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July 18, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:41
20220718_piers-morgan-uncensored-ballot-result-tom-bower-an
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Sunak Likely to Win 00:06:28
I'm Piers Morgan on Censor.
Tonight, as Britain roasts on possibly the hottest day in history, the race to become Prime Minister is also heating up.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss put out a further debate.
They're not been on this show either.
And people can't stand the heat of debates.
Well, get out of the politics kitchen.
Ex result in due in moments.
We'll bring it to you live.
We'll also speak to author Tom Barrama's explosive new book on Megan and Harry's Rip with the Royal Family.
And we'll talk to Nelson Mandela's grandson and Abba for his reaction on Harry's speech today to the UN on Mandela Day.
Well first tonight and the race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is heating up.
This is the scene at the 1922 committee where the result of a third vote in the Conservative Leadership Contest is due any moment.
Now, one person will be knocked out imminently.
We'll talk to you B's Bully Wellington Kate McCann is at Westminster awaiting the result.
And presumably, Kate, you're just slowly frying to death as you wait, are you?
I am Piers and you'll be pleased to know I'm also being bitten by ants because they are also back.
Apparently it's not too hot for them today on College Green but I don't think I will be as uncomfortable still as those MPs in that room because there are many of them who just don't know which way this competition is going to go all day long in Westminster.
Just going to interrupt you there.
We're going to go live to Graham Brady with a result.
Mordant 82.
Sunak 115.
Truss 71.
Tugandat 31.
So Tom Tugandat is eliminated from the election.
The other candidates are able to go forward to a fourth ballot which will take place tomorrow between 1 and 3 p.m. with the results announced at 4pm.
Very much.
We'll go back to Kate McCann.
Not many surprises really there, Kate.
Tom Tugenhart out, only getting 31 votes there.
What do you think of the other results?
Anything we can read into it?
Yes, I think there probably is actually.
Rishi Sunak getting 115 there up from 101.
That's big because remember there were only 27 votes in theory in this.
So for him to have built 14, that means he's sustaining the progress that he was.
So he's keeping the momentum going in his campaign.
But he's very close to that 120 mark.
And I was speaking to MPs today in the Commons who were saying there is no way that he's going to reach 120.
So he'll be very happy with that 115.
I think Penny Morden, now look, she's gone from 83 to 82 today.
Now that is backwards, but it's not as backwards as potentially things could have gone for her.
And interestingly, today I was speaking to a group of MPs who've been voting as some kind of block who were saying that in their eyes they thought it was really important that Rishi Sunak moved forward convincingly and that they may well lend some of the votes that had gone to Penny Mordant to him at this stage of the campaign, which could then go back to her tomorrow.
Sounds complicated, might not do her any favours, but it looks like that potentially might have happened today.
And Liz Truss, now she's gone from 64 to 71 votes.
Now, that's reasonably pleasing for her.
It's potentially not as much as she would have wanted to put on over the weekend, but I think she will still be pleased that she is making some progress because there had been a suggestion that she may well go backwards.
So reassured perhaps for her and onto the next stage tomorrow.
My bet is still that it ends up Sunak the Truss and Sunak becomes Prime Minister, which is an unusual scenario because normally he who wields the blade rarely wins, but I think he will in this case.
I think there's certainly an argument for that.
It's definitely easier to see Rishi Sunak's path to power than it is potentially for some of the others.
If it is Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss that go to the membership, then that does become unpredictable in some ways because Liz Trust does appeal to certain groups of the Tory membership, but not necessarily to others.
And I think Rishi Sunak's team have been privately quite pleased with the polling that they have seen, which shows that he is potentially one of the candidates that could beat Kier Starmer in an election.
And remember, that's very, very important to Conservative voters.
So that might be the deciding factor if it's those two.
I wouldn't necessarily rule out Penny Mordant yet.
There are some who say that Kenny Badenock's votes could split in a couple of different directions that may well keep her going.
She could try and regain things, but I think for Penny Mordant, people have seen her in the debates over the last couple of days and they've not necessarily seen a candidate that they thought was really as inspiring potentially as they hoped she would be.
Yeah, and finally, the two frontrunners really were my eyes anyway, Rishi and Liz Truss, both pulled out of the Sky News debate due to take place tonight, I think.
I mean, to me, they haven't come on this show, any of the candidates.
Pulling out of a debate that you've already agreed with a major network, I just think is pretty gutless, actually.
I mean, they should all be held to account as much as they've agreed to be held to account, which is not very much anyway.
Yeah, and I don't think you're going to find a journalist in the land who doesn't agree with you there, Piers.
We would all like to see these candidates put under scrutiny.
And there's been an argument from some quarters in the Conservative Party that if a few of them had faced more interviews, more media, more press, then they might have found this competition a little bit easier in some of those stages.
It might have clarified their arguments and tested them a little bit, because that's essentially what happens when someone points questions at you and you are forced to really come up with an answer.
I think I can understand from a Conservative Party perspective why they've chosen not to do that because you only had to take a look at Sir Keir Starmer's go in the Commons today when he rounded on Boris Johnson.
Yes, the current Prime Minister, but he'll do exactly the same with the next and used campaign tactics from each of those contenders that they made on television last night.
That is not a good look, whichever way you look at it.
And I think the morning after the night before, there was a lot of nervous energy around the Conservative Party today, wondering whether it was really all worth it and whether they ought not to try and avoid any more TV debates.
In fact, some reports that last night Rishi Sunak and Liz Trust were asking one another, what did we do that for?
Well, they did it to be publicly accountable.
That's the whole point of it.
Final question: How come you're so ice-cool tonight?
I mean, you're not sweating, you're not wheezing, you're not collapsing.
What's the secret?
The Threat of Diva Behavior 00:15:12
It's the hottest day in the history of the country.
Ladies don't sweat, Piers.
We don't sweat.
Well, not visibly, anyway.
You and Prince Andrew, then I don't think I want to be in that camp necessarily, but I have to admit that we have lots of people.
Not a place you want to find yourself, Ms. McCow.
Our lovely camera crews have brought water and I have a fan, which is just out of reach, but I would show you if I could.
Can you use the fan and go over to that idiot who shouts all the time and just do something with it?
I don't think a fan would cool him down, to be honest.
Nor do I.
Okay, we'll be back tomorrow.
It is heating up, thank you.
Well, Prince Harry is waded back into politics when nobody wanted him to, delivering a apparently a keynote speech at the United Nations in New York to mark Nelson Mandela Day for reasons that completely baffle me.
Can't think of anybody less qualified of the eight billion inhabitants of our planet to talk about Nelson Mandela than Harry.
Anyway, he decided to do that and bang on about stuff like climate change.
Let's take a listen.
We're living through a pandemic that continues to ravage communities in every corner of the globe.
Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all.
The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many.
And from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom.
We are witnessing a global assault for democracy.
And you have all got to take climate change seriously, even if I use private jets like a taxi service.
Do you hear me?
All of you?
Do you?
When did he become this miserable guy?
He's so miserable.
And pompous and po-faced.
Oh, I know.
It's when he met Megan.
All right, let's.
A little earlier I spoke to Ndaba Mandela.
He is Nelson Mandela's grandson.
He didn't even know Harry was making the keynote speech to celebrate his grandfather's legacy, let alone lecturing us all about climate change as he uses jets.
I had a wonderful 15-minute meeting with your grandfather many years ago, 2003.
I've never forgotten it, like most people who met him.
He was an extraordinary life force, one of the most inspiring people I've ever met in my life.
What was it like to be his grandson?
Of course, it's also quite amazing.
And I must say it's very humbling to see the admiration, the love and respect that he carries throughout the world.
And whenever people meet me and other family members, they are very much touched by that we're so close to the man.
So it's a great honor for me to be his grandson.
There's a lot of speculation today about Prince Harry making the speech at the UN in New York on Mandela Day and talking about your grandfather.
Do you think he was the right choice to make a keynote speech today that's getting so much attention?
Well, you know, our families do share relationships.
We've always been fond of Harry coming over to Johannesburg, and so has my grandfather over the years.
So for us, I mean, I believe that if there is a platform to communicate something, maybe an initiative perhaps, or something that needs to be implemented, I think anybody should really be able to take the platform and be able to put their money where their mouth is or to lead by example.
Did you know that he was making this speech?
I didn't know, to be honest.
I only found out on, I believe, Friday when I was actually speaking to one of your producers.
I was quite surprised, I must say.
Yeah.
But like I said, as long as there's something of substance in relation to our grandfather's values that he would like to implement, I don't see the problem.
Megan and Harry had a book written about them with their sort of tacit approval called Finding Freedom.
And obviously your grandfather was the long walk to freedom.
Do you see any obvious parallels between their battles for freedom?
Of course not.
There are no parallels at all, Piers, because you'll see one is obviously fighting for the dignity of black people against a vicious tyrant like Apartheid, obviously as opposed to one finding their own identity outside a said institution.
Obviously, these are very different things, but I guess, you know, how you define freedom for an individual can be different.
And maybe for them, it was a real struggle to finally make that decision, number one, and to also be able to carry out.
I mean, just because you got to that decision, it's always easier said than done.
So to some extent, maybe that's how they felt.
Obviously, those are definitely two worlds apart.
But you can see, yeah, I mean, to put it mildly, I mean, your grandfather spent 27 years in a 6x6 prison cell.
It's a rather different struggle, some might argue, than the struggle that Harry and Megan have had to leave a palace and go and live in a mansion.
Definitely towards the parts that they cannot be compared on any level, for sure.
But my friend, you yourself have also compared yourself to Nelson Mandela.
You talked about a long walk to the freedom of speech.
Wasn't that you, my friend?
Well, I think the example I use, and you're right to pick me up on it, but the example I use was I think your father was a great proponent of freedom of speech.
And I think he would absolutely have said that everyone, as you indeed have said in this interview, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I think he felt very strongly about that.
In fact, when I met him, he expressed himself in very forceful terms about a number of issues.
And I think he would have been incensed, actually, about the way that society is moving to try and suppress freedom of speech.
No, definitely.
Freedom of speech is one of the pinnacles of freedom, of course, of one's expression and obviously one's ultimate determination to lead one's own nation.
I mean, the great power of your grandfather was that he always practiced what he preached.
He never expected people to do something he wasn't prepared to do if he said do it.
I think the problem people have with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is they often, for instance, on climate change and carbon footprint and so on, they often practice a rather different thing to what they're preaching.
This is true.
This is true, Pierce.
You know, every year we have the World Economic Forum and you have all these heads of state coming in on their own private jets talking about climate change.
You know, so I think it's time we hold our leaders accountable and really let them put their money where their mouth is and say if they truly believe in climate change, whether it be Prince Harry, whether it be a head of state, people need to be held accountable at the end of the day.
Do you think Harry should stop using private jets if he wants to keep lecturing us about climate change?
I mean, like anybody, you know, who is putting their foot forward about a certain topic, they have to lead by example.
And that would have been absolutely the mantra of Nelson Mandela too.
100%.
And Dan, but it's great to talk to you.
You're a chip off the old block.
It's like talking to a younger version of your grandfather.
So I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you very much.
You've even got his love.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Pierce.
It was really great talking to you.
Hopefully I'll get to see you in the studio one of these days.
I would love that.
Next time you're in town, come in.
We'd love to see you.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you very much, Pierce.
Have a lovely evening.
Great characters of Mandela's, aren't they?
Well, we're joined now by royal biographer Tom Dow.
Tom, great to see you.
You've got this blockbuster book.
I've been reveling in your extracts.
Very juicy stuff.
First of all, your reaction.
Prince Harry popping up at the United Nations of all places on Nelson Mandela Day, preaching away about climate change again, having apparently got there by private jet again, preaching about politics in America, which no royal is supposed to ever do, so the constitution's been wound back and so on, whining about sort of the terrible, painful year he's had and all the rest of it.
What do you make of this?
Why does he do this?
What does he think he achieves by it?
Well, and also saying all that work to do in Africa, which he dedicated his life to, but propose now to paddle in the Pacific in Santa Monica.
Well, he does it because he needs a profile.
That's the only way they can get money by showing a profile and for Netflix.
Everything is built around the future documentary series to promote the Sussexes.
When you're as rankly hypocritical as Harry is, you know, preaching about climate change, using private jets all the time, when he doesn't have to, is there not a point where the United Nations should avoid using people like him on a Mandela Day, for example?
Well, it was pretty empty in the auditorium, wasn't it?
It was quite empty.
And the United Nations is quite famous for being a center of hot air.
So I think it's the right place on this day.
But what was unbelievable was, I mean, Mandela's legacy was really betrayed by the South Africans.
And, you know, South Africa could have been a completely different country if Mandela had been able to live for a few more years.
And I just thought that he skitted over all the problems of Africa and the self-inflicted problems while he just lives in luxury in Montecito.
And he made reference to Mandela 20 times in this brief speech, clearly trying to draw some kind of parallel between his own struggle and long walk to freedom as this great, inspiring historical figure who literally spent three decades nearly in a tiny cell.
Well, you know, Chris, you're the first person to say how limited Prince Harry is, unfortunately.
And now his wife trades off her husband's fame and fortune or not so great fortune now.
I mean, this is the problem, but we're still interested because, after all, he's a great character in our modern day.
Well, you can't ignore them if they keep popping up doing stuff like this.
We're kind of in a mutually abusive, toxic relationship, aren't we?
The media and Harry and Megan, because they keep doing stuff wanting attention, then they get quite adverse reaction most of the time.
Then they react really badly to the reaction, and so it goes on.
Well, what it really boils down to is the threat they offer.
If their threat was punctured, which I hope my book will do, and if their importance is diminished, which I hope my book will do, to show what really...
Any lawsuits yet?
No, no, too early.
Too early.
It won't be long.
It won't be long.
Stay there, Tom.
I want to come back and talk about your book after the break.
Where Princessi and Woke at Harry must be nuts were apparently the reactions from Harry's friends after their first meeting with Meghan Markle.
And those were the ones we can repeat as some of the revelations in Tom's explosive viewpoint, Revenge.
We'll talk about that afterwards.
Welcome back to Piers Organization.
Tom Bauer is a man every public figure fears when he puts his literary talons into them.
This time it's Harry and Megan.
Some great revelations in here.
Let's just go through some of them.
I mean, the one that really stuck out to me, because I'd heard this from actually some of the people that you were talking about, is when Meghan Markle goes to meet Harry's friends for the first time.
And they're all his old mates from the royal days.
They've all been to Eaton, most of them, and so on.
And they have a kind of certain banter, which Harry used to thoroughly enjoy.
Pretty sexist and misogynist and so on and so on.
And they're spraying around all their normal jokes.
And Megan is picking them up on every single one.
And it's driving them nuts.
Yeah.
Well, this is at Sandrium, a weekend shooting party, which was quite normal for Harry.
And he just thought they'd all get on together, but in fact, the opposite.
I mean, Megan is someone who doesn't hold herself back from complaining about people's way of manner, their way they talk, the way they behave, and all the rest of it.
She has a narrative, and she's a very domineering woman.
And so she asserted herself.
And what was amusing was on the way home from Sandrium, they're all texting each other.
Oh, my God, what a nuts nutso.
How on earth can he stay with her?
And the same then happened when they went to Tommy Inskip's wedding in Jamaica, which was a friend, a great friend of Harry's, who in the end was banned from the dinner after their wedding.
Yeah, well, I know at least three of the very good friends were apparently.
They're banned all by Megan.
And then they saw all these celebrities filing it.
Exactly.
Who'd known her about three minutes?
Yeah, if that.
And Megan was really, she controls everything.
So it was a great cameo.
Tell me about the Queen.
The Queen, apparently, you report, didn't want Megan at Philip's funeral.
Why?
Well, she didn't want the attention diverted from Philip.
If Meghan had been there, she would have got all the attention.
I mean, the Harry walk up the hill with William was, that just showed how the media was focused on the reconciliation and everything after Oprah.
So when she said to one of her aides, thank goodness, Megan isn't coming, she meant it with a heartfelt.
Was it the Queen that kicked them off the balcony at the Jubilee?
Well, I think it was the Queen, but also I'm sure Charles and William had a big say in that.
They weren't going to allow Netflix to dominate their big celebration.
When I read quite a few of the anecdotes in the extracts, there's a lot of diva-like behaviour from Meghan Markle, very controlling about her image when she does a Vogue shoot, for example, all over it, exactly how she wants it to be, Vanity Fair, all these things.
There's a constant kind of feeling that she wants to be completely on top of everything.
And anyone who gets in her way gets trashed.
Well, she thinks she wants to be the great Hollywood celebrity, the star, like Meryl Streep or something like that.
She imagines she should do the same.
The problem is she gets undone on each occasion.
On Vanity Fair, she doesn't get at all what she wants.
On Vogue, she gets much more than can be expected.
But of course, then the palace react because she's behaved appallingly by not telling the palace what she's going to do.
And I think the most interesting story is a Reitman's story.
Reitman's is like a Marks and Spencer's in Canada.
And I got the most enormously exciting story from the people involved in the shoot for the advert, AT Strong Carson Crewe, who tell this story about a woman who is, after all, only paid $15,000 a day, peanuts, for a star, to advertise these very cheap clothes, under $100 a pair of clothes.
And she behaves appallingly.
And they all loathe her at the end.
And she walks off in the end with a pair of shoes they thought they'd lent to her.
Destroying Monarchy Magic 00:03:34
When you got to the end of the book, did you have any sympathy for Meghan Markle?
Did you buy into her thing that she had no idea what she's really getting into?
Oh, on the contrary, I think she's a very scheming, very clever woman.
No, I think the surprising thing, at the end of the book, I realized how successful she'd been.
Here was a woman who was nothing.
I mean, born, broken family, the whole thing, an actress, unknown actress, all the rest of it, becomes a global star, which is what she wanted.
When she was about nine or ten, she said to her father, I want to be famous.
I want to walk down the red carpet.
And she has now done that.
And she's calculated that she could be a great success.
And by marrying Harry, she did it.
Are they in trouble now, though?
Is the Sussex brand on the downward circle?
A lot of American friends of mine are completely done with them, which they weren't even a year ago.
Sure.
And this book may hasten a downward trend, for which I wouldn't be sad at all, because they pose a real threat to the royal family.
Well, that's what I've felt from.
The reason I've been so exercised about them is I think they are destroying a lot of the magic of the monarchy.
They're calling the royals a bunch of callous racists and so on without producing any hard evidence to support any of these.
On the contrary, actually telling untruths.
And I think that was terrible.
That's really why I wrote the book, because I just thought this woman is really doing something quite dreadful to Britain.
And Harry has fallen in love with her in a ludicrous way and has gone along as her accomplice.
What about Thomas Markle in all this?
He's had a big stroke.
I'm told he can't even talk at the moment.
He's not heard a word from his daughter.
He brought her up for years on his own.
Wasn't at the wedding for reasons we all know, but what's your sense about him?
Well, I went down to Mexico and spent two days with him.
And of course, you can't have anything other than sympathy for a man who was terribly reduced by his daughter and quite puzzled.
And what the book tells is how that descent into acrimony happened, which I don't think has been told before.
I mean, all really, the genesis is these paparazzi pictures which she gives.
No, no, the genesis is long before Piers.
Is it?
Oh, much longer.
When she's in Canada, she's already breaking off from him.
Oh, you mean between?
Between him and I meant actually probably between Harry and Meghan as a soon-to-be-married couple.
It seemed to me it all blew up because Harry has this pathological hatred of paparazzi.
No, no, why did Harry never go to meet Thomas?
Why is that?
Well, I think because Megan didn't want him to meet a fat old man.
I mean, Megan was very worried.
That's why she brought her mother across the wedding just two days before the ceremony.
What do we know about her mum?
Her mum's a mysterious person.
Oh, very much so.
The book tells it all.
I mean, the mother really was a very odd woman, disappeared for 10 years, effectively, during her childhood.
That's why Thomas had to bring her up.
And in the end, what Thomas says is that it was Doria who really engineered the split between himself and Megan, because she wanted the fame and the glory.
Extraordinary situation where you have Meghan completely split from all her family on both sides, apart from the mother.
And Harry now pretty much split from all his family.
The two of them living in this weird place in California, this big house, and pretending or behaving like a renegade royal family.
Well, it's that.
I mean, they're the roars of Montecito.
But what is interesting is that right at the beginning, Samantha Markle, Thomas's daughter, warned everybody.
She said, she's breaking our family and she'll break the royal family too.
We all laughed at her.
And she is.
And it was true.
Yeah.
It's a fascinating book, Revenge by Tom Bauer, Meghan Harry, and the war between the Windsors.
It's going to be a bestseller, isn't it, Zom?
Short-Term Weather Spikes 00:13:31
It is already, Piers.
Selling hotter than the weather right now.
Good to see you.
Thank you very much.
Well, after the break, the British break-off temperatures across the UK hit historic levels today.
Some places reaching 38 degrees, could go up 40 degrees tomorrow for the first time ever.
Is it climate change?
Is it just a hot spell?
We're talking staying cool with the Piers Pack.
They're uncensored next.
Well, welcome back to Piers Morgan Sensing.
I'm joined now by tonight's Piers Pack, the leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, and author and documentary maker, Jenny Clemen.
Also joined by Financial Times columnist John Byrne Murdoch.
Well, welcome to all three of you.
I want to start by just showing some pictures of Britain's, well, I think it's going to be the second hottest day of the next two days because tomorrow's going to be an even bigger roast of it.
This is Luton Airport with melting tarmac.
We also had the Bryce Norton airport apparently was literally melting.
So that runway to be shut down at Luton for a few hours.
We've then got, these are packed beaches down in Brighton, my nearest big hometown.
Total lunatics out there.
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in these record-breaking sun.
These are scorching farmland in Cambridge.
Look at that.
See, you're made literally burning in Cambridge.
This is Greenwich in London, which looks like Greenwich London normally looks like.
I'm not quite sure why we're showing that, other than that it looks lovely.
So we're now looking at more pictures of beaches.
All right, we've run out of steam.
Let's go to...
I want to go to John Byrne-Murdock first, because John, you wrote a fantastically interesting piece, as always, about climate and about weather in this country.
I think one of the most striking things to me was that the amount of severe heat weather we're getting is accelerating indisputably.
No, absolutely.
And I think what's shocking is, as you say, it's not only that we're seeing such hot days as we're seeing today, but that we're actually, if anything, slightly ahead of what the modelers have predicted even a couple of years ago.
You know, we've now seen nine of the 10 hottest years on record in the UK in the last decade.
We're talking about around 40 degrees.
If not today, then certainly tomorrow.
And 40 degrees was a number that really wasn't expected in the UK.
You know, a very low chance, maybe a sort of once in a century chance by this point.
And yet we're already there.
And that, again, without anyone actually putting any more carbon into the atmosphere, is already going to increase for the next few decades.
So yeah, really, really shocking, shocking numbers.
I've seen a lot of people on social media who bear a striking resemblance to the ones who kept screaming, stop scaremangering about COVID, it's only the flu.
And now saying, stop scaremongering about the weather.
It was hotter in 1976.
Was it?
It wasn't.
The straightforward answer is no, it wasn't.
It's been hotter today and again will be hotter tomorrow than it ever got to in 76, quite considerably by several degrees.
But there's a couple of points here.
One is that, you know, just the fact that in the last few years, we've seen nine years where the temperature got hotter than it did in 76.
But the other point is that it's not just about the heat.
It's about the fact that we as a country, in terms of infrastructure, buildings, we're just not ready for it.
You know, you were talking about the melting runway.
We've had train rails being distorted so that speed limits have had to be introduced on the railways.
And, you know, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of houses in the UK that just weren't built for these sorts of temperatures.
And we're now very likely to see temperatures in this sort of range, you know, if not every year, then every couple of years.
And we're just not ready for it.
You know, people say, oh, I go on holiday to Greece or Italy and it's the high 30s and we have a great time.
Now, that may be true, but that's because those countries, you know, people have air conditioners.
The homes are built in such a way to withstand the heat.
You've got shutters on the windows.
We don't have that.
And that's why I'm sure a lot of your viewers will have found today a bit of a struggle.
You know, you try and just get your head down and get on with it, do some work, for example, and you can't.
It's just too hot.
Well, it's actually been hotter than hell, which is a town in Michigan today, but not as hot as Death Valley, which is one crumb of comfort.
Death Valley was apparently 110 degrees last night at 1 a.m.
The other fascinating thing, John, in your piece, was this brilliant story about these Arizona university students who parked their car at green lights repeatedly in different weather to see whether the heat had an impact on people honking.
And it turned out that the hotter the weather, the more people honked, which is an indication that people's temper and their mood rises at the same rate as the sunshine.
Yeah, I just love that study because of how ingenious a way it is in terms of it's a very sort of low, low maintenance study to do, as it were.
You just take your car, you drive up to the lights, when the lights change, you stay put and just see how many people beep their horns at you.
And yeah, you know, it's a fun study, but it's one of hundreds and hundreds over the years that have shown that extreme heat causes all of these things.
It causes you to be more irritable, less patient.
It also causes you to be less able to think clearly.
People perform worse on tests when the temperature is higher.
You struggle to remember things.
And, you know, we can say, look, you know, it's lovely weather, it's beach weather, but it's the temperatures we're talking about here, high 30s and into the 40s, are completely different to the sort of high 20s, early 30s where you might think it's a nice day.
It's just not easy.
This is real extreme heat.
Yeah, you can't even compare it.
Okay, panel, right.
So let me start with you.
Who shall I start with?
Richard.
You're not really a believer in climate change, are you?
Of course I am.
I mean, there's no question that the climate has changed since the year Dot peers, and it will always continue to change.
And we, quite rightly, as John has just said, we're in a warming phase.
We're in a rapidly accelerating warming phase.
But what was interesting about the link to 1976 was back then we had 16 consecutive days of over 30 degrees, including five days of over 35 degrees.
So we had a longer period of very hot weather almost half a century ago.
Now we're getting what looks like essentially short-term spikes.
But interestingly, back in the 70s, there was more concern about global cooling than global warming.
So we're clearly in a cycle, a warming cycle.
That's indisputable.
My point about climate change is, look, it's been here since the year DOT.
It will always be here.
We should absolutely affect what we can affect, which is emissions.
There are many parts of climate change, of course, that actually we can have no impact on.
For example, solar variability, volcanic activity, sea level oscillation.
These are massive things, totally out with our...
When you have the vast majority of scientists saying this planet is heating to a dangerous level where we could potentially end up with the extinction of the planet, do you believe them?
But I think we all know that we are in a warming phase.
I mean, do you believe them when they say the end warming phase?
I think that, look, that may be overstating it.
There's no question we're in.
It's a big maze.
I mean, we're bringing Joe here.
All right, let me ask you, what's your view about this?
Well, when I hear views like this and words like warming phase, I feel like, I don't know if you've seen the film Wally, but I feel like we're in some sort of archive in some futuristic film where they look back of how people spoke in that.
Well, there was a movie came out last year, which was a spoof of all.
Yes, I feel like...
With Coca-Cola, and it was brilliant, but it did feel a bit like that's what's going on.
And I think it's driven a lot by social media, isn't it?
It is.
You see the same people that were saying COVID's just a flu, and they're out again with their flags and they're waving this down as well.
I think they want to see.
People see what they want to see.
And people want to have this illusion that we can control everything and this feeling like everything is out of control.
When I looked at the weather forecast last week for where I live and saw 40 degrees, it really frightened me because we always feel like climate change is something or the climate emergency is on the horizon.
But we're living in it.
We have, you know, railways saying they, the National Rail saying we have to re-engineer the railways, water companies putting out warnings.
This is it now.
And I think we can't dress this up in we're in a warming cycle.
I mean this is it.
We're living in it now.
Okay let's just talk about.
The reality is we don't know that.
We're clearly in a warming cycle.
We don't, but what we do know is that is that the vast, vast majority of top scientists are all predicting pretty much the same thing if we don't as a planet get our activities.
But the point is there are many parts of climate change that the reality is we cannot control at all, as I just touched on.
There are parts that we can do like emissions reduction and we should be doing that.
And actually I think we're making positive steps towards that.
Okay.
Look, let's just turn to Tory leadership.
It's pretty hot as well.
Well it's pretty hot.
I mean although they're all ducking the hot kitchen of political debate.
So you've got the two leading candidates in my opinion Sunak and Truss both bailing on Sky News.
I'm quite happy as one of Sky News' rivals.
They're not getting a debate.
But on a professional level as a journalist, I don't like people agreeing to debates and then ducking it.
None of the candidates have been on this show to be accountable.
They prefer slightly easier vehicles, dare I suggest.
And I'm not sure that doesn't make me feel very confident about them being able to, for example, stand up to Vladimir Putin.
I'm optimistically holding the view that the last two peers, they're going to come onto your show and submit themselves to your gentle probing question.
Well they better.
They better because they're both more, certainly Rishi's promised me.
Tenny, I want to show you a video.
This is of Boris Johnson, who seems to be literally demob happy.
He was out in some fighter plane yesterday and put this video out.
Have we got that?
I think, to be honest, he wants us to think he's Maverick with this video.
We obviously adapted the video to incorporate a little bit of fun from Top Gun.
He wants to think he's Maverick.
I see him more as goose.
He's crashed and burned and is politically dead, but he's still pretending he's prime minister.
Richard, it's a bit embarrassing, isn't it?
Boris thing or Mr. How much taxpayer money got spent on that?
The whole thing's embarrassing.
We've spoken before about this.
The whole process is taking too long.
We're now in a situation where we're into lino.
Leadership in name only.
Right.
We've got a completely stasis situation.
Urgent decisions need to be taken about the cost of living, about cutting taxes, about helping people, and nothing's happening.
And John Byrne Murdoch is still with us.
John, the big claim that Boris supporters make is on COVID, he got all the big calls right.
And yet I look at a death toll, which in numbers is still one of the worst in the world.
I look at a first phase that, frankly, I thought was a complete shambles and a deadly shambles.
And he got lucky.
And, you know, generals did a bit of luck.
But he got lucky with the COVID vaccine rollout by choosing the right woman to do it.
But, I mean, is it fair?
Is there any logical argument to say he got the big calls right on COVID?
Look, I think there are very few leaders in the world who we can say have got much right at all on COVID.
As you say, the timing of things like the vaccine development and the ability to roll that out was not really in the control of any of the governments.
You know, you certainly couldn't look at the vaccine rollout and say that Johnson and the UK did things badly, but we didn't necessarily handle that any better than other countries.
And there were definitely elements of luck in, for example, choosing to go with a longer interval between two doses, whereas others chose a shorter one, largely based on gut rather than evidence.
So yeah, I wouldn't say it was a shambles, but nor was it a success.
And as you say, back in spring 2020, there were certainly many, many, many things that the government got very, very clearly wrong, including things like discharging patients back into care homes.
So overall, you certainly can score that as a positive card.
No, Jenny, your verdict on Boris Johnson.
I mean, some people still cling to the fact that he was done in unfairly.
He was a great prime minister.
He was the next Churchill.
A lot of other people think he was genuinely the worst Prime Minister we've ever had, certainly in living memory.
Where do you sit here?
I have always, even before he was Prime Minister, I was terrified of him becoming Prime Minister.
Boris Johnson only cares about himself.
These images are all about him wanting the public to remember him as a war prime minister helping out Ukraine.
The number of times he invokes the Ukrainian people to try and support his popularity.
He doesn't want us to remember Party Gate pincher Owen Patterson.
He wants us to think about him as a sort of Churchill figure, but he has only ever cared about himself.
I don't think he cares about Brexit.
Women in Sports 00:06:55
I don't think he cares about the country.
He just wants to be someone who is going down in history.
But I think he's going down in history in a very different way from how he would have wanted to.
Okay, well, let's take a short break.
We'll be back with more from the Piers Pack.
They're just getting started, as you can see.
They're heating up like the weather.
We'll be frying eggs on this desk in a minute.
Well, the transgender woman and competitive swimmer Leah Thomas has been nominated for the National Collegiate Athletic Association Woman of the Year Award.
The award is meant to honor the academics' achievements, athletics, excellence, and leadership of graduating female college athletes.
Well, Thomas caused controversy in March by becoming the first transgender NCAA champion in history after winning the women's 500 yard freestyle race.
Summer Riley Gaines competed against her in that race and is also nominated for Woman of the Year and joins me now from Nashville.
Well Riley, thank you for joining me.
Your reaction to Leah Thomas being nominated for Woman of the Year?
Yeah, it's a slap in the face.
That's what it is.
It's just completely abysmal.
It's wild that women have fought so hard to get equal opportunity in sports to kind of do a complete 180.
And I think that's exactly what this nomination is.
And just speaking from a swimming point of view, when you're in the pool against someone like Leah Thomas, do you just feel like you've got your hands tied behind your back in the sense that the physical advantage that Leah Thomas has from her male biological body is just overpowering for women born to female biological bodies?
Yeah, for sure.
Especially in a sport like swimming where it requires things like speed and power and endurance and your aerobic capacity, your lung capacity, all these things play a huge factor in it.
And when you're going against someone who is clearly and blatantly advantaged in those departments, it does feel a bit defeating before you've even raced.
Riley, if you were to lose.
Not a bit defeating, extremely defeating.
Right.
I can imagine if you were to lose the Woman of the Year title to Leah Thomas, how would it make you feel?
Not as much for myself would I be angry.
It's not personally like I want the award over Thomas.
It's I want any female to have that award over Thomas, any biological female.
But even just being nominated, it's such a huge honor.
This is the pinnacle elite, I mean, the pinnacle achievement for female athletics here in the U.S.
And so there's about a quarter of a million female athletes in college and only 570 get nominated.
So do the percentage there.
It's about what, not even 0.2% of female athletes.
And so to even receive this nomination is such a high honor.
And so to me, the damage is done.
This award is meaningless.
It's going to be impossible for the NCAA or UPenn to take back what's happened here.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Well, listen, best of luck to you.
I hope you win.
And always good to talk to you.
Thank you, Riley.
Thank you.
Martina Vatilova tweeted, not enough fabulous biological women athletes, NCAA.
What is wrong with you?
Jenny, can you put any defense up for this?
I think this says more about Leah Thomas's university who nominated her than it does about Leah Thomas or even the NCAA.
And I think we have to be aware that in America, the situation with trans rights is quite different than it is in the UK.
Same principle though, isn't it?
Well, American.
I mean, Leah Thomas knows she has a physical ability.
Yeah, I mean, with sport, it's a different thing, but American trans people have less access to health care and they are murdered at a much higher rate than trans people.
So I think it's a show of solidarity.
I agree, but none of them.
They're trying to be inclusive.
However, I would feel, as a woman in a swimming pool with someone who has gone through a male puberty, I would feel I would feel like it wasn't fair.
Richard, I mean, it seems to me, I just find this whole debate, we do a lot on this because I just find it so preposterous that we're even having these kind of conversations, but we are because that is the way society's been moving.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
The simple fact is that Leah Thomas does not qualify for that award.
Leah Thomas is not a woman.
That is a biological fact, no question at all.
And you heard it there.
The disappointment, you know, from a woman who is a fantastic athlete.
And whether it's her or someone else, you know, women have been fighting for over 100 years for, you know, to remove discrimination for equality.
And this is, as she said, it's more than a slap in the face.
It's just awful.
Yeah.
It's degrading.
It is.
And the problem is, Joan, immediately you sort of say something like Richard just said, most people, I think, would agree, right?
I would agree.
But you immediately get called transphobic by this mob online.
We see what happens to someone like J.K. Rowling, abused, shamed, to try and cancel every 10 minutes and so on.
It's a vicious, toxic reaction to it, which I don't think does anybody any good at this debate.
It's people afraid of talking about it.
And these are the things that are...
Makes women terrified of standing up for women.
Also, trans people too, because I think the vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle that they might say, you know what?
I don't mind.
Most trans people I know don't want to be a lot of people.
It goes to the toilet in the same facility as I do, but I do care about sports.
You can't make those little distinctions because you're either a bigot or you're a pervert and there's nowhere in between.
And if the NCAA had wanted to do something sensible, in my view, they should have had a personality of the year award.
And then all of the candidates would have been completely equal and that would have been a lot of fun.
You know, I see the ways it's all going there.
It's a bit like the award shows for singers and stuff.
You know, women singers have a cachet in history, right?
All the great female singers want to be judged against other female singers.
If we go to gender neutral awards for everything, that all goes.
All that magic goes.
Women stop being able to celebrate being women singers, women sportsmen, women so on.
And I just think that's such a shame.
Well, I think it's slightly different with sport because the reason why we have a distinction between female sport is that men would win everything if there wasn't that distinction.
It's not quite the same with music.
But I think, you know, you need to look at each sport on its merits.
There are some sports where going through a male puberty like rugby.
Here's the bottom line with it.
If they really want to go this way, then let's have the Olympics gender neutral.
Right?
So everyone can enter and we'll see who wins.
I'll tell you who's going to win.
99.9% of the time, the men will beat all the women.
Women will stop winning at school.
That's the hard reality of physiology.
Anyway, thank you very much for joining me.
To my pack, to John, to Richard, to Jenny, much appreciated.
That's all from me.
Whatever you're up to, keep it Uncle Sam unconsced.
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