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July 13, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:40
20220713_piers-morgan-uncensored-bill-bratton-dame-prue-lei
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Westminster Election Momentum 00:07:48
I'm Piers Morgan uncensored.
Tonight a sixth pack of Tories survive in the race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, but they don't include Jeremy Hunt and Nadeem Zahawi.
We have all the latest live from Westminster.
Cops in crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.
America's most famous police chief, Bill Bratton, joins me live to discuss the emergency in police trust.
And Bakos Dame Prue Leith on her controversial new campaign, Prassis Dying, and why she's taking on her own politician's son about it.
I think he's quite wrong.
First of all, I'm hoping that he will not manage to muster all his mates in Parliament to vote against it and that I will manage to persuade him.
Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan, Uncensored.
Tonight, our shocking footage from the Evalde, Texas, school shooting shows the most cowardly moment in policing history and when London's met police in meltdown.
I'm talking live to America's most famous cop, Bill Bratton.
the only man to run police departments in LA and New York, America's two biggest cities.
That's coming up.
The first breaking news.
Nadeem Zahawi and Jeremy Hund are booted out of the race to lead the Conservative Party.
Six candidates remain in the battle to be Britain's next Prime Minister.
Talk to you the political letter.
Kate McCann is live in the hotbed of Westminster.
Kate, good evening to you.
We're down to six and two quite big beasts who would have fancied their chances of winning gone.
That's right.
Jeremy Hunt and Nadeem Zahawi, as you say.
Piers, I just have to reference the music you might be able to hear because there is a party going on over the wall behind me.
It is in fact a party linked to Penny Mordent, who has had a very, very good day on the campaign trail here in Westminster.
She was essentially the surprise this afternoon in that announcement at five o'clock because we knew that Rishi Sunak was probably going to be leading the pack and he was with 80 odd votes.
But Penny Morden had a significant showing among MPs after her launch earlier on today.
And it has to be said the momentum at the moment is behind her.
Liz Trust is due to launch her campaign tomorrow, but the pressure is on for her to perform, to gather up those votes from Jeremy Hunt and Nadeem Zahawi, and the pressure tonight too, on Kemi Badenock and others in the campaign who are at the bottom end of voting, including Tom Tugenhat and Siwella Breverman, to essentially bin themselves out of the race and throw their weight behind somebody else.
Because the right wing of the Conservative Party is really worried that potentially there could be a bunfight to try and run off against Rishi Sunak and they really, really do not want the former Chancellor to be the next Prime Minister.
And if you're Rishi and you're the favourite at the moment you're looking at all this and thinking the real problem could be Penny Morden.
She's got all the momentum so he will tactically be trying to stop her becoming the person he has to face off against.
How would he do that?
Well at the moment the Rishi Sunak campaign think all they need to do is essentially keep the focus on why he is the best candidate for the job and they've got some polling that shows that he could do well potentially against Sir Keir Starmer.
They're not particularly worried about either one of Penny Morden's or Liz Truss at this stage in the competition because they are relying on the fact that the right wing of the Conservative Party are so divided over which candidate to back to try and prevent him from winning this race that essentially unless they get their act together within the next 24 hours he could well be fairly safe to sail through the next stage of the vote tomorrow.
There will only be one vote tomorrow not two and there probably will only be one person knocked out tomorrow so Rishi will make it through this next stage and into the weekend.
I think though, Piers, there are some big questions about whether Rishi Sunak's campaign is inspiring enough, whether it is a little bit too slick for his own good.
Even some of his supporters tonight are wondering whether he needs to create a bit of chaos and a bit of momentum to challenge those like Penny Mordens who are getting people here in Westminster excited.
Do you know what?
I think the last thing we need after Boris Johnson and his shambolic regime is chaos.
I actually like the fact that actually Rishi seems quite calm.
I thought Penny Morden did a very good launch today.
You know, originally I thought, you know, it might be Rishi v. Liz Truss.
I'm not so sure now.
I thought she was very assured today, Penny Morden.
She looked to me like a potential leader.
Yeah, and I think that's actually surprised some people here in Westminster.
Don't get me wrong, her campaign does have some problems and she may well come up against some roadblocks.
And it's not always the person who looks like they're the front runner that ends up in the final two.
There are some questions around, for example, her views on trans rights, on women's rights, on what exactly a woman ought to be.
She did try and head some of those off today, but those questions linger tonight and it's more about her record, people not knowing quite enough about her.
And secondly, Piers, you're right.
This is a vote that appeals to the Conservative Party.
This is not about the wider electorate.
So actually, the fact that Rishi Zunak is predictable, the fact that people know what he's about and the fact that he's already been in government may well appeal to the electorate in this case, which is Conservatives.
And it was interesting because her Achilles heel is supposedly about women, but she actually directly took that onto that.
I thought in rather a clever way, embracing humour and then an emphatic comment about what she thinks a woman is.
Let's go with the humour first.
She said this about Margaret Thatcher and one of her previous top people.
I think it was Margaret Thatcher that said that every Prime Minister needs a Willie.
A woman like me doesn't have one.
Very funny.
And then she said this about what a woman is.
A quick one and a straightforward one.
How would you define a woman?
I'm a woman.
I am biologically a woman.
And I can tell you, Chris, that if you have been in the Royal Navy and you have competed physically against men, you understand the biological difference between men and women.
You know, I thought that she showed in both those responses, one, humour and a knowledge of history of the party.
It was Willie Whitelaw, of course, that Maggie Thatcher was talking about.
But secondly, I thought reminding people she was a Royal Navy reservist, big tick, I would think, with Conservative Party membership, but also an emphatic statement really there about what is the burning issue of the day, which is this whole issue of whether transgender athletes can compete against women, for example.
I thought she pretty well nailed that quite well.
Look, I think even her supporters would concede that yes, she did go some way to nailing that today.
But the reason why she's being asked this question is because she has previously said that trans women are women.
And she said it at the dispatch box in the House of Commons.
And I think she's pretty much the only person in the government who's done that, who's gone that far.
And that's the reason why people are asking for her views about women, what exactly a woman is, how you would define a woman, and that whole conversation.
Her supporters today, after her launch, believe that she went some way to trying to tackle that issue, but they acknowledge that that question will probably come back around again.
And I think this point about the fact that some people suggest that Penny Morden has taken different views on the same issue over time, that might be a problem for her when she has to face the voters around the country when there are televised hustings when journalists can put those questions to her.
And it's worth saying, Piers, you know, she did take questions from the floor today from journalists, which other campaigns have not done, and certainly in a much more free way than other campaigns who've had a list of preferred journalists, if you like, and not allowed others to get in.
Summer Travel Chaos Explained 00:05:47
It swings and roundabouts, but I think she could have a bumpy ride on some of the later stages.
Yeah, it's going to be very interesting, but she's certainly put herself right in the frame.
Kate, great to talk to you.
I'm sure we'll be back tomorrow.
So bring me some more hot golf tomorrow, please.
I will.
Well, next break in travel news, and of course, it's total chaos.
British Royal Unions have called another strike.
They'll bring the country to a standstill again on the 27th of July.
And if you want a holiday, well, good luck with that.
Interminable queues, bursting departure halls, bedlam of passport control.
Must have been lucky enough to even get a flight.
Here's a taste from passengers grounded at a currently seemingly paralysed Heathrow.
London Heathrow today, London, Heathrow today.
We've been here five, six hours.
No one can find our bags.
Everyone's just wandering around.
I'm begging: if you are flying anywhere in the next few weeks, get there four hours early.
No, no, no, no.
Just about sums it up.
Well, I'm joined by aviation analyst and travel expert, Alex Vicheres.
Alex, good to talk to you.
Heathrow, what a complete and utter shambles Heathrow has become.
They're even now putting a limit on the number of passengers that can go in.
I think it's 100,000, which is 4,000 off what it normally is per day.
What is going on?
How has it come to this?
It's chaos, Piers.
And you know what?
I mean, if we look at Heathrow, for example, this is Britain's hub airport, the airport that has been vying for expansion for so long, seemingly completely unable to cope now that passengers have returned in significant numbers, but also realizing that, wow, we have no staff anywhere, no baggage handlers, no ground staff, following all those redundancies.
And it's left the airport, Britain's hub airport, having to tell the world's airlines, don't fly your passengers out of here.
Or rather, if you are going to fly your passengers out of here, we can only have 100,000 a day.
Just a reminder, Piers, in 2019, they would have about 125,000 passengers per day.
So it is pretty chaotic.
And I think we need some honesty here.
The worst is not yet over.
I mean, the worst hasn't yet come because the kids in the UK, the students, the pupils, they haven't yet broken up.
We're going to see disruption intensify.
And I think it'll be far more honest to be honest about that before things smoothen out from kind of mid-September onwards.
Why is it that some airlines like Ryanair seem to have got this right and are doing really well?
They had the sort of prior planning part of all this sorted, but others have got it completely wrong.
And why is Heathrow itself got it so hopelessly wrong in predicting traffic and so on?
You've got the famous European low-cost airline Ryanair, and I just spoke with the Sunday Times about this this past weekend.
It really comes down to the fact that they did not get rid of as many staff as other airlines, nowhere near on the same level.
O'Leary, their outspoken kind of bullish CEO, said that he wanted to exercise every other option, including unpaid leave during the pandemic, rather than simply pursue those tens of thousands of redundancies.
British Airways, as a reminder, removed a third of their workforce, 13,000 staff members, now scratching their heads that they haven't got staff nine months later to be able to deliver the summer service that they had sold.
And that's another problem that we face here: many of these airlines with the airports were so ambitious for summer 22, they have ultimately sold a schedule that they can't deliver because their staffing levels are anything but normal to be able to deliver as if it were a normal year.
And that's why we're in this situation.
And I don't think we're going to get much honesty going forward about practicalities of what people can do and how the government can work with the airlines and the sector because we've got this kind of weird zombie government now in the middle of a leadership campaign.
We're already in late July.
And so I think they're going to think, well, kind of let these rough few weeks get out of the way before they can take it.
But for most people, these rough few weeks are the holiday they've been waiting for in some cases for nearly three years, right?
After a pandemic.
And now there's going to be no trains to get them to the airport anyway.
And if they do get there, the flight may have been cancelled and all hell will break loose on the ground as well.
I think it's a complete disgrace, particularly from an industry that was so bailed out by the government through the pandemic.
This just comes down to bad management.
Bad, bad management.
Bottom line, right?
In one sense, you are, yeah, because the airlines could have seen this coming.
I wrote a column myself in January saying that the staffing levels were not adequate for the summer schedule they had sold.
The airlines will blame the government because they'll say that they were cornered with those erratic decision-making policies, the overnight amber plus, the Thursday night travel roulette from Grand Schatz in saying that they had to go ahead with the redundancies and the redundancies have now left all of these empty vacancies and therefore the disruption.
So, you know, there are a variety of contributors here, but for passengers, I think try to arrive not too early, around three hours before, because too early doesn't achieve much.
And also, if you've got an iPhone, then pop an air tag into your luggage because luggage is being lost left, right, and center.
If you haven't got an iPhone, use a similar product like a smart tag and so on.
There's only so much the passenger can do, but in this scenario, it would be helpful if we heard about passenger rights.
But of course, if everyone knew their rights, these airlines will go bust.
I could give everyone a tip for nothing, which is only take hand luggage.
I've been doing that for years, and that way they never lose my luggage.
Alex, good to talk to you.
Take care.
Thank you.
Social Media and Policing Trust 00:13:11
Uncensored next: new security camera footage.
Shocking footage shows police delaying for over an hour while the school shooter in Avalde, Texas slaughtered 19 children.
One cop even used hand sanitizer rather than engage the shooter.
They've got blood on their hands, these cows.
It was a devastating blow for trust in the police.
So, how to restore faith in policing?
I'll ask top US cop, Bill Bratt, after the break.
Well, trust in policing is in crisis on both sides of the Atlantic.
So, what do we do about it?
On one side, a radical fringe wants to defund the police, tear down those broken institutions as they see it, and start again.
On the other, back the blues, spend, strengthen, support our cops, defend the police.
I'm with those, but it's not always easy.
Not when you see videos like the one I'm about to show you.
And warning, it is truly shocking.
This is shocking security camera footage of the school massacre in Evalde, Texas, where two teachers and 19 children were shot dead.
And it shows craven, cowardly police cowering in the corridor for more than an hour as the children were slain inside their classroom.
Two minutes later, Ramos strolls down the corridor.
A child turns to run for his life as the killer opens fire.
And just three minutes after that, armed police enter the building.
But within 60 seconds, they retreat, even as the government continues to fire at the kids.
Officers with ballistic shields, rifles and body armor then wait in the corridor for more than an hour as the massacre unfolds.
One checks his phone.
Another is seen sanitizing his aunt.
At one point, Sheriff's Deputy Felix Rubio has to be held back by his own colleagues in tears because his own 10-year-old daughter was inside.
She died.
Well, finally, at 12.50, 77 minutes after the gunman first entered the school, these armed officers eventually summons up the guts to go into that classroom and kill him, but not before 19 children.
That kind of policing is impossible to defend.
And on the subject of trust, how can we defend the racial disparity in the number of people killed by American police?
Or the sickening murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin?
Well, this is where it goes to.
This is where it ends up.
More shocking footage.
This time, a small child in Minneapolis, Floyd's home state, swinging punches at a cop and abusing him.
No respect whatsoever for the police.
In the UK, the Met police in London is beset by scandal after scandal.
The murder of Sarah Everard by Met police officer Wayne Cousins put the force's failings under a brutal international spotlight.
The force has been accused of institutional racism, homophobia, misogyny.
We're witnessing a massive breakdown here too in policing trust, much of it self-inflicted.
So how do we fix this mess and restore confidence in the police?
Well, Bill Bratton is a man to ask.
He's a former police chief in both New York and Los Angeles, as well as an advisor to the Met Police here in London.
Johnson, Bill, great to see you.
Thank you very much for coming on.
Good to be with you and your audience.
I wanted to start, if I may, with this shocking footage that's been leaked from the massacre in Evalde.
We don't normally see this kind of footage, and it's extremely harrowing.
But perhaps the most disturbing part of it is the inaction of all these armed police.
What did you make of it?
Well, it is almost impossible to explain the unexplainable.
We are handicapped in some respects by looking at video that's been edited, unedited.
We don't have the verbal aspect of it, the audio.
But just what we are looking at makes you angry.
Extraordinarily angry, particularly as somebody who spent 50 years in the police profession.
Can't explain it.
Certainly not going to try to justify it.
There's going to have to be a lot of very thorough investigation of what went wrong there because everything looked like it went wrong.
No supervision, no coordination, no organization.
And in some instances, maybe cowardice.
In some instances, bravery that was first exhibited in the first officers who went down the hall were shot at and then be treated.
It went against everything we trained for in American police since Holovine back in 1989, I think it was.
We train our officers, one of you, two of you, three of you, four of you, you go to the danger.
That's the expectation.
You take the oath of office and put that badge on.
Most of these officers did not go toward the danger and can't justify it.
Truly shocking.
On a wider point, Bill, I think you're the only top policeman to have run the police in both New York and LA.
You've been in this game a very long time and dealt with all sorts of crime.
You were famous for the broken window strategy where you take care of the lesser crimes in an effort to try and stem the tide of the more serious crimes.
And it was very successful.
When you've looked at what's been going on with crime in America, but also in London, you came over here to try and advise the beleaguered Met Police.
Are there parallels and what should be done to restore trust in the police?
There are extraordinary parallels between British police services and American police forces.
The issue of broken windows that, well, I'm noted for my support of and implementation of that strategy dealing with so-called quality of life, victimless crime.
There's a more famous individual, Sir Robert Peel, your first head of the Metropolitan Police Prime Minister, in his very famous nine principles of policing, which is the foundation I stand on.
The first one is the basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
In my country, in your country, in the 70s, 80s, into the 90s, and unfortunately in some communities even today, the emphasis was strictly on responding to crime.
It wasn't believed the police could prevent it.
And the focus and prioritization was serious crime with almost total neglect of the so-called broken windows or quality of life offenses of loitering, public drunkenness, graffiti, prostitution, the hooligans hanging on the corner all night long, keeping you awake.
My rise in American policing was, I recognized very early on, that you need to focus on both serious crime and quality of life.
And why quality of life is what people see every day.
And it might be victimless in the sense you don't have a specific victim, but what has destroyed our neighborhoods?
They deteriorate.
What is destroyed is confidence in police and government that we care and can be effective.
The turnout of New York City began in the subways when we started focusing on the 5,000 homeless, or you call it sleeping rough, in our subways, the 250,000 people day not paying the fare, the aggressive begging, the defeating.
By focusing on that, the ridership began to feel more secure.
Based on that success, Rudy Giuliani hired me in 1994.
Interestingly enough, I learned from the Metropolitan Police, the British Police Services, that's where I got Sir Robert Peel's nine principles.
Sir Robert Mark visited Boston in 1975 and met a very impressionable young sergeant named Bill Bratton.
And I marry those nine principles.
That is the foundation of your new Net Commissioner, Samark Raleigh.
He is really going to focus on policing by consent.
The reason you call police services in your country versus police forces in my country is this idea that you're there to serve and service the community.
And you try to do that with the minimum of force.
In your country, I'm always amazed, being quite frank with you, that the majority of your officers still vote when it comes to a vote to not carry firearms because they feel that will reduce the confidence that the public has in them and the idea that they are a police service.
They're not a force.
It's one of the problems for police, both in America and the UK, and indeed everywhere at the moment, that social media can very quickly amplify anything, good, bad, and ugly.
You know, I'm thinking of the George Floyd video.
If we'd never seen the video, which came onto social media via someone's cell phone, if we hadn't seen that, I doubt it would have ignited the kind of firestorm that happened.
Once you saw it, you couldn't unsee it.
And the reaction of that little boy in the earlier clip abusing police in Minneapolis can probably be charted right back to all the furore around George Floyd's death and the Black Lives Matter protest and so on.
And the same here with the Sarah Everard story, where you have a serving police officer kidnapping and murdering a beautiful young woman.
Again, social media drove that story to a tremendous height of rage by the public.
How significant do you think it is, social media?
And how do responsible police forces deal with this?
It's very significant, but I look at it from the perspective of a plus and a minus.
The minus is that incidents can be amplified and magnified in a very significant way.
We saw that with George Floyd going back to Rodney King back in the early 90s, the first time videotaping was aired to American television before social media even occurred and what that brought about in America.
When I talk about the plus and the minus, the plus side of it is police can use social media to their benefit, which I certainly have done in Los Angeles, in New York, with the billions of followers who access Twitter sites, Facebook sites.
The idea of us telling our story from our perspective and sometimes with more facts than the media on social media might have.
In the Boston Marathon bombing back in 2013, the then police commissioner Ed Davis was able through his newly created Twitter site, Boston Police, was able to very quickly refute reportage, reporting by the New York Post and the CNN News Network that was erroneous, erroneous information in terms of who the suspects were, what was happening.
I remember that, Bill, because I was actually at CNN at the time.
I was on air covering that story.
And I remember that.
You're quite right.
You've done this book, The Profession, a Memoir of Policing in America.
How important is something that I think is hugely important, what I think my viewers probably feel is very important, physical presence of police on the streets.
That if you cut the number of officers on the streets, if you cut the visibility, that automatically crime goes up.
I am a big believer in that, the importance of visibility, the importance of not just visibility, but the police being actively seen doing something.
And it doesn't necessarily mean enforcing.
It means greeting.
How are you?
Good day.
Nice to see you.
Eye contact.
I find it infuriating when I'm walking down the street and I see a police officer coming toward me and they don't make eye contact.
Recently, I was in London two weeks ago for the policy exchange to discuss the new Metropolitan Police Commission selection process.
And I noticed that you very seldom see police in London now, other than around major institutions.
I did a presentation 10 Downing Street, certainly down by the palace.
But you see the police cars racing by, but you just don't see walking offices.
Maybe it's the area that I was in.
I was up in the Hyde Park, Marble Arch area, and then down by the government offices.
But the mistake I think that happened in your country, Piers, was a number of years ago, you effectively, well ahead of us, defunded your police.
Family Burden and Suicide 00:09:32
Yes.
You cut the police budget by 20%.
You closed Graham's Hill.
You sold off half your police stations.
And you have not recovered.
Huge mistake.
We took 20,000 police off the street.
Yeah, we took 20,000 cops off the street.
It was a catastrophic mistake.
And we've been playing catch up ever since.
And I know that you believed in that.
Bill, I could talk to you for a lot longer.
Thank you for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
No one has better credentials about policing than you, as we've just heard.
So thank you very much indeed for sparing the time.
Not the best.
Francis are next.
Should you let your family have a say in your right to die?
Bake Off star Dame Prue Leith thinks not.
Piers, we would only be having this conversation when I was within six months of dying.
I don't believe that my son would ruin, make my last six months even more distressing by refusing me that.
The great British Bake Off star, Dame Prue Leith, is a passionate advocate for assisted dying, which at the moment remains illegal in Britain.
Her son, the Conservative MP Danny Kruger, completely disagrees.
He spoke out recently in Parliament against assisted dying in a debate which was held after a petition reached 100,000 signatures.
Over half the people in other countries where assisted dying is legal choose it because they feel they are a burden to their families.
Tragically, a lot also say that they are lonely.
Isn't this terrible?
People getting the state to help to kill them because they don't want to be a burden on a family that never visits them.
Talk to any hospice manager about relatives and they will quietly confirm it.
There are a lot of people who want Granny or Grandpa to hurry up and die.
Well here we have a very famous mother and her nearly as famous political son, loggerheads, on a fascinating debate.
Well I spoke to Dame Prue Leith a little earlier about this.
Well I'm joined now by Prue Leith.
Prue, I'd lovely to talk to you.
Hello, Piers.
This is a very serious subject and opinions have been raging on both sides about it.
Why do you feel so passionately about this issue?
Well I suppose it's because I'm 82 and heading for the big decision.
But I really, I mean I started getting interested in the whole subject when my elder brother died and he died a really horrible death.
And recently my younger brother died and he died at home with his family around him and he didn't have assisted suicide because he didn't need it, but he had the sort of death that I think that people who want assisted suicide would dearly love to have, you know, at home, their own bed, surrounded by their family.
What is very interesting Prue is that in many states in America including California and New Jersey, Washington, Vermont, in many of the states assisted suicide is completely legal.
It's legal in many parts of Australia.
It's legal I think in Canada now.
So there are lots of countries in the world where assisted suicide is now a legal practice.
And what's more, it's being, you know, it looks as if Jersey, Scotland will get there before us.
I mean, it's only the UK government that has been so deliberate.
To play devil's advocate for a moment, there are reports out of Oregon, for example, where 53% of patients who were helped to die gave as a reason that they were a burden on family, friends and carers rather than citing pain or fear of pain.
Are you concerned about that part of it?
Yes, I think that, first of all, I think it's a legitimate reason.
If you know that you are causing your family a lot of anxiety and anxiousness And worry about you, and you are either in huge pain or not enjoying your life, then it's a valid reason.
I mean, I'm not saying for a minute that people should want to commit suicide or have an assisted death just because they're a burden.
But being a burden is one of the things that is so distressing.
I mean, see, this is where I think that the slippery slope argument, which I think Gordon Brown and others have espoused.
I do think there is a concern there, isn't there?
Where you're from a lovely family of well-intentioned people, I have no doubt.
However, there are lots of families which perhaps are not quite so well-intentioned to their oldest and not so dearest, who, particularly if there's money perhaps lurking in wills and so on, would be tempted potentially to really make these people feel they are a massive burden and should shuffle off this mortal coil very sharpish.
Yeah, I mean, that is a really serious worry.
I mean, first of all, I think we have to have enough safeguards to be absolutely certain that this is the patient or the person's real choice and that they're not being in any way coerced.
And there are ways to do that.
But it does require, you know, a lot of interviews and care.
But also, I think, I really think this is a bit of a bogeyman that doesn't, although it does exist, it is quite small.
One of your sons is a Tory MP who's actually vehemently opposed this legislation.
So what are you going to do if you decide in a few years' time you've become a massive burden?
And he says, sorry, mum, I'm not doing it.
Well, that's going to be a real problem because we are devoted to each other.
And he has generally very principled objections.
I think he's quite wrong.
But I hope he'll, I'm hoping I'll manage to, first of all, I'm hoping that he will not manage to muster all his mates in parliament to vote against it, and that I will manage to persuade him before I get there.
I mean, it's a fascinating situation where your own son is literally in the houses of parliament campaigning for the complete opposite.
Many families have disagreements about all sorts of things.
We happen to have one about this.
But I really think, I honestly believe that I should be in control of my own life.
I mean, I think the idea that somehow human life is so sacred.
I mean, sacred to whom?
It's not sacred to me.
And it's my life.
I'm not sure if I can do it.
No, but you see, okay, so here's again though.
I get it.
But here's the thing.
If I talk to your son about this, I'm sure he'd say, well, that's fine.
That might be her view, my mother's view.
But actually, I love my mother and I don't want to lose my mother and I want to get every moment I can out of her.
And if she's not in searing agony, but is simply drifting towards the end of her life, I don't want her to be pulling the plug.
Piers, we would only be having this conversation when I was within six months of dying.
I don't believe that my son would ruin, make my last six months even more distressing by refusing me that.
I think he would argue.
I don't want to speak for him, but I think from the arguments he's put forward, he would probably argue to that point.
I'm sure he would.
He would say that your decision would compound his distress.
What about his right to not let you take your life?
No, I'm sorry.
When it comes to my own life, it's my life.
Tough.
He's going to lose me within six months anyway.
So, you know, man up and bear us a few months earlier or a few weeks earlier.
Prue, Leith, it's a fascinating debate, not least your own situation with your own family.
But fortunately, you're looking in rude health, so we won't have to encounter this issue, I would imagine, for a very long time to come, thankfully.
But thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it.
There are so many people who are not in rude health, and we need to think about them.
Yeah.
We do.
It's an interesting debate.
And as you say, most of the public are with you, not your son.
Yeah.
Prue, great to talk to you.
Bye-bye.
Well on sense said next, this could get quite fiery.
Tonight's Piers Pack.
Journalist Ash Sarka last screaming at me on Good Morning Britain.
And Tom TV presenter Julia Hartley Brewer, who screams at me morning, noon and night.
It's not going to be pretty.
Join us after the break.
Well, tonight's Piers Pack, the last time I appeared on television with one of these ladies, this happened.
Trans Athletes in Women's Sport 00:08:37
Tell you what I'd do, Ash.
I'd go and check out some basic facts about your hero, Obama.
He's not my hero.
How hero is.
You didn't plan your protest against him.
Well, I'm happy to still call myself an idiot, identify as an idiot.
Do you still identify as Common?
All day, every day.
Welcome back, Ash.
It's been a while.
And Juliet, lovely to see you, Julia Hartley Brewer, who's a talk-TV presenter.
I want to start with women, because Penny Morden today has been coming under a bit of flack for her views about women.
Said two things today, which I suspect will ruffle probably all the right feathers.
Take a look at these.
I think it was Margaret Thatcher that said that every prime minister needs a Willie.
A woman like me doesn't have one.
A quick one and a straightforward one.
How would you define a woman?
I'm a woman.
I am biologically a woman.
And I can tell you, Chris, that if you have been in the Royal Navy and you have competed physically against men, you understand the biological difference between men and women.
Well, apart from the fact that I loved her campaign slogan, PM for PM, which has a great ring to it.
All right, Ash Sarka, you identify as a woman?
Sometimes.
Always?
Always.
You are a woman.
What is a woman to you?
So for me, a woman is someone who is an adult, who is human and is female.
And female is both a biological category where we're talking about biological sex and a gender category.
So depending on what we're talking about, if you're saying best female rapper, no one's checking chromosomes.
If you're talking about female reproductive health, you know, people aren't just talking about your social life.
It can be a biological or a gender category.
So when, for example, the hot issue of the day, when you have trans women athletes who are competing against women born to female biological bodies, do you think that's fair?
Do I think that's fair?
I think you'd have to take a look at the whole picture.
Well, Leah Thomas the swimmer, for example.
So it might be that in five to ten years, when you have much more trans athletes breaking through and you might see cisgender women at a disadvantage, you have to go, let's rejig the system in a way which can protect women's sport and include trans people.
I think right now, because trans people have been so marginalised for...
See, here's my problem.
You're a smart young lady, right?
I follow you on Twitter.
You're very smart.
You're very intellectually rigorous about stuff.
You know, you know, when you look at stuff like Leah Thomas demolishing women in the pool in America, that this isn't fair.
And you can support, as I do, and you do, trans rights, defenders, and equality and understand that on issues like sport, it is unfair.
The thing that I'm saying is that we haven't had a trans Olympic medalist yet, female sports.
We've had a trans hang on.
We've had a trans weightlifter in the New Zealand Olympics team depriving a woman born to a female body.
Oh, please stop saying woman born to a female body.
There's only one kind.
We're not a variant of women.
There's only one kind of woman.
I'm not a cis woman.
I'm not a woman born to...
I'm a woman.
That's all I am.
I'm a woman.
And the other kind aren't women.
And I guess my point...
Fair enough.
And my point about this, I think, would be that in that case, this weightlifter was unsuccessful competing against men, suddenly becomes Olympic standard as a woman and deprives an actual woman of being able to get an Olympic place.
So she was also unsuccessful competing against women in the Olympics.
Well, she did badly in the Olympics, but she still got to the Olympics.
She's an Olympian, and yet as a man, she never got anywhere near it.
I just don't think that there's enough evidence that women as a sex are en masse being drummed out of elite sport.
And the thing that I would say...
They are, but they are.
Ash, that's just wrong.
We're seeing it in sprinting, we're seeing it in rugby, we're seeing it in cricket, we're seeing it in swimming, we're seeing it everywhere.
As there are more and more trans people coming out as trans, and I've got absolute respect for that.
But as more and more people do it, I had Lord Winston on last night who couldn't have been clearer.
There is biological sex and there is gender, and they are completely different things.
And look, I'm not here to talk about, you know, this is biological sex missisgender.
When it comes to the condition of trans people in this country, we know that they're disproportionately excluded from using athletic and healthcare facilities.
We also know...
No, we don't.
Yeah, they are.
Yeah, there are evidence for that.
There are reports that trans people...
Well, yeah, because that's all we've got to go on.
That shows that trans people use gyms, use athletics facilities at far lower rates than cisgender people.
So I'd say, let's deal with that.
The other things I'd say, let's deal with, is, look, the day-to-day problems trans people face aren't about whether or not they can compete in the Olympics.
We're talking about when in eight trans people report being assaulted or abused at their place of work by colleague or customer within the last 12 months.
A quarter of all trans people will experience homelessness at some point in their lives.
And I think that your audience are home empathy.
Right.
So your audience are home empathy.
So that's important.
And you're unempathetic.
That's important to know.
And I hate to hear that.
And I'm aware of that.
So why choose the hill to go on?
I want to have an unfair advantage over women in sport.
Why not just say, we get it, that's unfair, and bring people with them as they move towards proper fairness and equality.
No community is a monolith, all right?
No community is a monolith.
And you're going to have some trans people who go, for me, the really important thing is, I want to participate in sport.
That's going to be, by its definition, because it's elite sport, a really small number of people.
I want to move on, but the problem is it is getting more and more people.
Juliet, let's talk about COVID and Novette Djokovic, because you've been going at it on Twitter, right?
So I don't think you should be allowed anywhere near the US Open because America, if I want to go to America, which I will be quite soon, I have to take a test and show my vaccination status.
That's it.
So does he.
Yeah.
So he shouldn't be allowed to play, right?
Well, he has to abide by the rules, same rules everyone else has to.
Although, interestingly, in 2020, everyone seemed quite happy for sportsmen and women to have completely different rules than the rest of us, being able to travel to things like the Australian Open when other people couldn't even get home to see their families.
Yeah, he's not asking for special treatment, though.
He simply said, I'm not vaccinated.
I'm not showing my vaccine status and therefore I can't play in the US Open.
The whole point is, it's this stupid rule.
Your vaccine protects you.
Anyone who's taken a vaccine, it protects them.
We know with Omicron, it doesn't actually provide much protection at all from infection.
It does protect you from getting seriously illegal.
The whole point is it stops you from dying.
I mean, that's the whole point of the vaccine.
Piers, a young, healthy man, what is he in his 30s?
His chances of dying.
You're a young, healthy woman.
You've been jabbed, right?
I have chosen to disclose my jab status when I chose to disclose that.
You sound like one of those people talking about transport.
Well, that's my business.
But whether one chooses to actually show that at a border, you can choose.
This is the thing.
You should be able to make a choice.
Bodily autonomy is the most fundamental human right.
Novak Trojovich isn't asking for special treatment.
I think it's incredible he's standing by his principles.
He's a young, healthy man.
He's a peak of physical fitness.
But he's also a role model who will have definitely deterred a lot of people who perhaps should have the job.
A role model for sports people standing up for their principles.
Huge role models.
Like the England footballers who take a knee for Black Lives Matter, but then happily go and compete to the World Cup in Qatar, where we have outrageous treatment of gay people.
I've no problem with them taking the knee.
I think it's good with the same knee.
In fact, funny enough, when the players take the knee at Arsenal when I go, the entire crowd of 60,000 people, white, black, and anytime, they all cheer.
I don't hear a single dissenting voice.
But it's hypocrisy because you can't do that and then go and play in Qatar.
Ash, this pack of LERPAC has nearly like doubled in price in the last few months.
Is that the 9%?
Most 335, now 489, I'm sorry.
So 50% or more rise, right?
This is indicative of what's going on with prices everywhere.
We're choosing a new prime minister.
We can talk about all the culture war stuff, and I think a lot of it is relevant and important.
Actually, for most of our viewers around the world, cost of living, cost of butter and margarine.
And when you look at the costs of heating on top of the increase of the price of fuel, the price of food, the price of rent, everything getting more expensive, you know what's not going up?
People's petty packets.
And in that kind of context, what political party is standing up for those people?
There's no major political party in this country saying absolutely everyone deserves a matching inflation pay rise.
So effectively, people are being told you're going to be made poorer, deal with it.
And I think there's only so long a society can hold itself together under those kinds of conditions.
Julia, Rishi's soon like a favourite at the moment, Penny Morden making a march.
Cost of Living Crisis 00:00:42
The problem is in a poll that came out today, apparently at least two people who were asked in the poll thought she was Adele.
Just take a look.
But the point being, she doesn't have much recognition.
We've got a few seconds left.
There we are.
Do you think she can beat Rishi?
I think she can.
I think it's all to play for.
Anyone making predictions right now is probably a fool.
I think the second preferences is going to be where it all goes, and that could all change the next day.
And Ash Boris said he went today with his head held high.
Last thought from you.
I mean, this is a man with an almost pathological lack of self-awareness on that.
He should have gone with his head held in shame.
That's it.
Thank you to my panel.
Actually, quite civilized.
Come back.
I liked it.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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