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June 14, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:36
20220614_piers-morgan-uncensored-stanley-johnson-and-harry-
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Amber Heard Playing Victim 00:11:21
I'm Piers Morgan on Censor coming up on tonight's program.
Stanley Johnson will be here to talk trophy hunting with big beasts and endangered species.
I'll also ask him about animals.
Money Over Morals has sports sold out to Saudi Arabia.
Legend Harry Redknapp will be here live.
And she lost her court case to Johnny Depp, but Amber Heard has not stopped playing the victim.
Do you stand by your testimony and your accusations against Johnny Depp about abuse?
Of course, to my dying day, we'll stand by every word of my testimony.
Well, good evening.
Bad news.
I'm afraid to start.
Amber Heard is still yapping.
She's broken her silence, which didn't last very long, in a new sit-down interview after her defamation trial loss to ex-husband Johnny Depp, insisting that he's the liar and repeating claims that he assaulted her during their marriage.
Because we've heard all this before, haven't we?
And the more that she whines and plays the victim, rather like that other American actress, Megan Markle, the less credible she becomes.
This was the most humiliating and horrible thing I've ever been through.
And the vast majority of this trial was played out on social media.
The jury saw it.
How could they not?
It would have been impossible to avoid this.
He says, you start physical fights and you say, I did start a physical fight.
I can't promise you I won't get physical again.
I mean, this is in black and white.
I understand context.
But you're testifying and you're telling me today I never started a physical fight and here you are on tape saying you did.
As I testified on the stand about this, is that when your life is at risk, not only will you take the blame for things that you shouldn't take the blame for, but when you're in an abusive dynamic psychologically, emotionally, and physically, you don't have the resources that say you or I do with the luxury of saying, hey, this is black and white.
But then there are other times there's another tape where you're taunting him and saying, oh, tell the world, Johnny Depp, I, a man, the victim of domestic violence.
20-second clips or the transcripts of them are not representative of even the two hours or the three hours that those clips are excerpt from.
He says, Doesn't never hit you.
He can't.
Is that a lie?
Yes, it is.
In the closing arguments, the Depp lawyers called your testimony the performance of a lifetime.
What do you say to that?
Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers.
When I asked his lawyers, why do you think you won?
The answer I got was because she never took responsibility for anything she did in the marriage.
I did do and say horrible, regrettable things throughout my relationship.
Do you think that maybe he just had better lawyers?
I will say his lawyers did certainly a better job of distracting the jury from the real issues.
Do you stand by your testimony and your accusations against Johnny Depp about abuse?
Of course, to my dying day, we'll stand by every word of my testimony.
I'm joined down by civil rights attorney, Lisa Bloom.
Lisa, I'd love to talk to you again.
When I watched this this morning on the Today Show, I've got to be honest with you, my mind went back to Meghan Markle's Oprah Winfrey to Wyna-thon.
Because the longer Amber Heard talks, frankly, the more she whines, the more she plays the victim, the more she tries to blame everybody but herself.
As with Meghan Markle, the less I believe her.
I just find her a really incredible or rather uncredible witness.
Or both, actually.
Well, you certainly have a right to your opinion, Piers, and I have a right to mine.
I have a lot of sympathy for Amber Heard.
I agree with the couple's marriage counselor that they were both abusive to each other.
And there's no question that she was vilified on social media.
As she says, she had to go into court past blocks and blocks of Johnny Depp superfans holding up signs that she deserved to die.
I mean, this was a horrific experience for her.
She stands by her testimony.
My concern for her is: is she going to get hit with a new defamation case?
Because now she's out there calling him a liar.
Right.
And also, my question would be: if Johnny Depp had lost that case, would he have been allowed on the Today Show to call his victim a liar, to stand by everything that he'd said?
I don't think he would have been given the platform.
So to me, there's a double standard there.
You've been involved in many of these cases, I know, but I think there's a real double standard there.
I think the Today Show would have been thrilled to have him on if he lost to tell his side or any of these high-profile guys who are accused.
I don't think that's a problem.
I don't think he has a problem having a platform.
He's got a massive platform.
He's an A-list celebrity.
He's wealthy beyond all imagining.
I don't think that would have been.
No, no, I don't think.
Well, I don't think this was a good idea for Amber, though.
No, I thought it was a total train wreck for her.
But my point being, I don't think the Today Show would have given Johnny Depp the chance to continue playing the victim if he'd been found guilty of domestic violence.
And my issue watching Amber Heard was a jury didn't believe her.
You know, 95% of the verdict went Johnny Depp's way.
They thought she was the liar.
And in fact, the only hard evidence that came out during the entire case about domestic actual violence, physical violence, was by her, not by Johnny Depp.
Yes, but keep in mind, she used the term domestic abuse, which includes emotional abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse.
She never said in that op-ed that was the center of the whole case that he physically abused her.
And I also think Samantha Guthrie at the Today Show did a pretty good job.
She's an attorney.
I know Samantha a little bit.
She's tough.
And I think she did a pretty good job of saying, look, just as you just said, Piers, look, Amber Heard, the jury didn't believe you.
The jury felt that you were a liar.
I mean, she really, you know, did a pretty tough interview there.
You know, the problem I have, Lisa, with the whole thing with Amber Heard.
And I've got no great truck for Johnny Depp, by the way.
I think he came out of it pretty awfully too.
But I think his behavior since has been a lot more respectful to the process.
He certainly hasn't, you know, tried to hammer things home with Amber Heard in the press by continuing to rant about her.
But my whole problem with it, if you go back to that first piece that she wrote, we now live in a culture, in a society, where there is a premium to people to play the victim, to write these kind of heart-rending op-eds, positioning themselves as these terrible victims.
What became clear through this case was that at very best, this was a mutually toxic, abusive situation.
She certainly wasn't the victim.
And yet there she was taking space in a major national newspaper to write this searing op-ed as a kind of representative for the victims of domestic violence.
And I think that goes to, in my mind, this culture we now have where people can build a career out of victimhood.
And many of them do it.
And I think it diminishes real victims, people who are really suffering, really being abused, really the victims of domestic violence.
And I'm cynical about it.
And I'm seeing it more and more.
What is happening when there's that mindset?
Well, I don't necessarily agree with you, Piers, that people make careers out of victimhood because I represent dozens and dozens of victims of sexual abuse and race discrimination right now in my law firm.
And I can tell you, none of my clients want to be in this position.
They wish it never happened.
They wish they could just go on with their lives.
Most of them never do any media.
They just want justice.
They just want some fairness and accountability.
And with regard to Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, they can both be victims.
And I think there are many marriages where both parties abuse each other and it's horrific.
And they can both be hurting.
And in the article, she talked about the massive backlash that she had gotten in Hollywood for saying that she was a victim.
And clearly, what we've seen in massive social media hate for Amber Heard and what she's had to experience in the last couple of months of this trial is not something anyway.
But again, you know, I agree.
Yeah, look, I don't like the social media pile on with her.
It can get very nasty, very ugly.
But her insinuation that the jury must have been reading all this and that's why they found against her, I think is extremely, in my view, disrespectful to the process, to the court case, to the jury.
I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to read any social media.
So maybe one or two did.
We don't know.
They're not supposed to.
Right, so they're not supposed to.
They're not supposed to, but you and I know.
Piers, when was the last time you were off of Twitter for six weeks?
Probably before Twitter began.
Twice six minutes.
But most of us are pretty addicted.
Most of us are pretty addicted to social media, whether it's Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is.
And to say that they were all entirely off for six weeks, that none of their friends and family members talked to them about it.
I mean, do we really believe that?
No, but it could be.
It could be legal.
They couldn't work with juries.
I know.
But ultimately.
But they say one thing and they do another thing.
I know.
But ultimately, to me, it comes back to this thing where all women must be believed as a starting point for these kind of cases.
I think all women should be listened to and evidence should be studied.
Of course.
But I think the clear, overwhelming sort of fallout from Megan Markle, Oprah Winfrey, Amber Heard, and this court case is that actually, no, not all women should be automatically believed because sometimes they're telling porcupines.
Well, listen, no sane person says that all women must be believed.
I mean, that's absurd.
I think you're right.
A lot of people do say that.
I represent any accuser.
I represent men.
I don't know about a lot of people saying that, Piers.
Maybe there's always fringe people on both sides of things.
But I think we want to take these allegations seriously.
I think what the Me Too movement has taught us, that a lot more people are sexually abused and sexually harassed than we ever knew in the past.
And we're all taking this a lot more seriously, and we should.
And a lot of prominent people, mostly men, have been taken down by the Me Too movement, and they should have.
And so overall, it's a positive thing.
But there's always going to be outliers, people who make up stories, and we have to have due process.
I agree with you.
I listen, I agree with everything you just said.
I think that most of the Me Too movement and time's up movements have been long overdue and very necessary.
A lot of bad people have been held to proper account.
I just think when I watch someone like Amber Heard, I see an actress and I see somebody who lost, but who doesn't want to admit she lost.
Me Too Movement Accountability 00:13:57
She's a kind of Donald Trump of Johnny Depp is a more successful actor.
Sorry?
Johnny Depp, yeah.
But Johnny Depp.
Johnny, he's a far more successful actor.
Why isn't he accused of acting when he's on the stand?
I just know if Johnny Depp had lost, there's no way he'd have been allowed to carry on calling his victim a liar on primetime American television.
They wouldn't have allowed it.
Well, you know, I'll defer to you.
You know more about television than I do.
I'm just a simple civil rights lawyer representing victims.
I'm not actually sure about that, Lisa.
You're a very accomplished television performer these days.
Great to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Always good to see you.
Thank you, Piers.
Well, I says the next.
Stanley Johnson, his son, was obviously too scared to be interviewed by me, runs into fringes to avoid me.
But his father is made of tougher stuff.
There he is, the Prime Minister's dad.
He'll be here live and unleashed to talk about endangered species, big beasts facing possible extinction.
And a sports sold out to Saudi Arabia where the great Harry Redknap will be here to talk about sports washing.
What is it?
Does it matter?
And the first flight transporting asylum seekers from UK to Rwanda leaves in just over an hour.
But we're now down to just six people on board at vast expense.
More this controversial migrant policy takeoff.
Adam Bolton and Richard Tice will be here today.
Well, an endangered species is a beast considered highly likely to become extinct in the near future, fending increasingly for themselves.
They're put at risk by the loss of territory.
Their plight is made worse by ruthless poachers who often want to bring them down as a trophy to their own prowess.
Sadly, these big beasts are sometimes too deluded to realize that it's already over.
It's only the poor marksmanship of the hapless hunters that spares them their futures.
Stanley Johnson is here.
You're not talking politics, are you?
Stanley, I'm obviously talking trophy hunting and endangered species.
No, let's start first of all.
I sense the trap.
It's not a trap.
Let's be completely upfront about this.
Talking of endangered species who may be facing a possible end.
Your son, Boris.
I have to ask you about it because he won't come on the show.
I haven't interviewed him in seven years.
No, let's talk, if I might, about endangered species.
We will.
But let's talk about Boris first.
Then we'll come to the trophy and your book.
I'm just curious.
You're his dad, right?
He's been through one hell of a period in his life.
He becomes Prime Minister.
He gets Brexit done.
He's then hit by a global pandemic.
He's hit by a war in Ukraine.
He's hit by all sorts of stuff, surging inflation now.
In the middle of it, he gets COVID and nearly dies.
His mother dies.
You put all this together.
That's a hell of a two and a half years for any human being.
As his father, when you've watched him go through all this, what have you been thinking?
I've been thinking I am very proud of this boy, of this man, of this PM.
I mean, that's what I say to myself.
I mean, he got, you know, the big cause, right?
And as far as I'm concerned, he's got a lot of things right.
You know, okay, I'm an environmentalist.
I think the way he pushed on climate change, the way he pushed on biodiversity, the way he pushed, if we get to it, so this is a series of endangered species.
It's fine.
And honestly, if you're asking me my absolute opinion on this, I'd say, I listened to what Imran Khan said to you the other day.
You know, people in Karachi are bewildered at the attention which this party gate beer gained also.
But you know why it's rattled people.
The party gate is not really about parties.
You and I have been to a lot of parties together, right?
It's not about the parties.
It's about a time when he and his government were locking people in their homes and they couldn't go and see dying relatives who were literally dying in hospital from COVID.
That was the rule of the law.
When the Queen was at her own husband's funeral sitting on her own because she wanted to abide by the letter of the law, there is Boris, the Prime Minister, being fined by the police for breaking his own law and 84 of his staff fined for illegal partying.
So that's the scandal.
No, well, I don't actually see it in that way because I see it as something that happened on the 19th of on the 19th of June 2020, which was just a few weeks after he came out of hospital having been really seriously ill.
He steps by for 20 minutes.
It's his birthday.
It wasn't a birthday party.
He broke his own law, Stanley.
Yeah, come on.
Come on, Piers.
We're not done.
Take my word for it.
Take the police's word for it.
Okay.
I think that that is time.
It is time to move on from that.
You know, it was a situation where, yes, he has a drink.
He had a glass in his hand.
And that was it.
That was the end of it.
Yeah, but it's all about the drink, is it?
It's about having a party which breaks his own law.
Hey, hey, Piers.
When he was telling other people every day from the podium, you can't do this.
It's the doing one thing and preaching another.
Now, you know that.
Look, I know you're in charge of this interview, and no reason why you shouldn't be, because you're the big cheese.
But I didn't come here.
As far as I'm concerned, it's high time we moved on to things which really matter, which are the things he is doing now.
Do you see?
It's the things he's doing.
And you mentioned them.
COVID, let's hope that's out of the way.
Inflation, he's got to deal with it.
Ukraine, Ukraine.
Well, who is taking the lead on Ukraine?
I think he's been good on Ukraine.
Yeah, I think Boris has been, I think he's been a leader on Ukraine.
And on the big calls, on COVID, I think he got some right and some horribly wrong.
I thought the first half of it, he was a complete disaster.
The second half, I thought with the vaccine program rollout and not locking down actually at the end of the last year, I think there were two important calls he got right.
Britain feels a much freer country right now than if you go abroad.
So I think he's got some of the calls right.
The idea he's got all the big calls right.
Well, I know it's a bit ridiculous, right?
I don't think I said that.
I think he's got many of the big calls right.
And that I think is crucial.
And as far as I'm concerned, I am, because you asked me the question, I am particularly pleased to see this son of mine being Prime Minister.
Whether other sons will be prime ministers doesn't matter.
But I am very, very pleased about this.
And long may he last.
Stanley, when you see him being attacked repeatedly for being dishonest, for being amoral, all those things.
What do you feel about that?
You know him better than most people.
Yeah, this is what I feel.
I feel this is all a lot of garbage.
I mean, total garbage.
I see this as the worst kind of journalism.
I'm not going to name the journalists.
I hope I don't have to meet them.
But honestly, I think it's, and I think it's tinged with, look, it's a hunting scene, isn't it?
We're going to get on to hunting.
We are going to get on to hunting, yeah.
It's a hunting scene.
There we are.
They think the beast is wounded.
Let's gallop after him.
Let's fire a few more shots.
It is absurd.
We have to move.
Is he irreparably wounded by the fact that 42% of Conservative MPs don't have confidence in him?
No, I don't think it's on the contrary.
If you look at the figures, more Conservative MPs voted in a confidence vote for Boris Johnson than have ever voted for a Conservative Prime Minister in any confidence vote.
Look at the figures.
Now, it may be that's because there were more Conservative MPs to vote.
That's why.
Okay, that's why.
But why were there more Conservative MPs?
It was because leave the percentage out of it.
Leave the sheer numbers out.
The percentage is all that matters, isn't it?
Sheer numbers got that result.
And you cannot deny that.
The 368 Tory MPs who were elected in 2019 were elected.
If you're a sharp political animal, you know that actually the stats are now heavily against him.
Hardly any Conservative Prime Minister has ever survived much longer than six months from a no-confidence vote, even if they all win them.
But the margin of the win is what brings them down.
Let me tell you something.
I am completely confident that this time, two years from now, you and I will be having this conversation possibly, and you will be saying, well, you're still the father of Prime Minister then, Stanley.
You know what?
That might be true.
I'm not saying necessarily that should be what happens, but I think you might be right.
He has got the escapology skills of Harry Eudini, hasn't he?
Eudini, as I recall, eventually died because somebody struck him in the tummy rather hard.
I'm not mentioning Jeremy Hunt, but you know, you've got to be careful who's around him at the moment.
Look, we need to concentrate on the main things.
As far as I'm concerned, why I'm here tonight is there's a crucial moment when this government, and I'm not criticizing my Prime Minister, I'm not doing that, but nonetheless, just to show I am not, as it were, starry-eyed, I am deeply worried that the proposal the government has promised to make regarding banning trophy hunting imports has not yet seen the light of day.
Well, let's be clear about this, because I agree with you about trophy hunting.
I think it's a disgusting thing, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Boris said he was going to get rid of it, and he hasn't.
So he's gone back on his word.
Well, it's to you.
No, Stanley.
It's in the word, it's the word as it appeared in the Conservative Party manifesto.
And if you ask the government about it, the government says firmly, we are still.
But have you talked to him privately about it?
I don't go into what I say privately to my son, and I wouldn't expect him to say what he says to me, you know, on air.
But nonetheless, on this sort of thing, I would prefer to speak out loud to you peers in the privacy of this studio, if you see what I mean.
And say the government has to move on this because I don't want to say...
For those who haven't followed this whole saga, what is it exactly you and a lot of signatories to a letter want to get what done?
Okay.
Trophy hunting is still massively practiced all around the world.
And by the way, British sportsmen are massively involved in trophy hunting.
And we have a time when endangered species are truly endangered.
And we've got the animals, we've got zeros.
Lions and rhinos and they're all there.
And yet people are still getting prizes from the Safari Club International, you know, for killing 100 different species of animals.
And people are paying $50,000 to fly in from America from Minnesota.
This all the Cecil Belion.
Absolutely.
So I want the government to really deliver on its promise to bring in this law banning the import of trophies.
And also, I want the government to push hard now on this other thing, which is again in the manifesto, which is to do with animals abroad and the fact that British tourists are going off in huge numbers post-COVID to places like Thailand and India and other places where animals are abused for spectacles and entertainment.
Please don't.
I don't think we've reached a point of agreement.
Well, I would point out on trophy hunting.
Yeah, look at this.
It's also a prime example of your son saying one thing and not doing it.
No, he has got every chance to do it.
That is the point.
He's watching this program.
What's your message to him about trophy hunting?
Sure, he watches you every day.
If he ever comes on it.
Well, I can't speak to that.
Get out of the fridge and get on here.
I can't speak to that, but I am convinced that environment remains a top priority of this government.
Climate change remains a top priority.
Biodiversity remains animal species is there.
You've got a great new book out from an antique land.
You've written how many books now?
This is my 25th.
Unbelievable.
Where'd you get the energy you, Johnson?
No, I don't have any energy at all.
It's relentless, isn't it?
It's very nice of you to say.
That is a thriller.
That is a thriller.
And it's all to do with what happened in Cambodia in 1975.
I look forward to reading it.
I like all your books.
I wanted to show you a bit of footage.
This is of a cockerel in Turkey.
This is a moment, Stanley, where I think you and I, probably Boris as well, have a moment, don't we, occasionally, when you just want to do this.
Watch this talk roll.
You're sure that's not the callous Johnson mating call.
I think it could be the call of the Mueds in if it comes from Turkey.
Watch the end though, Stanley.
See what happens at the end here.
It's going, it's going.
Now, the last time, the last time I saw a magnificent beast like that doing something similar was when you came on Good Morning Britain and we got you to do a handstand.
You remember this?
Come on.
I do a really cool.
Yep.
Oh my goodness.
No, that's it.
I've got him.
I've got him.
There he is.
All the money.
Oh my God, his money's falling out.
Well, let me get you done, Jim.
What I meant to say to you then is I always like to put my money where my mouth is.
I failed to say it then.
I'm happy to say it now.
Stanley, it's great to see you.
As always, an effervescent presence.
And you are a cheater, I've got to tell you, Piers.
You know, you lured me in here.
It was a bit like settled the line.
You lured him in there.
I'm a trophy hunter.
I lured in the trophy.
I don't think I'm a trophy.
You know what I mean?
There's nothing wrong with defending your son, by the way.
And we got to talking about trophy hunting and your book.
And I showed you doing a handstand.
The word talking for, Stanley.
Oh, thank you, Piers.
Good to see you.
See you all, folks.
Tell Boris to come in soon.
Border Policy Hypocrisy 00:10:38
We'll have fun.
Cheers, Stanley.
Good to see you.
I think he's going to get Boris out of the fridge.
Get him on the show.
Well, Uncensored, British government buys migrants to Rwanda impactful or immoral.
Piers Pack is next.
Well, from big beasts to two more big beasts.
It's just the Piers Pack, talk TV contributor Adam Bolton, talk TV presenter and leader of reform in the UK, Richard Tythe.
Welcome, heavyweights.
Did Stanley pass you on the way out?
I said you're a cheat.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I'm not taking that from them either.
But no, it's a good interview.
I like Stanley.
Let's talk about Rwanda, Richard, because I do think this is a genuinely complicated issue.
We've got a live shot here of Bothcombe Down in Wiltshire.
This is the plane that's due to leave in about half an hour's time.
We're down to apparently six people are now on this flight, which makes it incredibly expensive, obviously.
Does it even make it worth it if he's trying to prove this point?
Does this prove anything?
I think what it proves, Piers, is the principle.
The principle is whether or not the government, the elected government of the day, can carry out one of the key policies that it was elected on, which was to get Brexit done, which included taking back control of our borders.
So I think it's really, really important that the plane goes.
And we've been through not one, not two, three court processes in the UK, and yet the European Court of Human Rights seems to have decided it wants to interfere.
Even if there's nobody on that plane, it should still go with the blessing of the domestic court.
So here's my issue with it.
I think what's going on on the sea is unacceptable.
You cannot just go on like this.
Exactly.
You can have more and more boats and more and more people drowning.
It's just not acceptable for us to look at that and think we do nothing.
But I can't find it in my heart to think this is British to then take people, many of whom are genuine asylum seekers, albeit trying to enter the country illegally.
Many of them have come from genuine war zones that we simply say to them, right, we know you've come from Syria, we know you've come from Afghanistan, we know you come from Iraq, which we bombed, by the way.
But what we're going to do, we're going to put you on the first plane to Rwanda.
Look, there are no good options.
We all want to be somewhere else, which is no one's coming.
All of these are bad options.
I think the government has tried, it's tried to work with France, everything else has failed.
And essentially, this is saying it's another last-ditch attempt.
I also think here, Piers, that Rwanda is actually getting a very bad press by quite a lot of people here who may not know what they're thinking about.
For example, the United Nations own report recently said, and I'll just read it out: Rwanda's made notable strides toward improving people's lives.
There's 130,000 refugees there.
Rwanda has been impressive with progress.
Rwanda's done an excellent job integrating refugees.
It's built over 500 classrooms for 20,000 people.
As I mentioned last night, as an Arsenal fan, we have on our shirts the players visit Rwanda.
I think it's getting a very bad press.
Okay, let's bring it up.
First of all, this is not about Rwanda.
People say nice things about Rwanda.
I've never been there because this is about people who came through Europe to Britain and who wanted to stay in Britain.
So, you know, we ended deportation for criminals, I think, in the 19th century.
So I think the whole idea of deporting people is, you know, to quote Prince Charles, appalling or shaming or ugly, as the Tory MP, Jesse Norman, says.
But the real test is, is it going to work?
Right.
Right.
And that's where you've fallen for this.
I mean, you're not a Tory.
I know you've got your own party.
But, you know, the fact is, this is a cruel gesture politic.
It's a bit louder.
It's a little bit because they've got six people on the plane.
We know, contrary to taking back control of our borders, actually, immigration is going up in this country, if that's what people are really concerned about.
There are more people come in every day than they're even thinking of deporting to Rwanda.
We know they've only prepared 76 places in Rwanda with the money that's been given so far.
So this is not going to become and shouldn't become mass deportation.
But we also know this, Richard.
I want to talk about Richard.
It's not going to be a problem.
Richard, let me put this to you, because it's just an interesting thing that I read about today.
We found some information about it.
So between 2014 and 2017, Israel operated a similar scheme, sending people to Rwanda and Uganda under a voluntary scheme.
Migrants were given a choice to return to their own country or accept a payment of £2,700 and a plane ticket to East Africa or go to jail if they stayed in Israel.
Now, apparently, a lot of people took the option of going to East Africa, but then left.
And they actually migrated to other parts of Europe.
So it didn't solve the problem.
That was then, this is now.
I refer to what I just read out earlier in terms of the UN's own report.
Amnesty International is more critical of Spain's performance with migrants and refugees and indeed the UK than it is of Rwanda.
Ultimately, we've got, I think we're all agreed, we've got to have a deterrent to stop people coming across the channel.
This may or may not work.
My hunch is that it probably won't, because the odds, for the reasons you've just mentioned, of you actually going from the UK to Rwanda are remarkably low.
My preference actually is to keep working with the French and to have a joint arrangement where anybody who comes across the channel is picked up safely, taken back to France.
You have a joint processing centre and they are promptly, rapidly processed.
Okay, I mean, look, the French are showing knowing to them.
The problem is we can't do a problem.
But you have to try new things to act as a deterrent.
What about Ukraine?
So when the war in Ukraine happened, we suddenly have a massive influx of Ukrainians.
Now, they're not entering illegally, vast majority.
coming here legally, but we are working very hard to process very quick asylum for these people.
Well, nothing compared to other European countries.
Right, but we're still doing it.
What I mean is that our system seems to work fine with Ukraine.
Well, this is what we're doing.
So people who are not coming from Ukraine.
This is what you hear from people like Nadeem Zahawi, that there are ways to come in.
Actually, if you're in Libya, if you're in Iran, if you're in Iraq, there aren't easy ways for you to apply and come in.
So I'm not saying you should try and be illegal, but they are actually not telling the public the truth when they say it's easy for people to apply.
If we accept that the Rwanda thing probably isn't going to work, I don't think it will.
But either way, if it's not doing something like that, something dramatic, we try and make a big deterrent statement.
What should we do about stopping so many people risking their lives to come over on these dinghies?
Well, I agree with Richard.
I think we should be working with other European countries.
But of course, thanks to Brexit, we're not working with them.
No, thanks, thanks.
Thanks, Emmanuel.
We're not preventing that particular thing that I've just suggested.
Because goodwill on the country.
Let me hear what Adam wants to do.
Because we've chosen to go to a menu where we think we can pick and choose rather than actually operate in an alliance.
And, you know, people were told, okay, that's going to put up the drawbridge.
And actually, through government incompetence, it hasn't put up the drawbridge.
People are still coming in.
And once they recognize and see that, I think the government's going to be in big problems because their supporters wanted that.
And that is why they are doing this policy.
This policy is a PR stunt to persuade people that they're dealing with immigration when they're not soft to me.
As we know, this government is very good at talking the talk, all sorts of headlines, short-term headline-grabbing spin, and then no delivery.
And the reality is, you've just touched on it, the Home Office is not fit for purpose.
We saw it in the early weeks of the Ukraine refugee crisis.
We were miles behind.
We know that we're way too slow with processing these claims.
But I just want to put one point here, which is actually there's a lot of suggestions we're not taking our sort of allocation of asylum seekers and refugees.
That's actually not true.
In the last three years, we're in the top four nations for taking refugees from elsewhere in the world.
And we've been taking them from Afghanistan, we've been taking them from Ukraine.
Refugees are different from the US.
Hang on, but Afghanistan was a war zone.
Ukraine is a war zone.
Obviously, we've been quite rightly very generous with...
Whenever I watch people like Nigel Farage constantly banging on about economic migrants and saying these are young men in a very disparaging way, why do we demonize economic migrants who might be of use to our economy?
Look, I think the reality is, you know, we always want a smart, lawful immigration system that works for our economic needs at a particular time.
But the key word is lawful, as opposed to illegal.
You can't just open all borders and say everyone's welcome.
That's not going to work.
We know we've got huge infrastructure problems, housing problems, GP problems, hospital problems.
So we've got to plan for this on a sensible, grown-up basis.
And I think historically we've actually been quite good at this.
I agree with what you've just said, but I don't agree that it is the British way to just ship people off who may have come from genuinely horrific places and horrific conditions, which partly we may have helped create Iraq and so on.
We just put them on a plane to someone like Rwanda.
Well, particularly if you're paying half a million pounds per seat, whatever it's costing to get them.
That number's irrelevant.
If we have to expand places, it is.
If we have 50,000 people cross the channel this year, 40 grand each in the first year, that's 2 billion in one year on top of the current 5 billion plus that illegal.
But we've got a lot of other things, but I've actually really enjoyed this debate.
I just want to end by asking both of you, you first, Richard, in a year's time, will we still be sending people to Rwanda or is this thing dead in the water?
Well, it's an unfortunate phrase, but you know what I mean?
I think that's unlikely.
And in a year's time, I suspect, sadly, there will still be lots of refugees, people, illegal migrants, making that very dangerous voyage trip across the channel.
Adam, we don't want to have people dead in the water, but I don't want to have them flown off to Rwanda.
So there's got to be another way.
Has this government got it in it, do you think, to come up with another way?
Sport Putting Money Before Morals 00:08:44
In a word, no.
I mean, the precedent of schemes like this is the Israeli scheme you mentioned, is the Australian scheme you mentioned.
And both of them basically have gone into stalemate now, and they're not sending vast amounts of people out, although there are some people still.
But actually, the Australian scheme did work.
It did stop.
Well, it did reduce the number of people coming to Rwanda, but they also had a lot of mistreatment of people in these centres they put them in.
And of course, we don't want that.
That's not the British way.
But the British way is to actually find a problem.
Let's try and find a solution.
And we've got to keep...
And the problem is no one else has got an alternative situation.
Australia, as they always point out, has a much greater flow of immigrants coming into the country anyway.
I do agree, though.
When I listen to Labour, I don't hear an answer, right?
I hear a lot of whining about what the Tories are trying to do.
I don't hear a credible answer from them either.
It's a very complex issue.
Thank you, Richard.
Thank you, Adam.
Good to see you both.
And so it's the next, as golf stars spurn the PGA for a Saudi-backed rival, is sports washing, as they call it, selling out?
Well, football legend Harry Rednat will be here to discuss that.
Not the least surprising news of the millennium is that Kim Kardashian seems to have ruined Marin in Monroe's iconic dress.
This is before on the left.
And on the right is what it now looks like.
Apparently all sorts of stuff went wrong with it when Kim Kardashian tried to burst herself into it.
That's why she should have never been allowed anywhere near the damn thing.
There we are.
Kim Kardashian ruins popular culture.
Who knew?
Sport washing.
What is it?
Well, it's when a cold-shouldered, controversial country uses the prestige and popularity of sport to whitewash its ugly reputation.
The Live Golf series is the latest sporting spectacle to face the charge.
Top stars have been offered bottomless pits, pots of Saudi Arabian gold to join the Breakaway League and abandon the PGA tour.
And to supporters, that's just business.
But to critics, it normalises a Saudi regime, which uses forced labor, bombs children in Yemen, and murders journalists.
So it's sport putting money before morals.
Well, here's golf superstar Rory McElroy, who spoke out against the Live Golf Invitational Series.
I'm sure not every Saudi Arabian is a bad person.
And it's very, you know, we're talking about this in such a generalized way.
And I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East.
And the vast majority of people that I've met there are very, very nice people.
But there's bad people everywhere.
And, you know, the bad people that came from that part of the world did some absolutely horrendous things.
Join me now, one of the most experienced Premier League managers of all time, former Tottenham West Hand boss, Harry Rednatt.
Harry, great to talk to you.
Piers, good to talk to you.
This sports washing.
What do we make of it?
I mean, the principle behind it is that these dodgy regimes, corrupt regimes that do terrible things, have appalling human rights records, use sport by investing heavily into sports to try and improve their image.
What do you feel about this phenomenon?
We're seeing it more and more now in boxing, in football, in Formula One, now in golf.
I think it's been going on a long time, Piers.
You know, I mean, we look back to, you know, people cleaned up their image by buying football clubs, coming to England, buying Premier League clubs.
It's something that's been going on quite a while, obviously, with the Saudi situation and the things that have gone in their country.
But, you know, they're coming, they're now owning a club in the Premier League, Newcastle.
And we can, you know, we all feel strongly about the things that have gone on in that country.
But, you know, you go and tell them Geordies, 55,000 of them that turn up every week to Newcastle, they're not suddenly going to stop going.
And the players have been offered enormous amounts of money to go and play in this new golf, this new golf competition and golf tour.
And they're going to take it.
I mean, to be honest, they're not, you know, if someone's coming offing them 50, 60, 100 million to go and play golf and where they can treble their earnings, they're going to think, well, if I don't do it, somebody else will do it.
So unfortunately, that is the way of the world.
Someone will come along and tomorrow and say, well, you know, do you want to come out and work in Saudi?
We'll give you 10 times what you're earning now.
It's very difficult to turn it down.
I mean, I think that my issue with it is there's a lot of hypocrisy around this.
I mean, take the PGA, who runs the biggest golf tournament in the world, the series.
Everybody wants to be on it.
But the PGA did let Phil Mickelson, a number of the other players on this live tour now.
They did let them play in a Saudi tournament last year.
The deal was they then had to play in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am once in the next two years.
That says to me this is not about morality, it's about money.
Yeah, but it's all about money, isn't it?
Really?
Everything is about money, really, Piers.
You know, we've had the boxing going to Saudi.
We've had, you know, as I say, they're now coming owning clubs in the Premier League.
And, you know, nobody really, you know, the Newcastle players will go over to Saudi for a visit with the management team.
And, you know, as I say, in the Jordan, them great Newcastle fans who love their club every week, they're not the slightest bit bothered whose money it is, as long as they're buying better players.
They're winning more games.
They're up the league.
I've always said years ago, if Saddam was saying they'd had a team, they'd all be singing, there's only one Saddam, the fans.
You know, that is how it is, isn't it?
They're only interested.
Give us a winning team.
Don't care where your money come from.
How many times have you seen it in this country with people only buying sports franchises who, you know, we all wonder where their money's come from?
And suddenly they change their image.
They clean their image up by.
I mean, we saw it, didn't we?
We saw it with Stebramovich at Chelsea, you know, who was one of Putin's Pew friends.
And he bought Chelsea.
He gave them a better image.
With the war in Ukraine, he was unable to then denounce the war or criticise Putin because he would have probably been killed by Putin.
So he'd said nothing.
And as a result, he's lost it all.
Yeah, I mean, we don't actually know who owns half these Premier League clubs anyway, really, do we?
You know, we had people, you know, I hear stories.
This guy who owned one club, he now owns another club in England, but he's not the chairman.
It's his money.
It's owned by the front man is somebody else.
They're all, you know, they're using their money to wash their money.
And it's so really, we're not sure who's actually behind half the clubs in the Premier League.
I wouldn't think, certainly a few of them anyway.
We've got the World Cup Russian money.
Right.
I totally agree with you.
We've got the World Cup coming in Qatar.
And as a result, it's not this summer as it should be.
It's going to be in our winter.
And my issue with that is, I saw FIFA, for example.
You know, FIFA's been all over Pride Month and talking about we should be celebrating LGBT equality and gay rights and so on.
And yet they've sold their most prestigious tournament, the World Cup, to Qatar, where it's illegal to be gay.
There's a lot of hypocrisy again there, isn't there?
Absolutely.
Well, you know, listen, we're not silly.
You're a clever man.
You know, why has it ended up there?
You'd have to, you know, why have we had all these problems with Set Blatter, Platini, and all these people?
It's all.
Is it corruption, Harry?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, it's got to be, innit?
Why do they get these tournaments?
You know, you see the Russians, you know, you see Putin with Johnny Fant, what's his name, Infantini or whatever his name is.
You know, he's got to give him a lovely nice, I don't know whether it was a gold watch or what he was getting off him one day.
But, you know, listen, that's how it works, unfortunately.
So we'll end up with tournaments, you know, in places like that because it suits the people to make the decisions.
Yeah.
Harry, great to talk to you.
Really appreciate it.
It's a complex issue, but I think in the end.
You're right.
And I think there's so much hypocrisy about all this.
Money will talk and the hypocrites should talk.
Yeah, Louis, for sure.
Money will talk.
Hypocrites should take a back seat.
Great to talk to you, Harry.
And you, Piers.
Well done, mate.
Bye.
All the best.
Hypocrites Should Take Back Seat 00:00:54
Well, finally tonight, I've got a 10-year-old little girl who I'm proud to call my daughter.
But thankfully, she doesn't attend the Burgess Hill Girls' School, a couple of miles from where I grew up.
Well, the word daughter is now apparently offensive.
Yeah, the teacher of this school, who's a private girls' school in Leafy, West Sussex, won't call her pupils girls because she says there are so many gender options available.
This label says I use the word students instead of girls.
But when you're writing to parents, it's difficult not to use the word daughters sometimes.
Child or children suggest someone too young.
You can't use the word daughters all the time about someone's little girl.
Let me help you, headmistress.
Can I call you headmistress?
Little girls are somebody's daughters.
Stop the madness.
That's simple tonight.
Whatever you're doing tonight.
Keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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