All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Oct. 5, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:14
20221005_piers-morgan-uncensored-liz-truss-speech-julian-as
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Truss's Economic Reality Check 00:14:55
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London, welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Today was a big moment for Prime Minister Liz Truss after a honeymoon from hell with the economy smoldering around her, a chance to possibly reclaim the faith of the nation in her big conference speech.
Well moving on up is a bizarre choice for a soundtrack, isn't it?
Because they certainly are moving up.
Inflation, energy prices, mortgage rates, debt, not to mention Keir Starmer's poll ratings.
Also, the people that originally sang that song, All Vote Labour, the writer has been particularly rude about the Tories.
And it contains lyrics about packing your bags, baby, and going.
Well, Truss's advisors briefed in advance that she'd arrive on stage to a 90s classic, End of the Robe, would have been my choice.
And by the end of it, maybe don't speak.
The slogan plastered behind her says, getting Britain moving.
Well, it's certainly moving, but into a recession.
But to be fair to Liz Truss, she was very clear about how she's going to fix the unholy mess she has created in probably the worst first month of any PM in history.
I have three priorities for our economy.
Growth, growth and growth.
Groan, groan and groan.
Utterly meaningless blather, but also rather familiar meaningless blather.
We need three things.
Growth, growth, growth.
I mean, you know you're in trouble when you're plundering Keir Starmer speeches for dynamic inspiration.
And for those of us who were hoping for some detail, well, this is about as much as we got.
And for too long, the political debate has been dominated by the argument about how we distribute a limited economic pie.
Instead, we need to grow the pie so that everyone gets a bigger slice.
I love a big pie, Miss Truss.
But pies don't grow.
They're just the same size that they start as.
She did at least appear to have made friends with her Chancellor, who crawled out from under the large bus that she's been throwing him under all week.
And that's why our dynamic new Chancellor and I will be taking action in three areas.
First of all, we will lower...
We tank the economy!
Whoopee!
Whoop!
Boom!
Really?
What's so funny?
What's the joke?
You sent people's mortgages rocketing.
The Bank of England had to bail out £65 billion to save the pension schemes.
The pound tanked to a record low against the dollar.
What is so funny?
Why are any of you people laughing?
What is dynamic about what Kwasi Kwateng has done other than it's the single most dynamic, terrible start to any Chancellorship ever?
It says an awful lot that the biggest cheer of the day came at this moment.
That's right, it was for the security guards kicking out the protesters from Greenpeace, or as Liz Truss calls them, the anti-growth coalition, because anyone who disagrees with her is anti-growth, even though everything she's done so far has led to the opposite of growth.
The sad truth is that nothing has been more anti-growth than Liz Truss's premiership.
Today she basically told us to strap in and get ready for more of the same kind of chaos.
She said we'll grow the economy but doesn't tell us how we're going to grow it or how she's going to pay for it.
She said she'll cut the national debt, but also that we'll borrow and spend more.
None of this makes any sense.
We all want and need the government to turn this around.
We'd all love to have gigantic tax cuts, but that's not how these things work in a cost of living crisis of this magnitude.
And sadly, right now, it looks like the best way to get Britain moving is to get Mistrus moving out of number 10.
Well, joining me now is Talk TV presenter Richard Tice, Lauren Commentator Paula Roan-Adrian, a former Conservative MP.
Louise Mensch.
Well, Louise Mensch, let me start with you over.
I think you're in New York.
You're very good at defending the indefensible about Boris Johnson.
Have you now shifted gears to defend the indefensible about Liz Truss?
Well, Piers, don't you think it's about time you said, come back, Boris, all is forgiven?
Well, you know what?
I tell you what, on that point, there is a poll out which basically says that very thing, that actually most Tories are getting buyers' remorse and wish they could bring back Boris.
That is how bad things are, where he is a better alternative.
It's not that surprising because the first thing that Kwasi Kwarteng did before he announced all these ridiculous plans was he got rid of the civil servants at the Treasury who know what they're doing, who've got institutional knowledge and who have been there a while.
And I'm afraid to say that bespeaks a lot of arrogance.
And the most worrying thing that Liz said in her speech today, which otherwise was okay, it was a steady the ship speech, was the Chancellor and I are in lockstep.
Well, when she finished, the pound fell a little bit more against the dollar.
And if she is to turn this around, I don't know if she can, but if she is to turn this around, the first thing she has to do is she has to sack the Chancellor.
I know that she's very good friends with Kwasi Karteng.
I know him.
I like him myself.
But although loyalty to your friends is admirable in most circumstances, it isn't admirable when you're the Prime Minister.
Then you have to be loyal to the country first.
He is obviously a disaster.
He has to be fired.
He has to go.
And she has to appoint a consultant.
Well, I would agree with that.
I don't agree with what you just said.
I don't disagree with you about the Chancellor.
I think he's completely discredited now.
But this idea of her steadying the ship, it looked more like she was at the wheel of the Titanic and this is still careering into a gigantic iceberg of their own making.
They built the iceberg and they're now driving the ship into it.
And I'm not sure there's much they can do now to restore confidence back into the economy and the markets, which will save them from the inevitable holding.
And by holding, I mean a gigantic shellacking at the hands of the Labour Party at the next election, because the polls are getting scary for all Conservative MPs.
Absolutely agree with you.
And one thing the Conservatives have been good at is ripping off the plaster when they have to.
And I think in this case, they have to.
Liz is going to have to do more than just get rid of the abolition of the 45p rate.
That was okay, but it doesn't go nearly far enough.
She needs to really listen.
She said she listened.
She needs to really listen and recognise that the markets thoroughly rejected this idea of cutting taxes and then at the same time cutting benefits.
She can either take decisive action or I think, I hope, I believe the Conservative MPs will take decisive action against her.
And if neither of those two things happen, then the voters are going to take decisive action against the Conservatives.
I completely agree.
Let me bring in Richard Tice.
Richard, are you going to try and pretend you thought that was a good speech?
I think of her terrible week.
It was entirely in keeping.
Well, it was about the best that she could do.
Look, the reality is they have had a disastrous start from the end of the period of national mourning.
But we have to stop.
Which, by the way, they have to stop some pathetic excuse.
Kwasi Kwa Saint has repeatedly said this.
James Cleverley was at it again this morning.
But somehow the Queen dying is responsible for their cataclysmic budget.
Bearing in mind, he was laughing during the year.
Yeah, that was weird as well.
No, but the point is, just to correct you about the pension thing.
They've actually spent only $3 billion.
They've got a facility for $65.
Right.
Which they're not using.
The bond markets are settling.
But it is catastrophic because interest rates have gone up.
The real reason the markets took fright was because of the government's massive bailout of the energy freeze using debt as opposed to the scheme that I put forward, which was to put the cost onto the producers.
That's why the bond markets and all the markets took fright.
Well, we know how to do it.
We've even got the farcical situation where the boss of Shell, the CEO, has asked the government to tax energy firms to help the poorest people deal with soaring bills.
So no doubt he's...
They're also begging her to win fall taxes.
The wording he used was the need to be an intervention.
I proposed in mid-August a proper full-scale intervention that didn't involve government debt.
The government ignored my plan, and frankly, they deserve everything that gets thrown at them.
But my problem, Paula, about this is the optics are so bizarre.
You come in, you take over an appalling cost of living crisis, and it seems like your priorities are to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in society, to spare the energy companies making all this profit, any windfall tax, to remove any cap on bankers' bonuses.
And you're like, what are you doing?
Why are these people your priorities?
What about the people at the other end who are now, if they've got a mortgage, now facing horrendous bills, which will far outweigh any saving they make on the energy?
And it's not even at the other end.
What we're talking about is the masses here.
We're talking about most of the people, the ordinary people of this world, who will get up and go to the polling station and vote, who are going to risk losing their homes, who cannot afford to heat their homes, who cannot afford to feed their children, who cannot afford just the basics.
And this anti-growth coalition, I make up part of that anti-growth coalition.
The Bank of England makes up part of the anti-growth coalition.
Van Bruhn and Shell, they make up part of the coalition.
Well, the Bank of England.
Here's the problem with this.
The Bank of England might be incompetent, as you say, but they've had to bail her out.
So how can she now turn around and use them as some stick of incompetency, given her own incompetence?
They're all incompetent, is the reality.
I mean, the Bank of England, first of all.
That's scary, Richard.
No, it is.
Look, because the Bank of England should have raised rates earlier.
But the Bank of England on Monday morning at 8 o'clock should have been buying in the bond markets.
They wait until Wednesday, for heaven's sake.
That shows the height of their incompetence.
They allowed this to drag on.
Look, they're all clueless.
I don't buy the bit that actually Tom Scholar was going to save the world.
He wasn't.
Frankly, he's old school orthodoxy, good riddance.
You need to bring in some smart people.
They had some smart people.
But it's all very good.
And they didn't bring them in.
It's all very well playing casino politics.
No, it's not very well.
It's terrible.
No, no, what I mean is it's all very well if it lands on the colour you bet the bank on, right?
They seem to put everything on red and it's come up black.
And the problem with that is it destroys confidence in this administration.
And at the top of it, you've got Liz Charles.
I watched her today for body language.
And I'm a student of body language, right?
I just saw a rabbit in headlines.
I saw somebody who has lost her confidence.
She wasn't even as confident today as she was in August when she was taking on Richie Sunak.
And actually, sounded quite confident.
Well, because she hasn't practiced.
Right.
Now she's realised the reality of what is going on.
And I think she's incredibly vulnerable, having made the classic mistake that Boris made, actually, of getting rid of everyone from the cabinet who's not a yes person to her, who doesn't agree with her.
You all go rather than keeping in a lot of disparate voices who might challenge her, might make better policy.
She's done the same thing as Boris, so they're all outside the tent and they're all attacking her.
And I think that's going to be what brings her down.
What's happened to her over the last month or so is that she's had a reality check.
She's out of her debt.
Well, we've had a reality check.
But also, Paula, they've made some horrific mistakes that have demonstrated their incompetence and that has basically lost the confidence of the markets, business leaders, and frankly, the population at large, which is a disastrous thing.
And the most tragedy of all of this is that people's mortgages are going through the roof.
No, Louise Mensch, is she still with us?
Yeah, I am.
Absolutely.
I advocated when it came down to Richie Sunak against Liz Truss.
In fact, I backed Sunak from way before.
I felt for a year he should have been running the country because we need someone who understands the economy and economics.
Everything that he predicted.
Well, wait a sec.
Everything he predicted about what would happen if Liz Truss went through with her plans that she was espousing in the leadership race, everything has come true.
He literally articulated exactly what has now happened.
I would rather have the guy who predicts all this than the one who never saw it coming.
So why can't the Tories say, you know what, we just made a mistake.
We're not going to go through another torturous leadership process.
We're actually just going to have the other guy.
I think it was a very bitter leadership contest, to be frank with you.
And I doubt that he could unite the parliamentary party.
Personally, I supported Penny Mordant, who's come out today and said there is no way that we're going to be cutting benefits at a time of soaring inflation.
And that's who I think they should go with as a compromise candidate.
But I do just want to come back to the issue of inflation.
Liz Truss sells herself and Trita did today as a daughter of Thatcher, as a Thatcherite.
Well, I'm a Thatcherite too.
And the one thing that Thatcher did first when she got into power was she tackled inflation.
Liz is in fact doing exactly the opposite to Thatcher's plan.
She's risking inflation.
Thatcher didn't go for growth and tax cuts, which she absolutely did, until she got inflation under control.
That was her number one priority.
And that should be Liz Truss.
And she also, I've been saying this, yeah, I agree.
I've been saying this for a while.
This is not what Thatcher would have done in this position.
She stabilized the economy, got inflation under control, and then when it was all going quite well, then she slashed income tax and has then become known as the great tax slasher.
In fact, she stabilised the economy first.
She also put windfall taxes on energy companies, Richard.
Thatcher.
Yes.
And if I could say one more, if I could just say one more thing on that, one more thing on that point.
You said about the cabinet that she's got a bunch of yes, men.
I think it's a lot worse than that because she admitted today before conference or yesterday that she and Quasi had come up with this frankly nutty miniature budget on their own without even consulting the cabinet.
You can't blame the cabinet when the cabinet didn't know.
And that's why people like Penny are speaking up now.
So she's got a very short time.
Although I would say, I don't know if she can.
Cabinet Disloyalty and Short Time 00:04:12
I would say what Penny Morton has done, by the way, is extremely disloyal to the concept of collective responsibility.
The cabinet is supposed to subscribe to collective responsibility, not going out and saying what you would do.
Richard, make it very clear that.
Hang on, Louise is completely wrong about Penny Morden.
Penny Morden has the least understanding of mathematics and economics, frankly, of any of the leadership candidates.
So that would have been catastrophic as well.
They made a terrible mistake.
They're not going to get rid of Quasi.
They're very, very good friends.
For the country's point of view, I hope they've got to, frankly, learn their lesson and try and restore some confidence.
But it's, look, they're finished at the next election.
And frankly, good riddance.
Do you know, there's a new phrase, Paula, which has now entered the Oxford Dictionary as of today.
Squeaky bum time, which was the famous line used by Alex Ferguson when he was talking about those, yeah, exactly that sound.
That's actually the gallery doing that, not anybody at the desk, I might add.
Squeaky bum time, which is that moment towards the end of a football match when things are getting a little bit tense.
I do feel that mistrust is heading into that territory where you feel like, I mean, I saw Grant Schaps, he said he gives her 10 days basically to turn this round.
I mean, that's an incredible thing for a senior politician in the same part of December.
I don't think she has any time to turn it around.
The damage is done.
She's at an end.
But in terms of the squeaky bum analogy, I can imagine that she's going for rear of the year, if that still exists.
Yeah.
Because where else has she got to go?
Can't she come back from this, Richard?
Or is she basically?
Because her credibility is so short that really is just a matter of time.
And the Tory MPs will do what they always do, which is they'll make a ruthless calculation about their own future.
And if it looks like they're all going to lose their jobs, out she goes.
Well, that's quite an interesting one because, in theory, they can't do that for a year.
My hunch is...
Unless they change the rules.
Unless they change the rules.
But in which case, she could just call an election.
She could call an election.
That's her double bluff, right?
But if they could.
If I had an election now, they would get absolutely distracted.
I mean, the red wall voting alone has moved gigantically away from the Conservatives.
But for no real love for Labour, but for absolute disdain for how the Conservative Committee is...
Here Starmer doesn't have to say another word.
I mean, the one thing I was struck by, I was speaking to my mother earlier about Lisa Nandy, who I'm on question time tomorrow night with Lisa Nandy and Nadeem Zahawi and a few others, Brian Cox.
So it should be a lively evening, but she's been quite impressed by Lisa Nandy and indeed some of the other Labour frontbenchers who had a very competent week of their conference.
So you've got a situation where it's the Tories, the incumbent government, who look completely incompetent and chaotic.
And the opposition are basically just doing politics by numbers.
They've got some pretty smart people on the front bench now, just doing their jobs and doing them quite solidly.
And I think Middle England, which is the kind of place my mother represents, I think they're beginning to think, you know what, they're not so bad compared to this chaos.
It's like the last two years of John Major, and it'll be just a gradual drip, drip, drip.
And the various Tory MPs, they're now starting to look for their future jobs, their non-exec directorships, you know, where they go in this.
All of it.
And I think we're just, you know, and it's, but actually, you come back to the very first point, trustonomics.
Look, the growth thing is right.
I've been banging on about it for 18 months.
You can't tax your wear out of a crisis.
You grow your wear out of a crisis.
That's the first point.
Have you ever tried to grow vegetables without water?
No, but the way you water it is the thing is, in a business, you borrow to invest to grow.
And cakes do grow, actually.
Not that I bake many myself, but cakes do grow.
And so, you know, you've got to grow the size of the cake.
And then actually, once the cake has been made, it's a pie, by the way, not a cake.
No, it's a cake.
She originally started talking about a killer.
Then she moved to pie.
I don't know why.
Maybe it's a bit more spodgy.
But there's a pie or cake.
Once they've been baked, that's it.
They don't then grow again.
No, that's right.
But, you know, her argument is that you've got to grow the cake and then essentially get to bake.
Her cakes remind me of a very soft souffle that unfortunately one little prod and the whole thing collapses.
We'll take a short break.
Stay with me.
Still ahead.
Social Media Censorship Struggles 00:09:51
A free speech martyr or a high-tech terrorist who deserves to be in jail.
I'll talk to Julian Assange's wife about his fight for freedom.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensor.
Richard and Paul are still with me here in London, along with Louise Mensch in New York.
So an interesting thing happened yesterday.
played a little teaser trail to my interview with the rather notorious Andrew Tate, this guy who's been removed from social media because of his apparent misogyny and so on.
Big interview.
We're airing it in full on Friday.
I'm not sure what I make of it.
I think it's down to the viewers to watch it and see whether you think the punishment suits the apparent crime.
But one thing was really fascinating was what happened. when we put the clip on our social media platforms.
So it's A, got a gigantic response.
So other than Jordan Peterson, which has had now nearly 10 million views, that interview on our Facebook and YouTube platforms and TikTok and so on, Andrew Tate immediately last night blew up massive.
Millions of views now coming in for just this five, six minute clip.
But Facebook then removed it as the traffic was flying and sent us a note saying your post goes against our community standards on dangerous individuals and organizations.
We weren't quite sure if that referred to him or me.
But we were assuming it's him because they've de-platformed him.
And yet there I am challenging him on his views, none of which to me actually in themselves constitute being no platformed anyway.
Then we protested.
Then we get a notification, it's back on Facebook.
And then we get another notification with an apology from Facebook.
We're sorry that we got it wrong.
So an interesting little journey there with Facebook's censorship process, I guess, that there's a guy they banned from having his own accounts on Facebook, as he has been on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms.
And there's Facebook automatically wanting to ban him from even appearing on our site, even when I'm challenging him on his views about why he's been banned, and then rewinding and apologizing.
Louise Mensch, this really goes to the heart, I think, of a lot of the issues around big tech censorship.
We still have this ridiculous situation where Donald Trump is banned from Twitter, for example, and I think Facebook as well still.
And yet the Ayatollah of Iran and Taliban leaders are allowed to have accounts and they're still active.
I don't understand the inconsistency there.
And I'm not quite sure with Andrew Tate why I can't even challenge him on his views, which have led to him being banned, without those clips also being censored, albeit now rolled back with an apology.
Yeah, I mean, how are you supposed to hold the guy to account?
From what I'm reading about the previews of your interview, you ripped him a new one.
I'm looking forward to seeing that because it's about time that guy was challenged.
And yet, all this is doing is making Mr. Tate more interesting, more sexy, if you like, than he needs to be by saying not only are we going to ban him, but we're going to even ban journalists talking about him.
I mean, what is he?
What is he, Area 51?
Right.
Is he classified?
What is the point of ripping down everything that contains this guy?
If he is a Muppet, which is what he sounds like, then let's have people like you holding him to account.
And I think also, practically, it's also because Mark Zuckerberg is cheap.
It sounds like it was an algorithmic decision.
We don't like Andrew Tate.
We're going to yank it.
And then when you process it, they said, oh no, our bad.
Well, Facebook has got billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars.
They can afford to pay some real people to make these decisions so that stupid things like this stop happening.
Right, Richard Tice, I mean, it's this creeping censorship from big tech.
And I've been on the receiving end of it before when I wrote a column several years ago for the Daily Mail website in America about Simone Biles, the gymnast in America.
And it was quite a provocative column about when she quit and I said she shouldn't have quit and so on.
But regardless of that, the column got removed by Google because it turned out nothing to do with what I'd written in the column, but because somebody had written in a comment underneath the column.
So the publishers were being held to account for a comment on a column, not even the content of their own editorial.
And Google unilaterally removed the whole thing, thus depriving the publisher of making any revenue from that column for the period when it was being extremely, at the time, well read.
And I found that a pretty disturbing bit of censorship, too.
The whole thing is so disturbing in so many ways.
The bizarre thing is that, as I understand, Instagram didn't remove your Tate T's, so to speak, even though Instagram is also owned by Facebook by the parent company.
So that shows that actually the algorithms have got no consistency.
Lou Ruz is quite right here that there should be some smart, bright, well-paid people who are able to make an instant judgment.
Elon Musk, Elon Musk is going ahead with buying Twitter, it looks like.
Full disclosure, I own stock in Twitter, so I want to put that on the table.
But it's interesting with Elon Musk because he's vowed to root out bots and all this kind of stuff that's been going on with Twitter.
He's a big advocate of free speech.
There is a rumor that he may bring Donald Trump back to the platform.
Would he be right to do that, do you think?
I think he would.
You can't have the Taliban on Twitter and the 45th president of the United States not on Twitter, for heaven's sake.
I mean, it's just, it defies all logic completely.
We have to watch all of this big tech stuff like Hawks.
You had the shambles with PayPal last week, taking down things like the Free Speech Union, a parent group looking after the welfare of the world.
Yeah, so for heaven's sake, are just appalling.
Absolutely.
Paula, what do we do about this?
Because they've got a hard job.
I spoke to one of the top people at Facebook in the summer who told me that the sheer volume of accounts they remove on a minute-by-minute basis is enormous.
They're really struggling to keep up with how they sort of police their sites.
And they're aware that they're builders of Wild West and they're trying to police them.
But at the same time, when they do over-police, we all come down like a ton of bricks.
And this is the problem, isn't it?
Because we know that we are losing children due to the content that they see online.
Poor young girl, Molly, who is a little bit more.
Exactly.
And so we are at, you know, this, and this is the problem, isn't it, with social media?
We're taken to these vast different regions in terms of the depth of the arguments in relation to free speech.
We know that.
But fundamentally, do I think they're doing the right thing?
Absolutely.
And have we evidenced that?
In this case, yes, we have.
What about this, then?
What about this?
So I've talked about this a couple of times, but I had a death threat made against me and my eldest son on his Instagram in public, not a private message, public comment to a picture of me and my son, right?
This was back 18 months ago, maybe longer.
And I was so incensed by the nature of it and the specifics of it and how just grotesque it was doing on my son's Instagram.
He's in his late 20s, but he was a bit freaked out by two, that I reported it to the police.
I've got an update today from the police.
It still hasn't reached a charging decision.
They knew who this person was months and months and months ago.
They've had the phone months and months and months ago.
And there's still no charging decision.
Now, I'm a high-profile person who has talked about this in public.
And there's still no resolution to this 18 months after a specific death threat, which if they made it in the street, would be a criminal offence.
So my point is not just about the complexity of doing all this, but also the accountability that has to come then from the full force of the law when people act with impunity on social media.
But then we go back to the police and funding, because that's the issue.
I think that's right.
That's the issue.
I don't blame the police.
I mean, the people who've been handling it with me are very nice people, but they literally are so strong.
But it requires common sense.
It does require smart people.
The police case, that you know there may be a need for extra resource, but you can't say that Facebook and Instagram haven't got the resource.
They clearly have and they should be.
They've got to apply some conversations, let's be clear.
But there's a massive difference between someone like TALK TV UH, having a uh, an open discussion with someone like Andrew Tate and some blogger from the deepest, strangest place of well, the thing about Andrew Tate is I didn't know much about him, but my sons all did so.
He's got a huge following around the world, of young men in particular, and the big question for him is, has anything that he's done really constituted being no platform, being removed, being banished from from all social media powers?
And i'm not sure.
Frankly, after interviewing him for 90 minutes, I I really conclude, i'm not sure that he did do anything that deserved it.
You might find him unsavoury.
He's a big bragging jack, the lad who talks in a pretty coarse way about women, but there's no evidence of any non-consensual behavior.
A lot of women have raced to defend him.
No women that he's been around have spoken out against him and yet there he is banished and I see the eye of Toller of Iran tweeting away yesterday.
Interesting anyway.
The whole interview airs on friday uh, with Andrew Tate.
If you don't know much about him, you'll find it compelling anyway.
Is he malicious, a misogynist?
Is he misunderstood?
Is he all those things you can decide?
But ultimately, should he be banned?
Here's a little tease, I believe that me standing up and saying, a man must protect a woman and provide for her, so we need to make sure that she's safe.
He needs a degree of authority.
Julian Assange Extradition Debate 00:09:37
No, but no, you but people do have a problem with it, and that's not sorry, and that's the world we're in.
Now i'm over here.
Why are you single?
I'm not single.
Well, you're not married.
Well, if I was married, the last thing I would do is advertise it to the feral psychopaths on the internet.
So i'm not a feral psychopath.
Good, so we agree.
No, we don't.
Yes, we do.
No, we don't.
Beers are on my side, afraid of being cancelled along with me.
Being anti-any woman at all is misogyny.
Not when i'm, not when i'm saying that women are beautiful and attractive at a certain age and if you fix the problem in their life, perhaps they won't feel.
The president.
No, but that's not a disease.
No, but Andrew, that's situation.
Andrew, you're simply wrong.
Why do you misquote?
No, because you're being misquoted.
That's not the question.
She's hand.
I believe that I have.
Don't behave like a politician.
It's a very lively watch, is all I will say, and i'll be fascinated what your reaction is when you see that, because is this an example of big tech censorship just because they just don't really like the cut of someone's jib, or is it more malevolent than that?
Watch it and make your own minds up.
The whole thing will air on friday.
We'll run it for an hour and then we'll run the entire thing without any censorship on youtube.
After that, he's already blowing up our youtube uh platform and at the moment he's allowed to, so it's interesting how this all works well.
Coming up next, WIKI Leaks founder Julian Assange is wanted in the Us for leaking classified documents.
Right now he's languishing in Bell Marsh prison while his supporters fight his extradition.
We'll talk to his former lawyer, but now his wife Stella, who got married to him in Belmarsh Libiscu plus.
We platform them in the Pandemic that we don't pay them what they should be paid.
Nurses are voting on industrial action for the first time ever a national strike by nurses.
But should they be allowed to do that?
We'll debate.
Welcome back to Piers Working ON Census.
Now decades since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange moved into the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to the United States.
He's still fighting, but now from behind the bars of the toughest prison in Britain, Belmarsh.
To some he's a free speech martyr, to others a threat to national security.
In a moment I'll speak to his wife and former lawyer, but first a reminder of Julian Assange's story, story behind the biggest leak in intelligence history.
Profile on me an editorial.
All right, The United States must pronounce its witch host against Wikileaks.
Today is an important victory, but it by no means erases seven years of detention without charge.
He does not deserve to be in a supermax prison.
He's an innocent person.
Well, Richard Tyers and Paula are still with me because I'm joined by Julian Assange's wife and his former lawyer, Stella, and in America, former U.S. National Security Advisor, John Bolton.
So welcome to all of you.
Stella, welcome to you.
Incredibly difficult way to lead your life.
Your husband is in Belmarsh.
I've been to Belmarsh.
It's an incredibly high security prison.
It's a pretty grim place to be locked up.
He's been there nearly four years now, having also had seven years of no liberty in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Where is this going to go?
What do you hope to achieve?
What do you think may happen here?
Well, Julian faces a potential sentence in the United States of 175 years for doing journalistic work, for receiving information from a source and publishing it.
And it was in the public interest.
It was about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And he revealed tens of thousands of civilian deaths that had not been acknowledged before, and war crimes that have never been prosecuted.
Let me play devil's advocate.
As a journalist, I thought that a lot of the stuff that appeared in the New York Times and The Guardian and various other newspapers who acted in collusion with Julian and Wikileaks over those revelations, they redacted a lot of the more sensitive stuff which might lead to people's lives being impacted by the revelations.
WikiLeaks didn't.
They just put it all out.
As a journalist, you would never do that.
So they weren't really acting as journalists.
They were acting as here it all is and work it out for yourselves.
Whereas the newspaper editors acted like what I would say proper journalists should do, which is to be careful about exactly what you put in the public domain.
Do you accept that?
I don't accept it because it's not true.
Wikileaks did actually redact all of those publications from the Manning that Manning gave to Wikileaks.
And in fact, it was in cooperation with those newspapers.
They told Wikileaks what had to be redacted and then Wikileaks published it redacted.
In fact, Wikileaks withheld 15,000 documents from the Afghan war logs, got criticized over redacting too much in relation to Iraq.
And in relation to Cablegate, in fact, it was the Guardian that published a password which led to the cables being published.
And in fact, they were published by a U.S. publication first.
So Wikileaks and in the extradition hearings, there has been witness testimony about people who are working with Wikileaks at the time that Julian did in fact take every precaution to redact any names that could be at risk.
Okay, Ambassador Bolton, thank you very much for joining me, first of all.
Why is America so intent on bringing Julian Assange to unbelievably draconian justice of 175 years, i.e. the rest of his life in prison?
Well, I think that's a small amount of the sentence he actually deserves.
He's committed clear criminal activity.
He's no more a journalist than the chair I'm sitting on.
The information that he divulged did in fact put many people in jeopardy.
It undercut the ability of the United States to have confidential diplomatic communications, not just with other foreign governments, but in many countries with dissidents, people who even speaking to American diplomats could find themselves in trouble.
And so, you know, he's been complaining about his treatment over the past period of time.
He's the one who sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Now he faces extradition to the United States.
I presume he will get due process in the United Kingdom to determine whether extradition should go forward.
And when he gets to the United States, he'll get due process here.
And I hope he gets at least 176 years in jail for what he did.
Stella?
Well, of course, Ambassador Bolton is kind of the ideological nemesis of Julian.
He has, during his time for the Bush administration and later the Trump administration, sought to undermine the international legal system, ensure that the U.S. is not under the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction.
And if it was, Mr. Bolton might, in fact, be prosecuted under the ICC.
He was one of the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq War, which Julian then exposed through these leaks.
So he has a conflict of interest here.
Ambassador Bolton?
Well, that's ridiculous.
I have an opinion.
So does Assange's wife.
I guess we both get to speak them.
You know, I think that what she fears is being brought to the United States and having Assange put under trial.
If he's innocent, if she can at least show reasonable doubt that he's not guilty, he'll go free.
What's she worried about?
I guess what she's worried about is a fair trial, because it's pretty clear what the attitude towards him is.
Well, let her say...
That's fine.
Let her say Julian Assange cannot get a fair trial in America.
Let her say it.
Okay.
Well, he cannot get a fair trial in America because he is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, and he cannot bring a public interest defense.
He cannot say I published this information because it was in the public interest, precisely because it is under the Espionage Act.
And it is the first time that a publisher has ever been published, prosecuted under this act.
Something that constitutional lawyers in the United States have been warning could happen for the past 50 years.
And the New York Times and the Washington Post say this prosecution strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.
Ambassador Bolton?
Well, I think they are badly wrong on that.
He's in effect a hacker and a person who breaks and enters into secure information.
Not even the U.S. election.
He's prosecuted under the...
Let me finish now.
The fact he's prosecuted under the Espionage Act is something that's been part of American law for many, many years.
Plenty of other people have been prosecuted under it.
And that goes directly to the issue of whether a country can protect classified information.
There's absolutely no doubt about it.
And I would say to the esteemed editors of the Washington Post and the New York Times, when you try and equate yourself with Julian Assange, you're making a very dangerous gesture because while you're saying the First Amendment should apply to him, a different kind of legal system could move it in the opposite direction and put you under prosecution as well.
It's a very dangerous position to take and an inaccurate one.
They're doing two completely different things.
One set of them are publishing news.
The other is damaging American national security.
Richard Tyson, you've been jumping at the bit again in here, quickly.
Nurses Demand Fair Pay 00:06:34
First of all, it's ridiculous that he's in Belmarsh prison, for heaven's sake.
I mean, I just cannot understand that.
As you've said, it's the most high security.
So that's absurd.
If this can't be resolved, and it sounds to me actually as though it may not, is there not a sort of international jurisdiction?
Because there is actually international important issues here that do need resolving.
And both sides have a very strong, robust argument.
And I wonder whether, it's almost like a test case internationally.
It's really, really significant, really important, and it needs to be heard, I think, in order to get some clarity.
Before I let you go, how is he physically?
Because he's been in ill health.
He was isolated during COVID for many months, couldn't see anybody, including you.
How is he?
Well, he's suffering profoundly, and his health is declining by the day.
You know, he's a caged animal, and you can just imagine what that does to a person.
He's far away from me and the kids.
He only sees us once or twice a week.
And there's no reason for him to be in a high-security prison.
And actually, on Saturday, we're doing a human chain around the British Parliament to call for his release.
Stella, it's good to see you.
Thank you for coming in.
It's a fascinating debate.
It cuts to the heart of where free speech begins and ends.
And it's complex.
It's difficult.
I mean, there's no doubt about that.
But I appreciate you coming in.
Can I just say that?
Final word, Paul, quickly.
Wikileaks released the names of the membership of the British National Party in 2008.
This is not just about what's happening to Julian Sargent in America.
It's about all of us.
I wanted to thank him for that.
Thank you.
Really appreciate you coming in, Stella.
And thank you to Ambassador Bolton.
I appreciate you coming in from America too.
Thank you very much indeed.
We're coming next.
We clapped, we banged pots and we called them heroes, but we didn't give them proper pay rises.
Now nurses are balloting for what would be their first ever national strike over pay.
But what about patient safety?
Should health workers be allowed to strike?
That debate with the former head of the Royal College of Nursing Minister.
Welcome back to Piers Wilkinson Censor.
Tomorrow British nurses will vote on a strike over paid, potentially the first national strike in their history.
But should nurses like the police and the army be forbidden from walking out?
Richard Tys is still here.
Plus, we're joined now by Dr. Peter Carson, the former chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing.
Welcome to you, Dr. Carter.
People will say, look, a lot of sympathy for nurses.
I personally have a lot of sympathy for them.
I used to be married to a nurse.
I think they should be paid more money, but I don't think they should be striking.
What's your response?
Well, they don't want to strike.
What they need is a half-decent pay award after 12 years of pay stagnation.
The fact is, last year, 40,000 nurses left the profession, and most of them left because they couldn't take it anymore.
And the feeling is, if this government doesn't give them something, the health service is going to suffer even more.
So they're doing it not just for themselves, they're doing it for the good of the NFL.
But you know, the argument is that if you allow nurses to go on strike, rather like the police on the armed forces, if you let them go on strike, you actually put people's lives at risk.
Well, first of all, Piers, there's a lot of misunderstanding.
Let me reassure your viewers.
Nurses will not be walking out of wards and departments and neonatal units.
Midwives will not be abandoning women halfway through labour.
What will predominantly happen is that things like outpatient appointments and elective surgery will be cancelled.
Now, that has an impact, and there is a danger that some members of the public might lose sympathy.
And these are people who have something to have been waiting months or years.
Richard Tys, your response to this.
Actually, there's a difference between the police and the army, which essentially are monopolies for our security, and the nurses.
I actually think there's a really smart long-term deal to be done here because so many nurses have absurdly been charged student loan fees for a decade plus.
Frankly, what the government should do is cancel all of the nurses' student loan fees, past, present, and future.
That is a massive, massive recognition in return for, in return for, a decade no-strike deal.
I would also get rid of all car parking fees.
Absolutely, which I think remains a running sore and scandal that our nurses have to basically end up with all these car park fines when they're racing to get to work to save lives.
Nurses have to pay to be trained, then they have to pay to come to work and to park.
The pay is not good.
And this government, I mean, look what they've been doing over the past few weeks, which you've covered earlier on this program.
They were prepared to scrap bankers' bonuses.
The 45% pay issue.
Spared the energy companies, any windfall taxes?
Absolutely.
And what nurses are asking for is a half-decent pay award.
What is that figure?
I'm not going to put a figure on it because I don't want to do that.
All union people say that.
No, no, no.
Look, the last decent pay award was in 2008 when myself and Dave Prentice negotiated directly with Alan Johnson, who was the Secretary of State for Health, and we got an 8% pay rise.
Never in my worst nightmare.
Answer me this.
When you have a cost-living crisis like we do right now, which is really acute and it's really biting, you know, I had a problem with some of the strikes and not others.
Like when British Airways crew clearly had promises renewed by their management, I was on their side, for example.
Some of the train drivers who were earning 50,000, 60, 70,000 pounds a year, I have less sympathy for 10% pay rises right now.
The country can't really afford this.
Where's the line with strikes generally?
Well, as I say, nurses don't want to do it, and it's very well clapping on a Thursday night.
But what the public don't realise is every day over a two-year period, nurses and other health workers were going in to the very places that most of us were trying to avoid.
Many nurses left their own homes and didn't go back for months.
A friend of mine works in an intensive care unit at St. Mary's.
He left his place in Brighton, didn't come home for three months.
I've heard medicine.
You haven't got to tell me.
I'm completely on their side.
I just don't think it's right there.
Strike, but I want them to get money.
Thank you for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Richard, great to see you.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
Export Selection