believe the totality of their achievement should outweigh the negatives, which go with any human being.
Of course.
Talks, first of all, about Churchill, because he's coming under increasing attack from the Woke Brigade.
You know, they portray him as a white supremacist, a racist, somebody who did evil things and shouldn't be considered great in any shape or form.
What's your response to that?
Yeah, they basically find him guilty of some Victorian attitudes, which, as you know, if you're born in Victorian England, you might well have some Victorian attitudes.
Surprise, surprise.
If you're born in the 19th century, it turns out you don't have all of 2022's views.
But you're right.
I mean, the anti-Westernists, which is what I think they are, not just woke, woke as a sort of manifestation of it, but the people who just hate the West, hate the Western democracies, they keep trying to take down our hero figures.
And when I first started noticing, I thought this is very strange.
You know, normally, cultural revolutionaries start at the margins and move inwards.
But they haven't.
And I think that this is very telling.
They have come for Winston Churchill and are defaming his reputation.
And this isn't just the fringes.
This isn't just some protesters graffitiing his statues.
You know, it's things like the BBC, who now never run a story about Churchill without running a link to a page of the 10 worst crimes of Winston Churchill.
We have his own, the college named after him at Cambridge, running panels about his alleged racism and much more.
And when I noticed this, I thought this is strange.
And then I looked at America, and it's the same thing.
In America, the same thing of finding people guilty of being born in the past and having some attitudes of the past has been used to justify the removals of statues of the founders.
The lowest moment for me, Donald.
I thought the worst moment for me was when you had the Black Lives Matter protests in London, and they had to board up the statues in Parliament Square of Churchill, Mandela, and Gandhi.
Three of the great figures really of the last hundred years had to be protected from a mob that may want to deface them and scrawl horrible graffiti on them.
I know that it was such a depressing moment.
Nobody passes this test, Piers.
That's the crucial thing.
Nobody passes the test.
As I say in The War on the West, even if you take some of the criticisms of Churchill, and like all people, he's a bit flawed.
Everybody is.
Even if you take those criticisms, you know, does standing alone against Adolf Hitler and being more important than any other individual for seeing Nazism beaten back, does that count for nothing?
You know, so what if he liked to drink on the side?
So what if he said some things that we don't agree with today?
That's your count in the plus side.
Same thing with Abraham Lincoln.
Does freeing the slaves count for nothing?
Apparently not now.
Abraham Lincoln in America has the same treatment.
Even Gandhi, who you just mentioned, gets the same treatment.
Nobody is good enough for these people who believe that history starts with them and only they in 2022 know what's right and wrong.
These people, of course, are doing something very, very wicked very quickly.
They know that if they take out Churchill, they will take out Britishness at a very fundamental level.
If they take out Jefferson and Lincoln, they've taken out America.
It's no less than an assault at the very fundamentals of our identity and our right to feel pride in our own history.
I completely agree.
And I think if you can't acknowledge that human people are flawed and complicated and have good and bad sides to them, whoever they are, nobody is completely saintly.
You know, I've seen people now trying to rubbish Mother Teresa.
It's like, really?
Really?
You think the totality of Mother Teresa's life is that she's an evil woman?
And I'm sure the Queen will get it too when she passes on.
It's like, just give it a rest.
We're allowed to have a lot of people.
The Lady Astor statue.
The Lady Aster statue only went up a couple of years ago.
And they already calls for it to come down.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Douglas, it's a great book, The War on the West.
Great to have you on.
Please come back.
Great to see you.
Love to have you as a guest.
Appreciate it.
Well, on censor, next, she doesn't get more on census than my next guest.
Scary spice from the Spice Girls.
Mel B, she'll be here live.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan on Census.
Spice Girl Mel B has been a global star for decades, but had perhaps her biggest honour yet last week when Prince William presented her with an MBA at Buckingham Palace.
She dedicated her honour to all women affected by domestic violence.
And I'm delighted to say Mel B joins me now.
Mel, how are you?
Hi, good to see you.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
How are you?
You're looking very tanned.
Is that makeup or is that your tam?
It's actually just a bit of makeup, but it's fine.
I'll take the compliment.
I'll take the win.
Well, talking of win, congratulations on your MBE.
What did that mean to you to get an MBE and be at Buckingham Palace?
I mean, it's really surreal, to be honest.
And I don't take it personally to do with me.
It's for all the women that have been through similar things to what I've been through.
So, you know, it's just more about raising awareness, but to get an MBE for it is just kind of crazy.
I'm like, why didn't Spice Girls get an MBE?
But I mean, to do it for the women and to do it for what I'm doing it for is just like quite overwhelming.
It still hasn't really sunk in because it was only like a few days ago.
And are you a monarchist?
I mean, we've got this late-breaking news tonight that the Queen's going to miss the state opening of Parliament.
Obviously, a lot of concern about her health generally right now as we head towards the Platinum Jubilee, an amazing achievement.
Are you a big believer in the royal family, the monarchy?
I mean, I'm a massive royalist, like me, my mom, my sister, my dad, all about the royals.
But you know what?
I mean, the Queen's been through so much.
You know, she's lost the love of her life.
She's 96 years old.
So whatever she wants to do, she can do.
I mean, she's the Queen.
So it's up to her.
And I kind of bow down to that.
You got your gong from Prince William.
And a little Dickie Bird tells me that in your earlier life as a rampant young spice girl, before you matured into a more sensible one, that you guys used to get helicopters down to Highgrove and secretly have peanut butter sandwich parties with William and Harry.
Is that true?
Well, let me just explain.
I mean, we got invited to High Grove many times and it wasn't our helicopter, it was their helicopter.
They'd hire it for us and pick us up and then we'd arrive on the lawn.
It was quite fancy and well-to-do.
And there'd all be these posh sandwiches and we'd be like, we don't really want cucumber and cheese sandwiches.
Let's go in the kitchen and make some bagels and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
And they loved it.
I mean, they're only young, but it was really nice to see William.
Again, you know, I'm all grown up and I'm getting my MBE.
And he literally had such a long conversation with me.
I got a bit embarrassed because, you know, the whole protocol is you wait for William to kind of talk to you before you speak and then he ends the conversation.
But this conversation was going on and on and on.
And I was looking behind me.
I was like, there's so many people waiting to get their MBE together.
What was he saying to you?
Was he asking you if you still eat peanut butter sandwiches?
No.
I mean, I'd like half of the conversation I'll never tell anybody because that's between me and him.
But it was really kind of taken aback how, you know, I'm a spice girl, but yeah, I'm getting the MBE for raising awareness for domestic violence and women that are in vulnerable situations.
He was just asking me about my book, about, you know, how long I was in the abusive relationship for.
He really went quite deep.
And then he said to me, he goes, so who are you here with?
And obviously my mum's white with blonde hair.
And I went, I'm with my mum, she's over there.
And he was like, oh, hello.
And my mum went bright red.
And the conversation still carried on.
He was so sweet and so polite and respectful.
I was one that was like, okay, I think we need to go now.
And yeah, I'd have to do my curtsy.
And I whisked off.
And I was just, I was just kind of in shock, but so happy and so delightful.
Because when you see Mel, when you see marriages.
Right, well, you know, having had these fun times at Highgrove with him and Harry when they were like inseparable brothers, how do you feel about the way that their relationship has fractured so badly at the moment?
Well, I mean, that's just what the press are saying.
Nobody knows really what happens behind closed doors.
No, it is true.
I mean, those brothers are.
It is unquestionably true.
They are possible.
I have three daughters.
I mean, they're brothers at the end of the day.
I have three daughters.
And, you know, I'm closer to one child for this, closer to my middle child for that.
So you just don't really know what kind of dynamic happens behind closed doors.
When you saw the whole kind of Firoy go down with in a Meg's it when him and Harry and Megan left the country and we, we had the first biracial member of the royal family and everyone was so full of hope about it all and so positive around the wedding and then suddenly, within 18 months it was all over and she gone.
You come from a biracial, uh background yourself.
Insulating Britain from Political Chaos 00:16:10
What did you make?
Did you feel sad that it ended so quickly and so acrimoniously?
Uh well, I don't really take what happens in the media as the gospel truth.
You know, I was just happy that um, the monarchy was so accepting of somebody of black and white descendant, you know, because it's so white and very British, which I love the whiles, like I said.
So it was kind of a shame that it got presented in the way that it did.
But, like I keep on saying, nobody knows what happened, you know, and if one of my kids wants to go and live in Australia or New Zealand or Israel, you know I will always be supportive, you know.
Finally well, you've done some great.
No, no, you've just it's uncensored.
You can say what the hell you like on this show.
I know I can, and I'm talking to you, remember.
The issue of domestic violence that you've written so powerfully about and spoken so powerfully about and now been awarded for your work in this area.
Right now, there's this grisly trial going on about probably one of the worst toxic marriages I think I've ever witnessed between Johnny Depp and Amber Herb.
We've had two trials now.
We're in the middle of the second one.
Does this kind of thing actually is it damaging to the cause that you're trying to advance and promote?
I mean, this is such like a very sensitive topic for me because it's so personal.
But to me, this trial is so, this case is so not entertainment for me.
And what I worry about is it's going to damage, you know, future men or women coming forward and making their own claims or the justice system having doubt or not believing.
Because at the end of the day, you know, we can't get away from the fact that two women get killed every week in this country by their former partner or their current partner, as opposed to 12 men a year.
So I have to kind of remind myself that I'm glad that people are aware of the situation, which is an epidemic of domestic violence and coercive control and any form of abuse.
But I also think that to look at this case as entertainment is damaging.
And that's why I have not even looked at it at all.
By the way, I've been in Colorado with Ruby Wax filming for three weeks, which is another story, which has been amazing.
So to land back in England on Sunday, because I now live in Leeds with my mum, surrounded by nature, it was really kind of, it really made me have like a lump in my throat to think that this is televised.
Because I know when I went through all my stuff in the US, I actually had to like file court papers to have a closed courtroom because otherwise TMZ were going to be allowed in and all these different outlets and cameras and filming and all that stuff.
And luckily the judge granted me for it to be a closed court.
So I just wanted to do it.
I do think it's, I mean, I think it's incredibly sad.
It's very squalid and it's very sad.
And it's like this awful toxic relationship exploding in public.
And everyone's judging.
Everyone's judging.
Well, everyone's bound to judge, aren't they?
I think that's human nature.
Yeah, but it's human nature to judge.
I don't think you can blame the public or even the media.
These two are at each other's throats and they're doing it in public.
Everyone's going to have a view.
But I agree with you.
The moment that crosses into entertainment, then I think it devalues the issue that you've campaigned so courageously for.
Mel, I've got to leave it.
More entertainment with your tan.
What's it going to do with my tan?
Are you living in LA or are you living here now because you've got your new job?
If you just want to spit it out that you're quite fancy the way I'm looking at the moment, just say it.
It's fine.
Just get it off your chair.
Don't.
Come on.
You've been mentioning my tan three times now.
I'm doing that.
No, you look good.
You've got good lighting.
You've got good lighting.
A good little bit of a spritzer going on.
Mel, you're looking hot.
I miss you.
Let's have dinner soon.
We've had a lot of fun over the years.
I would love to catch up with you.
Great to see you.
We have.
You take care, Mel.
That was properly uncensored.
I like it.
Bye.
Uncensored.
I didn't swear.
You were about to.
That's why I've had to get rid of you.
Great to talk to you.
Bye.
I love Melby.
Now, at a time when everyone loves to play the victim, and I think we're seeing a bit of that in the Herb Depp court case, I want to introduce you to someone who's overcome so much in her short little life, but never played the victim.
Eight-year-old Harmony Rose Allen was diagnosed with meningitis when she was a baby and given a 10% chance of survival, but she's fought the odds despite losing all four limbs.
She's crossed the finishing line of a half marathon.
She's competed in gymnastics.
She loves to swim.
And she's also won a Pride of Britain Award.
And today she achieved something else which is extraordinary, although most of us would just take it for granted.
She managed to brush her own teeth.
She honestly is one of the gutsiest young people I've ever had the pleasure to get to know.
She sent me this lovely message before we came on air.
Hi, Piz, so great to see you back on the telly again.
Hopefully I can go to a new studio soon.
Bye.
Just sit there an open invitation, young lady.
You're always welcome here.
And thank you for inspiring us all.
You know, her story and her attitude reminds me of my favourite all-time poem by D.H. Lawrence called Self-Pity.
Something she has never ever displayed.
The poem in its entirety goes like this.
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
That is Harmony Rose, and we could all do with invoking more of her spirit.
Well on Sansa next, the woman who nudged Insulate Britain's eco-warriors with her SUV and got banned from driving.
I'll bring her face to face with Insulate Britain.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan on Censor.
Eco-activists have become a regular irritant on UK roads, sitting in front of traffic, sometimes gluing themselves to the tarmac.
I sympathise with their cause, but not the way they're going about it.
I think it's dangerous and just winds people up rather than bring them to their cause and side.
But one such person who did take them on was Sherilyn Speed, who'd just been banned from driving after she nudged three insulate Britain activists with her car when they blocked her on the school run.
Here's what happened.
Move out of the way now.
I don't know.
My son is 11 and he needs to get school.
My son needs 11.
He needs to get to school.
I need to get to work.
So move out of the way.
Move out of the way.
Get out of the road.
Someone needs to move my back away.
Move out of the way now.
Well, Sharon Speed joins me now along with Liam Norton from Insulate Britain.
Good evening to both of you.
Sherilyn, when I watched that video, I just see a mum desperate to get her kid to school on time.
I've got a 10-year-old who I take to school, but I walk her to school.
You have to drive your son.
You now can't do that.
When you look back at what happened there, describe your frame of mind about what you encountered and the way you reacted.
Do you know what?
It was a really hard time personally for me.
I know more people are aware of a bit of my background now.
I just found it really stressful.
You know, it's early in the morning.
I'm trying to get on Sunday school, get to work.
I've got personal things going on as well.
I'm suffering with anxiety.
And I've got these people in front of me stopping me from going to where I needed to go.
I just found it really difficult.
A difficult, it's a really hard experience for me.
And when you then got dragged through the courts, you were banned from driving for a year, received a £240 fine, you were charged with assault, although that got dropped.
I mean, could you really believe that you were suddenly being made to look like the villain in this story?
I mean, I've been to court three times for this.
I'm still shocked that I'm on a driving ban, I'll be honest.
I don't really think that I deserve that.
I mean, they did say it was going to be careless driving, which meant I got points on my license and a fire.
And I was happy, you know, to accept that.
I understand that I did do wrong, you know, and I take the consequences.
But for someone who has no previous convictions and, you know, not even points in my license, I just felt like that was a bit harsh.
And as a result, you now can't drive for a year.
You can't take your son to football training.
He trains all over London and Essex.
You can't help your mother with her shopping and getting around.
It seems to me that you've ended up being pretty harshly punished here when, in fact, you were being prevented just from going about your normal day.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, well, let's bring in Liam.
Liam, you represent Insulate Britain.
I look at that video and I see a mum who wants to get her kid to school on time.
You want to, you know, protect the planet and make it better for her son.
And yet at the same time, you want to stop him being educated.
So people watch that and they go, why are you doing this?
Why can't you protest in a different way to literally lying in front of cars to the point where a young mum loses it and ends up with a fine and everything else and not being able to drive a boy around?
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
It's that it's not a good situation.
I spoke to Sherilyn about a month ago and we had a really good conversation.
She's still got misgivings about the tactics that Insulate Britain were using back then.
But she also said to me that she didn't realise how bad this climate crisis was for her 11-year-old son.
And that's a similar position to me.
Like, I'm an electrician, Piers, right?
I'm just a normal bloke.
In 2018, I see the front page of the paper, and there was a hundred academics, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that it was morally justifiable to get arrested because of how bad this climate crisis was.
And they blocked bridges.
And commentators like yourself were very unhappy that people were blocking bridges.
But that highlighted to me how bad this crisis is.
And I still stand by the justification for the fact that public disruption is necessary because we're looking at the absolute collapse of civilization.
Here's my problem.
Here's my problem with it.
I actually have a lot of sympathy with the cause that you're fighting.
I don't disagree with you about the threat from climate change or global warming.
But what I disagree with you are about the tactics because Insulate Britain, you know, you've had a case where a man was trying to drive his mother to hospital when she suffered a stroke.
You know, and he believes, the son, that if you'd actually, if you'd got to the hospital earlier, she would have recovered.
As a result, she's been left paralysed.
You had Insulate Britain protests causing an ambulance to be delayed by nearly an hour on another occasion with a chest pain emergency.
Another unnamed paramedic told a Metro newspaper that Insulate Britain were causing ambulances to be caught in tailbacks created by the road-blocking protests.
When I read stories like this, you know, my blood boils.
I'm like, what right have you got under the cause of global warming and climate change, which you want to protect young people in particular from a future which we don't know is going to be safe for them, to do this kind of thing where you imperil people's lives or to stop a child having education or not being able to get around or an old mum being able to be driven around shopping.
I don't think you have the right to play God like that with people's lives.
Yeah.
And I don't believe that this is a cause.
What we're talking about...
No, no, no, what we're talking about is a physical reality.
Yeah, but it's also a cause.
You're fighting a cause and you're protesting.
There's the real world.
You can't protest about all sorts of things.
There's the real world, Piers, right?
And we need to understand that we're living in the real world.
I understand that.
What I don't understand, Liam, is why you have to do the kind of things I've just read out.
Why you have to make that poor woman not be able to take her son to school?
There are other ways to protest.
But why is that poor son in 20 years' time going to live in a world that's one of unimaginable horror?
Well, we don't know whether we do in 20 years.
We do.
And we need to start to accept this horrendous physical reality that exists, Piers, and we're not discussing it well enough.
And Sherilyn's son is 11 years old, doesn't get to have a say in his future, which at the current trajectory is going to be one of unimaginable.
Lynn, I come back to the point.
I agree with you about the need to take climate change seriously.
What I don't agree with you is stopping people from getting emergency medical treatment or stopping children going to school.
That to me seems to be the opposite of what you're trying to achieve, which is a safer future for people.
Yeah, so what we're saying here is why aren't we talking about the government criminality that's going on when every person knows like this is happening now?
We've got an absolutely catastrophic heat wave going on in India and Pakistan at the moment to the point where glaciers are melting in the Himalayas, causing rivers to flood and breaking into the world.
I don't disagree with you about the dangers that are being faced to the world.
I would support you.
The problem I have with your tactics is you put me off supporting you.
You don't bring me to your protest.
I don't think, oh, I want to join these guys.
They're making a great point.
I just look at this poor woman and think, why have he done that to her and her kid?
I look at these terrible stories of a woman left paralyzed because you lot were lying in front of a car.
It's like, why do that?
There are other ways to protest.
Because you're not listening to what I've just said.
You're not emotionally connecting to the fact that what I've just said to you is one billion.
Actually, you're not listening to what I'm saying.
No, I am, but what I'm saying we're in this.
Because what you're not hearing is I'm agreeing with your cause, with the campaign you're going to be doing.
I just don't agree with the tactics.
I want you to concede, Lynn.
But I don't agree with government criminality.
Let me finish.
I want you to concede that the tactics you've been using are self-defeating.
I think there's a better, more effective way to do it.
I think you would, if you're honest with yourself, say that actually this doesn't work, this kind of thing.
It might get you a few lurid headlines, but I don't see any of the British public go, you know what?
I'm watching this video.
I've got to join that protest.
I think the opposite.
I think you're a bunch of people wrecking people's lives.
And I don't think that's actually what you want to achieve.
Well, look, we're prepared to take the consequences.
There's 14 people currently in prison.
Non-violent, ordinary people that are currently in prison.
Ordinary people like Sherilyn Speed are receiving unfair sentences.
Nobody wins here.
But what we're saying is for the government, look, we had an ordinary, like a no-brainer plan to insulate Britain, which has been proven in an energy crisis now.
I've got an energy bill of £550 that I'm really struggling to pay.
I'm sure Sheryl is a good person.
But do you insulate?
You famously walked off Good Morning Britain and you were in good company.
All the best people do.
But you walked off Good Morning Britain when they asked you if you insulate your own home and you said you don't because you're a hypocrite.
Have you started to insulate it yet?
I've just said to you, I've got a £550 bill that I can't pay.
Right, so just to be clear though, you still don't insulate your own home, even though your whole campaign has got to start doing that.
So we're talking about social housing.
I understand.
The poorest in our society.
We're saying that it won't happen unless the poorest in our society can do the job.
And as we all know, the poorest in our society are struggling in poverty.
But Lynn, I would take you more seriously if you did insulate your own home.
So are you only doing it?
You're an electrician.
You know how to insulate a home, right?
But for the last 18 months, I've been doing a job that doesn't pay well, Piers, right?
So I'm not a very well-off guy.
And what you're saying is that only people that can afford £10,000 to insulate and retrofit a project.
No, I'm not saying that are the ones that can have an opinion on this.
Keeping Focus on the Queen 00:06:39
And we're talking about...
No, no, I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying, I'm saying it would probably help your cause if you stopped lying down in front of mums trying to take their kids to school or people whose mothers are literally having strokes and getting paralysed.
If you stop doing that and you actually practice what you preach about things like insulation, people might be more inclined to follow your campaign, which, by the way, just to finish on, I agree with.
We can come together.
We can come back to the next one.
Well, let's get there to go.
Let me ask Charlie before we get on with the job.
Let me just start Sharon before we go.
Final question.
Do you have any sympathy with what he's doing?
Sharon, can you hear me?
Do you have any sympathy with Liam?
Yeah, I can hear you now.
Do you have any sympathy with Liam?
Sympathy with him?
Yeah.
Look, I just...
Look, I've spoken to Liam.
I've said to him before, I don't agree with the methods.
I think we're stronger together.
I think that communication is key.
I think that if we talk to people, you know, if they come and speak to come to our communities and speak to us, you know, maybe they would get more of us on their side instead of pissing us off and holding our cars and stuff like that.
I agree.
I swear that's what she's ever agree.
I think we're reaching a little point of potential consensus here.
All right.
Liam, you're onto the right idea.
You're executing it, in my view, in a self-harming way.
But we'll continue the debate, okay?
I promise you that.
We'll continue the debate.
Good to talk to you both.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Well, on sense of the next, the Queen's ill health means she won't attend the state opening of parliament for the first time in 59 years.
What does that mean for her?
And what does it mean for the future of the monarchy?
We'll debate that next.
Well, this is the year we celebrate the Queen's 70 years of service to Platinum Jubilee, but with the news that she's missing tomorrow's state opening of parliament, there are concerns about her health.
I hope, as I said at the start of the show, that she makes a big recovery in time for those celebrations.
But it does raise the question, of course, of life after the Queen and indeed the future of the monarchy.
And joining me now is the Conservative columnist and daughter of US politician John McCain, Megan McCain.
And here in the studio, Vanity Fair royal editor Katie Nicole.
Welcome to both of you.
Katie, let me start with you.
This is a worrying time, I think, for anyone like me.
You, we've been in this country our entire lives with one monarch and her health is clearly not good.
It's not good.
How surprised should we be, given that she's 96?
We know she's had a spate of ill health.
I don't think anyone really knows quite what the matter is.
I mean, we are told that there are problems with her mobility, okay, and it's episodic.
So I understand some morning she wakes up and she's all right.
Other morning she wakes up and she literally moves.
We have to consider life after the Queen at some state.
We do, of course.
What is the future of the monarchy as far as you're concerned?
Well, I think we're going to get a pretty good view of it tomorrow, Piers, because you're going to see Prince Charles, the longest-serving Prince of Wales, representing the Queen, delivering the Queen's speech.
Her throne will be empty, but he will fill that throne one day.
And you're going to see him flanked by Queen Camilla, as we now know she's going to be, his eldest son, an heir, the next Prince of Wales.
So I think this is almost a bit of a projection into the future.
I think it's going to be very significant.
Let's bring in Megan McCain.
Megan, I know you've been pretty scathing about the whole idea, the concept of a monarchy.
Why?
I'm an American.
You know, I celebrate the 4th of July.
And it's sort of a foreign concept for most Americans.
That being said, as cheesy as it may seem, the Queen, the Crown, the show that was on Netflix, was a huge hit here.
And I think sort of gave a lot of Americans a better understanding of why she is so beloved and why, as the longest-serving monarch in your history, why she should be respected.
And I think it's made a lot of Americans very territorial of her as well.
And she really has become a cult figure in the past few years since the popularity of that show, unlike anything I'd seen before.
I mean, in terms of the reality of a monarchy, really, it's just a figurehead thing for the country.
They pay for themselves.
They make more money from tourism than they cost.
And in the Queen, we've had this remarkable rock of stability for 70 years.
Whereas in America, of course, you chop and change presidents and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't.
I mean, do you understand why we find it quite comforting to have this kind of enduring figurehead?
Sure.
I mean, you know, I think also what has been interesting to sort of see the modernizing of the monarchy.
And again, I don't follow this as closely as people who live in the UK, but I do know that William and Kate had a rocky tour recently where, you know, the head prime minister in Jamaica had many things to say about not wanting to be under the monarchy anymore.
And I think it'll be interesting, as Katie said, to see how this modernizes.
I'm really American.
I'm like hardcore 4th of July, like love my guns American.
So I don't think I'm ever going to be like you look at me basically and you see King George III reincarnated when you look at me and hear this accent, right?
Let's be honest.
Yes, I just know Captain Hamilton singing.
Katie, one of the spanners in the works, of course, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the ongoing antics.
They've been banned from the balcony.
Quite a big moment by the Queen to do that.
But they are coming with their kids and presumably a Netflix crew in tow.
Quickly, how damaging or otherwise do you think it is their ongoing behavior?
It is damaging to the crown.
It absolutely is.
I think the Queen had very little option.
Harry and Megan made it clear they wanted to be over here.
It is a family event as well.
She wants her family around her.
This is probably going to be the final hurrah.
But I think you'll find those Netflix crews are kept at some distance.
I think the idea that they're going to be allowed to hijack this in any way, the focus needs to stay on the Queen.
Unfortunately, the Sussexes, as always, provide a detraction.
And Megan, finally to you, we've got 30 seconds or so.
Are you a Megan Harry fan?
I've seen you be quite supportive of them.
I think you were supportive of them after I had to leave my morning show, actually.
I'm not a fan.
I was a fan in the beginning because I thought they were interesting and sort of, you know, modernizing the royal family, but they're way too woke for me.
And Harry came after the Second Amendment in this country.
And I believe the First Amendment as well, which is like a huge, you know, it's like, if I had attacked the Queen, it's the equivalent.
And they're just too woke for me.
No.
Okay, well, we agree on that, Megan.
We agree on that.
Great.
You've got a great book out called Bad Republican.
Katie, your book, Harry and Megan, Life, Loss, and Love.
Great debate.
Thank you both very much indeed.
Tomorrow, Lennois, the great boxing champion, and an official spokesman for the Taliban.
If that doesn't get you watching, nothing will.
Remember, keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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