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Virtue Signaling at the World Cup
00:09:07
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| Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, England will defy FIFA to protest against gay rights at the Qatar World Cup, or rather, the way they're not being tolerated. | |
| Should protesting footballers boycott the tournament and just get on with playing football? | |
| Or is the virtue signaling enough? | |
| Emergency measures from the Bank of England, the warning from the IMF that the worst is still to come. | |
| Is it now too late to fix our economic mess? | |
| I'll ask billionaire John Calwell. | |
| Plus, EcoZealus blocked a fire engine and an ambulance on another day of chaos in London. | |
| Is it enough of these halfwits? | |
| A spokesman joins me live. | |
| Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Well, good evening from London and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| It's impossible to watch any sport today without a social justice sermon of some kind. | |
| Eat your peas, be kind, and then we'll let you watch the game. | |
| Premier League footballers line up with Ukrainian flags before tying up their rainbow laces for gay rights, probably while already kneeling for Black Lives Matter. | |
| Lewis Hamilton's rainbow helmet poked out from an F1 car, painted all in black as a stand against discrimination. | |
| The NFL has racial justice messaging on helmets, on referees' caps, even on the pitch itself. | |
| At one point, Arsenal and Chelsea shirts were so congested with supportive badges, they literally ran out of space. | |
| They promised to wear a mental health awareness patch, but it wouldn't fit around the NHS patch and the BLM patch. | |
| It's exhausting, isn't it? | |
| Now, let me be clear. | |
| In all those cases, I emphatically support the social cause behind the gestures. | |
| But these choreographed exhibitions of, let's be honest, virtue signalling have begun to lose a lot of their meaning. | |
| And rather than winning over the fans, it's beginning to alienate them by, well, winding them up. | |
| If a player wants to take a stand or a knee or wear a badge, that's of course they're right. | |
| But ramming it down the throats of football fans just want to watch football and don't really want to be exposed to too much political lecturing or hectoring. | |
| I don't think that's going to fly anymore. | |
| The English FA said today that Captain Harry Kane will wear a one-love rainbow armband at the World Cup in Qatar, where being gay is disgracefully illegal. | |
| I've no doubt Harry Kane means well. | |
| He's a good guy. | |
| But to me, it's a bit of a weak gesture. | |
| It smacks of tokenism. | |
| It's not going to change anything about Qatar's attitude to gay rights. | |
| And if the England team really, truly has a serious moral objection to this World Cup being staged in Qatar, perhaps they should boycott the tournament. | |
| That might concentrate more minds and effect more change. | |
| But I suspect most England fans would rather that the players just focused on winning the matches and the tournament and left the virtue signalling at home. | |
| Well, joining me now, MStudios broadcaster Adrian Childs, the former vice chairman, doesn't seem a good enough title to me. | |
| The former god of Arsenal football club, David Dean, the man who brought me more pleasure as a fan of Arsenal than any other human being in history. | |
| It was also part of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup, which of course was lost to Russia. | |
| And the great football manager Harry Rednack is at his home in Poole. | |
| Probably heard that these two were here and decided he wouldn't bother getting the train up. | |
| Harry, great to see you. | |
| So the standard lineup, it's a really interesting debate this because, and by the way, we're going to come to your brilliant books, you guys, so don't worry. | |
| Adrian, it's a really interesting debate, all this. | |
| It really cuts to sports watching, virtue signaling, how the line is drawn. | |
| What is the line? | |
| Should there be a line? | |
| When you heard that Harry Kane was going to wear this one love badge, promoting gay rights in Qatar, where it's illegal to be gay, what was your reaction as a football fan? | |
| Well, I suppose, like you, I'd feel, well, if he feels that strongly, don't go. | |
| On the other hand, if he is going to go, at the end of the day, he is going to go and play for England. | |
| I'd rather he was wearing that armband than not wearing it. | |
| It's just a mind difference. | |
| What harm does it do? | |
| Well, here's my point. | |
| Once you go down this road of signalling virtue, whatever the virtue is that you care about, where do you stop and who do you not do it for? | |
| In other words, once you start doing this, as we've seen before, some clubs run out of space on their shirts to promote their virtue. | |
| And I'm at some point, I support all these causes. | |
| I do. | |
| I support Black Lives Matter. | |
| I support the campaign for gay rights to equality and so on. | |
| I support all these things. | |
| But as a football fan, I'm a little bit sick and tired of it, to be honest. | |
| Well, I think plainly, if you're running out of space on the shirt, something's gone wrong. | |
| And if you support every cause, to some extent, you support no causes at all in the end. | |
| But I think they should be allowed to support what they're passionate, what they're passionate about. | |
| And if Harry is doing that, then I would say good luck to him. | |
| In terms of sport washing, in terms of where the tournament's being held. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I think that's kind of all over now. | |
| Not after Qatar, which still seems bonkers to me on almost every level, but Russia. | |
| You know, the idea, go to Russia and, you know, we'll, you know, we'll bring them into the world, family, we'll almost civilize them or something. | |
| Everything's going to be better. | |
| And we go, we have a fantastic tournament. | |
| And where's that got us? | |
| It had a certain element to it, didn't it? | |
| Of, you know, well, Hitler ran the trains well. | |
| You know, Putin put on a good tournament. | |
| Actually, none of that makes any difference to what they're really about. | |
| So next time the argument's mutated. | |
| Next time the argument's made, well, he needs to go to country X because it'll be a force for good. | |
| Well, it might be for the duration of the tournament, but it can all go pear-shaped very quickly. | |
| Okay, Harry Rednapp, Harry Kane wants to wear a one-love badge on his arm as England captain in Qatar, where it's illegal to be gay. | |
| Should he be doing that? | |
| I don't know whether Harry wants, you know, is it Harry's choice, really, or is it the FA or whoever, you know, saying, listen, Harry, this would be a great gesture. | |
| I agree with Adrian, really. | |
| I mean, what harm does it do? | |
| But then again, what good does it do? | |
| Probably none. | |
| You know, but I don't know where you go. | |
| I'm with you. | |
| I'll be honest, Piers, the way you introduced the show, I think you said it all for me. | |
| I just, you know, you summed it up perfectly. | |
| It's all gone crazy. | |
| We're all getting, you know, at times you get... | |
| I agree with everything. | |
| You know, I'm behind all the great causes, but I think it's going a bit too far now. | |
| We just really, it's non-stop, non-stop. | |
| You know, we do want to just get on with things without having to keep worrying about people wearing this, doing that, doing that. | |
| It's just, for me, it's gone over the top a little bit now. | |
| David Dean, first of all, welcome. | |
| You've got a fantastic book, Calling the Shots. | |
| And for people who don't know who you are, and I find it hard to believe nobody knows who you are, you ran Arsenal in what I call the most glorious period in our history. | |
| Three great titles, a bunch of FA Cups, silverware coming out of our ears. | |
| You brought Arsen Benger to the club and for eight, nine years, the best manager in the world, as far as I was concerned. | |
| You brought glorious football to us. | |
| And then you had to leave in dramatic southern circumstances, forced out in a boardroom bust up. | |
| And it's never really been the same since. | |
| Although, funny enough, I think they must have heard you were coming on my show because Arsenal have finally begun to play actually as well as they did when you left the arena. | |
| Let me ask you, first of all, how are you? | |
| Very well, thank you very much. | |
| Are you happy to see our boys at the top of the premium? | |
| Yes, indeed. | |
| Stop the race. | |
| There's a wonderful new chart which has gone up at Arsenal. | |
| And it's a little bit self-indulgent, but if you can't be self-indulgent on your own show, well, when can you be? | |
| As a massive Arsenal fan for 52 years, we finally have our own song. | |
| And it's written by a guy called Lewis Dunford. | |
| The fans have adopted it. | |
| Just soak a little bit of this in. | |
| What I love about it, | |
| he's a young lad, he's an arsehole fan, he's a North Londoner, and the video that goes with it is a wonderful little snapshot of community life in North London. | |
| It really moved me, actually. | |
| And I love the fact the fans have adopted it. | |
| I love the fact that we're top of the league. | |
| It's all great at the moment. | |
| But it also reminds me, and I think you as a West Brom fan will certainly relate to this. | |
| You can't enjoy the good times in football without having gone through unrelenting misery and pain. | |
| That's true. | |
| We all have to suffer, don't we? | |
| Without despair, there is no hope. | |
| There can't be. | |
| And I think of all the joy I've had as an Arsenal fan, it is massively enhanced by the misery I've had to endure. | |
| The two go hand in hand. | |
| I think that's true. | |
|
The Hard Decision on Poppies
00:03:30
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| But of course, the pain of losing weighs much heavier than the joy of winning. | |
| It does. | |
| You know, it lasts longer, does it? | |
| You were involved, David, at very high levels with the Football Association on the international stage as well when you were at Arsenal. | |
| When you look at this whole issue of morality and sport, let's just call it what it is, whether it's the live golfers at war with the PGA, whether it's having a World Cup in Qatar. | |
| I thought Agent summed it up brilliantly about that. | |
| Look at what happened with Russia. | |
| We kind of allowed them to hijack the game for a tournament and now they're at war in Europe as a sort of a return act. | |
| Where is the line morally for you with sport? | |
| When you were doing deals around the world and stuff, is there a line or is it all littered with hypocrisy? | |
| Well, I think part of the problem is this has just raised its head really now, 40 days before we're kicking off the World Cup, which is a shame. | |
| Qatar won the World Cup bid 12 years ago. | |
| Why have a controversy now at this stage? | |
| And in the end, it will be left really to FIFA to adjudicate and decide what should be done and what shouldn't be done. | |
| Is it smart of Harry Kane to go ahead and wear a badge which will clearly upset local people in Qatar? | |
| We can have our own view about their rules about homosexuality, but it is their country, their culture. | |
| Well, let me give you something similar. | |
| You may remember in 2017, England were playing Germany at Wembley and we wanted to wear a poppy because it was just before Armistice. | |
| And FIFA at the time didn't want us to do it. | |
| And I remember I was part of the FA delegation that lobbied FIFA. | |
| And in the end, they did agree for us to wear the badge, the poppy badge, on the sleeve, not on the main shirt itself. | |
| And these are all things up for debate. | |
| But of course, once they allow England to do something, what about the rest? | |
| There'll be other people lobbying. | |
| You know, it'll be Ukraine or be Croatia or be Palestine or somebody else will come on and say, we want to do something similar. | |
| Is it easier to simply keep it out of sport? | |
| But at the same time, there has to be a campaign, quite rightly so, against discrimination. | |
| And I can understand the FA quite rightly standing up and Harry Kane as the captain being an iconic figure for that campaign. | |
| I mean, Harry Kane's a decent guy. | |
| I mean, Harry Redknapp, you know Harry Kane, he's a top bloke. | |
| I really like him personally. | |
| He may well not have made this decision. | |
| I just wonder, you know, we discussed this earlier, but I just wonder whether it's just easier for sport to stay out of these things. | |
| That once you go down this road, where does it stop? | |
| And how much effect does it really have? | |
| You've already seen a lot of teams wanting to stop taking the knee, actually led by their black players, saying it's not enough. | |
| It's fine to do this, but what's it actually achieving in the cause of racial equality or stopping racial injustice? | |
| But you know, the difficult thing, Piers, when you're in a team, are you going to be the one that stands up and says, listen, I don't want to do this now. | |
| I'm fill up with it. | |
| You know, we've made this stand. | |
| We've done what we had to do. | |
| You know, when everybody's doing it, are you going to be the one that is going to get slaughtered for not doing it? | |
| What if two or three might not agree with it and think, well, you know, we've made our point. | |
| So, you know, it may not necessarily be every, you know, it's a team and there you have to follow each other. | |
| It might not even be their views in lots of cases that they should be still be doing whatever, whether it's taking the knee or whether it's wearing armbands or whatever. | |
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Drinking, Racism, and Team Stands
00:03:27
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| But probably it's very difficult to come out and be the, you know, the couple that even though you agree with that, you know, it is completely wrong. | |
| There's no place for racism. | |
| There's no place for, you know, but you've got to be the one that comes out and says, no, the two or three that got, you know, said, look, I'm not going to do it anymore. | |
| It's very, very hard decision to make. | |
| And, you know, you say one word out of place these days or do one thing slightly wrong that people with the establishment they don't agree with and you really are in trouble. | |
| Yeah, I completely agree. | |
| Talking of people really being in trouble, the good drinker, Adrian Charles, how I learned to love drinking less. | |
| You went, now you may not like us for doing this, but we read the book and our team managed to assemble what you were drinking in an average week at the height of your drinking. | |
| And this, I think we've got a shot of it all here, I think. | |
| So this is 100 units, 10 bottles of wine, 50 pints of beer. | |
| That's what it was equivalent to. | |
| That was your weekly intake week after week, month after month, year after year. | |
| A, how are you still standing, let alone being one of the top television personalities in the country? | |
| And secondly, what made you stop? | |
| Well, a couple of things. | |
| In terms of the quantity, the reason I could do it is that it was my misfortune. | |
| That I was good at it. | |
| I was just good at it. | |
| I didn't, I never got drunk. | |
| I wasn't, you know, I wasn't out particularly late. | |
| It was just constantly topping up. | |
| It wasn't obviously outwardly affecting my health. | |
| And actually, then as part of the program, I had a liver scan and there was a bit of damage there. | |
| And I just thought, hang on, can I address this? | |
| Or do I have to just stop drinking? | |
| And then I thought, well, no, let me try and see if I can drink less. | |
| And I mean, the realization I got very simply was that if you lined up all the drinks I've drunk in my life, it'd be about four miles long, three miles long or whatever. | |
| Yeah, I think so. | |
| I'm in on the back of an envelope. | |
| I mean, that's a lot of poison to put through your body. | |
| And I just, the real tragedy for me is if I look at how many of those drinks are really wanted or needed or enjoyed. | |
| And it's much less than half. | |
| Most of the time, it's just drinking for the sake of drinking because it was kind of what you did, or you're in the pub at nine o'clock and it doesn't shut till 11. | |
| Most people who get to that stage of drinking, they either give up completely or they get worse, sadly, and a lot of people die from alcoholism. | |
| How are you able to, I guess, have the self-discipline and control to just reduce it massively to a level where you can still enjoy a drink, but you don't feel that need to drink as much? | |
| I think for once, I just did a lot of thinking about it. | |
| And the more people I talked about it, the more experts in the field, the more I realized, you know, people said things to me, like one guy, West Bromfin, actually said, it's important we take alcohol off its undeserved pedestal in our lives. | |
| It's not be all and end all. | |
| It's a useful thing, but your life absolutely mustn't revolve around it. | |
| And also realizing that the only drink that has an impact is the first one. | |
| It achieves a change of state and that's lovely. | |
| And then maybe the second one, but each subsequent drink is just a vain attempt to recreate the first drink. | |
| The fourth glass of a Chateau Latour 61. | |
| I mean, I mean, David, you would know you've probably drunk it. | |
| I prefer the 62 myself. | |
| Never more than four. | |
| Well, that reveals, I'm afraid, your shameful ignorance of the great Bordeaux. | |
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Markets, Inflation, and Energy Prices
00:13:29
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| David, you also have a terrific book out. | |
| By the way, the good drinker. | |
| It's a fascinating read. | |
| Anyone who thinks they might have an issue with drink, it's a really good one because you end up still drinking. | |
| You just don't drink yourself to an early grave. | |
| David, your book, obviously from my point of view, as a great fan of Arsenal, found it riveting. | |
| But I'm more interested about the fact that it all ended so acrimoniously, not just for you, but also then for Arsene Benger. | |
| This great manager. | |
| I'm not going to divorce myself from any blame for forcing him out at the end. | |
| I thought he went on way too long, if I'm honest. | |
| But for eight, nine years, he was an absolute legend. | |
| He's never been back to Arsenal since 2018, since he left the club. | |
| There's a statue waiting to be unveiled. | |
| And there's been a big piece in the papers today that it's time that he made his piece, that the new manager, Mikel Arteta, has said, please come back. | |
| We want you to be part of it. | |
| The fans want him to come back. | |
| What do you feel? | |
| You're one of his best friends. | |
| What do you feel about it? | |
| Well, firstly, I think it's right that he should be acknowledged for what he did 22 years, get into the Champions League 20 successive times. | |
| I wish us luck to do that again. | |
| So it should be recognised. | |
| And I hope that he will realise that at some stage, to come back and unveil a statue. | |
| He deserves one for sure. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because he's brought, as you quite rightly said, the opening part of your program. | |
| He gave us the best time ever in Arsenal's history. | |
| And I was delighted to be part of that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, you brought him there. | |
| Well, thank you for saying that. | |
| Did he go on too long? | |
| I know you've said that before. | |
| What do you feel? | |
| I feel that it's a great shame he was not embraced. | |
| Even if he was not going to be a tracksuit manager or coach anymore, with his knowledge, he should have still been within the organisation somewhere. | |
| Meanwhile, he's not good enough for Arsenal, but he is good enough to be global head of football development for the world, for FIFA. | |
| And you're both going to be in Qatar for the World Cup. | |
| Both going to be in Qatar for the whole. | |
| And I'm actually going to be in Qatar. | |
| Good. | |
| And I'll be doing my show from the World Cup for a week in the qualifier. | |
| And you're going to enjoy it in Sunday. | |
| Is it madness to think that the three of us could sit around it? | |
| Why not? | |
| And I tell you what, and this is a message to all your viewers. | |
| Qatar will be a huge success. | |
| It's a very welcoming place. | |
| I've been there many times. | |
| In fact, last time I was there was in November for the Arab Cup, which was a great experience. | |
| I look forward to it. | |
| David Dean, it's called Call on the Shots. | |
| How to win in Football at Life. | |
| No one knows better than you, because honestly, you did an amazing. | |
| Thank you for everything you did for Arsenal. | |
| We all greatly appreciate it. | |
| Adrian Giles, for everything you've done for West Bronx. | |
| Have I got it, John? | |
| And Harry Rednat, who probably, I think you'd agree, Harry, your greatest achievement in world football was winning soccer aid with me as the co-manager. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| Yeah, that was a great couple of days, Piers. | |
| I must be truthful. | |
| But I agree with everything that David says about Arsene Benger. | |
| You know, amazing manager, amazing football man. | |
| Really, I'd love to see him go back there and unveil that statue because he really deserves it. | |
| You know what? | |
| I would... | |
| Use that fantastic brain. | |
| Yeah, I listen. | |
| I was one of his biggest fans and then one of his most vociferous critics. | |
| I think I would stand by the criticism. | |
| Probably went on too long, but he was a complete legend of the club. | |
| And he absolutely deserves a statue. | |
| He deserves to be back there. | |
| So I hope he does go back there. | |
| Gentlemen, I could talk about this all night. | |
| Unfortunately, the viewers wouldn't want me to, but I could. | |
| David, great to see you. | |
| Adrian? | |
| Good to see you. | |
| Best of luck with the books, you guys. | |
| And Harry, always great to have you on the show. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Good to see you, Piers. | |
| Well, still to come. | |
| Billionaire John Caldwell on why he's turning off his heating to help beat Vladimir Putin and whether he regrets backing Liz Truss to run the country. | |
| And I regret to say they're added again to stop royal protesters blocking emergency vehicles on the streets of London this afternoon. | |
| We've got one of them in the studio with me. | |
| I suspect it's going to be a little lively, that discussion. | |
| Welcome back to Piers Bookman says the Bank of England today made another emergency intervention into the British economy. | |
| It's the third time it's been forced to access the calamitous mini budget. | |
| The IMF, meanwhile, said the worst is yet to come for the global economy. | |
| One of the Britain faces high inflation for longer than similar economies. | |
| Perhaps Liz Truss needs a word with my next guest. | |
| Joining me is the billionaire entrepreneur John Caldwell, alongside author and journalist Jenny Cleveland and talk TV study led to Kate McCammo. | |
| Welcome to all your stellar panel, if ever there was one. | |
| John Caldwell, great to see you. | |
| As one of the richest, most successful people in the country, what on earth do you make of this basket case of a few weeks we've had with the economy? | |
| Well it's not just a few weeks, it's a few years unfortunately because all the wrong things were done right at the start of the pandemic and there should have been a lot a lot of different actions taken by Rishi Sunak first of all. | |
| So all of this crisis started way back then and of course the pandemic was a huge challenge to overcome but there was lots of ways of managing it more shrewdly than we did and those mistakes have now added to the inflation which is of course also caused by the Ukraine situation and the hyperinflation of energy prices. | |
| So the whole lot has come to together as a storm which has not been settled down by Liz Truss. | |
| Well she's poured she's poured a lot of fuel onto the fire with this mini budget. | |
| I mean many economists I talk to think she's talking complete nonsense and quasi-quarting. | |
| That this idea that you can get growth, growth, growth by unleashing all these massive tax cuts without actually any way of funding them, they think is a complete disaster. | |
| I mean with your you agree with that. | |
| No, I agree with that. | |
| That's not to say I've ever been against borrowing more money, but I wanted to borrow more money to invest in the economy to grow GDP. | |
| If you only borrow the money to put into people's pockets and rely on that feeding through and creating growth, it's not going to work because all it'll do is create inflation. | |
| And of course that's where we are now. | |
| We're in a desperate situation. | |
| Right. | |
| Kate, I mean, I watched Kwasi Kwaten today in Parliament. | |
| I thought he was pretty hopeless, to be honest with you. | |
| Every time he veered off his tight script, he just sounded less and less confident. | |
| And the problem is, it's not about whether he's confident, it's about other people and the city's confidence in him. | |
| And at the moment, there isn't any. | |
| In fact, they think things are going to get a lot worse very quickly. | |
| And that what he's managed to do is make things immeasurably more difficult for this country to get out of soaring inflation. | |
| Yeah, and I think look at what's had to happen. | |
| He's had to bring forward his medium-term fiscal report to the end of the month to Halloween. | |
| And at that point... | |
| Halloween horror. | |
| Well, the Halloween budget. | |
| I mean, you couldn't really have chosen a worse date for it in theory. | |
| But what that has to do is a huge amount of work. | |
| He has to reassure the markets that he has this covered. | |
| And to do that, he says he's going to give long-term plans on things like planning, infrastructure investment. | |
| There are eight of these growth plans. | |
| I was speaking to number 10 yesterday and they say, well, don't expect to see all of those at the end of the month. | |
| That's a huge problem because if we can't see what his plan is and how he's going to reassure the markets, then they won't necessarily be reassured. | |
| And I think his performance in the comments today is worth highlighting because actually, Kwasi Kwatang really struggled against his own side. | |
| His own MPs, you know, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, former chief whip. | |
| These are not rebels. | |
| These are people who are inside the camp who are saying, we're not comfortable, we're not happy. | |
| You need to reach out and study the ship. | |
| And if you don't, then you'll have some real problems. | |
| What will the trigger point be for a genuine rebellion against Liz Truss and Kwasi Quartec? | |
| Well, I think actually what's happening tonight is quite problematic because Andrew Bailey has made comments saying that what the Bank of England is doing will definitely end on Friday. | |
| And that's caused a real problem for the pound already. | |
| Now, that's happening as we speak right now. | |
| That shows you how jittery markets are, what the confidence is like. | |
| Everyone in Parliament has eyes on that. | |
| They are all concerned about the long-term damage that's being done here. | |
| Because when we talk about guilt, what we're talking about is the cost of government borrowing, how much it costs all of us to borrow the money that they're proposing to grow the economy. | |
| Now, the IMF today has said, well, yes, the UK's economy will grow potentially more than we expected, but so will inflation. | |
| It'll be running really high. | |
| And that's a problem for all of us. | |
| And Jenny, this is the problem, isn't it? | |
| You can talk a good game on this stuff. | |
| It looks to me like they've played casino politics. | |
| They've rolled the dice all on red. | |
| It's all coming up black. | |
| And I don't think they have the experience or the know-how to now guide themselves out of this floundering ship on the rocks. | |
| And I think it's more than that. | |
| I think we have reached this critical point where trust is lost. | |
| Any faith that we might have in this very young government is gone. | |
| And markets don't have faith, voters don't have faith. | |
| I don't think that they can ever regain the confidence of markets and voters. | |
| They had an opportunity. | |
| There was a window after the mini budget where they could have said the right things. | |
| They could have reassured people. | |
| They have floundered. | |
| You know, obviously these measures, the Bank of England's measures coming to an end on the 14th of October has meant that already the prices of bonds is going up because people don't trust the government to be able to keep things on an evening. | |
| John, I don't care if they're Tories, if they're Labour, if they're a Lib Dem Labour pack. | |
| I don't care, actually. | |
| What I care about is their ability to navigate us through incredibly difficult times. | |
| And what I really object to is it seems to have been Liz Truss and Quasi Quartec almost on their own, without any conversation with their cabinet even about these key factors of the mini budget, which has now turned disastrously wrong. | |
| I didn't vote for these two to do this. | |
| Nobody did. | |
| They don't have a mandate to behave in the way they're behaving. | |
| No, it's extremely frustrating, but I'm frustrated more in the long term, Piers, because I put in a plan to the government in March 2020 when I saw exactly what was going to happen as a result of the pandemic. | |
| I first of all said nobody should be substantially worse off. | |
| Rishi got that wrong and made people substantially better off in a large sector of people and then made other people a lot worse off. | |
| So he got all that wrong. | |
| But I also put in what I call Cordwell pandemic recovery, which was a methodology of making Britain boom in the long term. | |
| And the central piece of that was to set up an enterprise zone for inward investment from all the countries in the world on environmental technology and grow what I call the Silicon Valley of the environment in the UK. | |
| And that would have provided a long-term income stream in a really desperately needed sector in the environment. | |
| One of the things the markets hate is unpredictability. | |
| Obviously, a massive, unpredictable thing is the war in Ukraine. | |
| And you have a personal interest in this. | |
| You've actually taken in a Ukrainian family. | |
| First of all, what made you do that? | |
| And what's it been like having this family live with you? | |
| Well, I thought it was absolutely horrendous when Putin invaded. | |
| And I think NATO incidentally made a massive mistake there. | |
| We should have sent troops in, protected the Ukraine borders and then leave it to Putin if he wanted to create a world war, not be now on the defensive all the time and letting innocent Ukraine people get slaughtered. | |
| So I think that was a colossal mistake in all of this. | |
| wanted to help out as much as I possibly can. | |
| So right at the beginning, I went on social media and looked for a Ukraine family. | |
| And I got a mother and son who were desperate. | |
| They were desperately, emotionally damaged and just wanted safety. | |
| And the husband, the father's on the front line, I think. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And of course, they are now living a life, a very pleasant life with me where everything's provided and they've got lovely grounds, a lovely life, but they've got this compelling cloud of what's happening back home, what's happening to her husband, what's happening to all her relatives and friends, and what's happening to her homeland. | |
| And she bursts into tears quite regularly, as you'd naturally expect, because she doesn't know. | |
| None of us know. | |
| So, I mean, it's a tragic situation. | |
| Well, good for you for doing that. | |
| One thing you said is that as part of the battle over energy, for example, that the British public should rally now and start to conserve individual quantities of energy. | |
| Why do you feel that's important? | |
| Well, that's a minor step and it's been blown slightly out of proportion, but I still think that is a really good thing to do because we've got very high energy prices. | |
| When I was a kid, like a lot of people of my age, we lived in houses that were freezing cold, no heating hardly at all, and so on. | |
| Now, I'm not suggesting we go back to that, but what we can all do is reduce our energy consumption, which is great for the environment and will reduce. | |
| How are you doing? | |
| I mean, obviously, you're a very wealthy guy, you've got a lot of electricity. | |
| What are you doing? | |
| Well, I preach to people that they should do this and take measures to cut energy consumption. | |
| So I'm doing it myself. | |
| And I've switched my heating off at home. | |
| I just have my kitchen warm. | |
| My bedroom, when it gets to freezing temperatures, I'll put a little bit of heat in the bedroom. | |
| But I'm practicing what I preach because I don't want to be hypocritical about it. | |
| So even though financially it makes no difference to me whatsoever, I just think I do my bit and leave from the front as I always have done. | |
|
Coronation, Parties, and Sadness
00:09:40
|
|
| Jenny? | |
| I think it's a fantastic idea. | |
| And what surprises me is that the government is so reluctant because they don't want to appear to be a kind of nanny state that they don't want to give people any kind of tips at all about how they might do this. | |
| Even obviously we all know you can turn your heating off and put a jumper on, but what about things to do with insulation or turning your boiler down? | |
| I would save energy by turning off the lights in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwatang's offices because it seems to me the more light they have, the more cataclysmically bad work they're doing. | |
| I think they care very much about how they are seen, of all what they stand for, rather than doing what's best for the country. | |
| And these are very simple things that they could do. | |
| And it's great that John is here telling us what he's doing, but why aren't we being given more advice elsewhere? | |
| I agree. | |
| Some sad news just coming in. | |
| Dame Angela Lansbury from Murder She Wrote has died at the age, I think, of 96. | |
| One of the great actresses of her generation, absolutely beloved figure. | |
| So very sad news there. | |
| Just coming in now. | |
| Sure, there'll be a lot of tributes. | |
| There's a statement here, of course, Murder She Wrote, Beauty and the Beast, so many films and television projects. | |
| The statement from the family said the children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her seat at home in Los Angeles at 1.30 a.m. today, Tuesday, October the 11th. | |
| Just five days shy of her 97th birthday. | |
| What an amazing career and an amazing life. | |
| And this, of course, will probably be the music should be most associated with for Murder She Wrote. | |
| We'll see you after the break. | |
| Welcome back. | |
| Still with me is John Caldwell, Jenny Clemen and Kate McCann. | |
| Okay, politically for Liz Truss, I mean, she's only been in the job a month, as has quasi-grate. | |
| But it's hard to imagine a more terrible month for any incumbent new prime minister. | |
| What is the mood music amongst her own MPs? | |
| Because they ultimately can decide her fate. | |
| Yeah, not great. | |
| I mean, when you speak to ministers on camera, so you interview them and they say, oh, you know, we don't pay attention to the polls because it's just a snapshot in time. | |
| When the camera stops rolling, they say, oh, yeah, I'll lose my seat. | |
| I'm not going to be able to win. | |
| And that will be the moment when if enough of them think we're all about to lose our seats, that's the moment they may think, you know what, we can't go into this election with Liz Truss. | |
| If the economy continues to tank, if the pound continues to tank, if the Bank of England keep having to bail everything out, and this looks really bad earlier next year, why would they keep her? | |
| Well, because I think the problem they've got politically is that the country won't suffer another leadership election and the party is not coalescing around one leader. | |
| In a situation where you really wanted rid of Liz Truss, if there was one person who came through the middle and everyone could agree there didn't need to be a contest, then maybe. | |
| But that person doesn't exist. | |
| So you've got a party where there are lots of frustrated MPs who've actually never really. | |
| How pathetic is that, that there's nobody in a party decided to do that. | |
| They've been in government, though, for such a long time. | |
| And when I say, you know, the mood amongst those MPs, a lot of them are new MPs. | |
| They feel like they've been hard done by. | |
| They feel like we've never had a great, you know, run of it in Parliament. | |
| It's always been very difficult. | |
| We've had Brexit. | |
| We've had Covid. | |
| We've never really been as part of a United Party. | |
| And then you've got the older hands who say, well, this is more 92 than 97. | |
| Yes, we'll get a dropping, but we'll probably still win. | |
| But that's not great either, because it leaves the party. | |
| I mean, the worst thing I've read this week is that Boris Johnson doesn't wish to comment on rumours he may come back. | |
| I mean, he's only just, they just got rid of him. | |
| I thought you were back. | |
| Already, Jenny. | |
| Didn't you want him back? | |
| I don't want Boris Johnson back. | |
| He wanted me smashed around the head with a great sledgehammer. | |
| He just wants the attention of being... | |
| He wants the attention of being a bit intriguing. | |
| The problem is she's making him look good, isn't she? | |
| Well, I mean, there was a lot of... | |
| There's a lot of buyer's remorse going on. | |
| Boris was a clown and an illegal party and all the rest of it. | |
| But at least he wasn't Liz Truss. | |
| Back in the day in the kind of depths of the summer when he came out in support of Liz Truss, or rather there was a sense that he was supporting Liz Truss. | |
| I think it was Dominic Cummings who said that he thought that it was because she was going to make such a mess out of it that would give him the opportunity to go back in. | |
| So if you're a conspiracy theorist, you might believe that. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I just, I think... | |
| Well, his hero is Winston Churchill, and that's the problem. | |
| Because Churchill got driven out by an ungrateful public and then he roared back years later to put things back on track. | |
| John Gulwell, switching gears a bit. | |
| King Charles III, the coronation will be on Saturday, May the 6th. | |
| It's around the bank holiday there. | |
| There's a lot of reports that they may try and slim it down, that rather than the big four-hour coronation that we saw for the Queen, his mother, that for him and his own queen, Camilla, it may be a shortened version, maybe an hour or so, and less pomp and pageantry. | |
| I've got to say, I'm in two minds about this. | |
| I understand the optics in the middle of a cost of living crisis, but I also looked at what happened at the Queen's funeral and thought, my God, we showed the world what we can do when we put on this kind of thing. | |
| And that was a very sad occasion. | |
| Now we have a chance for a glorious celebration of our new monarch. | |
| Is it right to skimp? | |
| I mean, you live like a king yourself. | |
| I've been to your place. | |
| I've been fucking in Palace like in a suitbox. | |
| But should we just go for it and say, you know what? | |
| Actually, this is what we do better than anybody else. | |
| We should, because the pomp and ceremony is something that we do brilliantly well. | |
| It creates a lot of revenue for Britain through tourism. | |
| The monarchy have been the key people in the monarchy have been exceptionally good. | |
| The Queen is probably the greatest, not probably, is the greatest monarch that's ever lived and probably ever will live. | |
| And I think King Charles has done a great job in lots of areas of the environment and architecture and so on. | |
| And I think he'll be a pretty good king as well. | |
| And I think we should celebrate that and show the world that we can celebrate it in spite of the rather difficult circumstances we're in at the moment. | |
| This is what I think. | |
| Jenny, I presume you think the complete opposite, do you? | |
| Well, I don't think there's a delicate balancing act. | |
| I think we live now in a digital age where people's attention spans are a lot shorter. | |
| I think four hours might be a bit much. | |
| You could make one hour very sensational. | |
| I also think, you know, the coronation. | |
| It's not a reality TV show. | |
| Well, you know, coronation. | |
| I don't have the staying power for it, believe me. | |
| But also, I mean, the carriage, the special coronation carriage, is like a gold carriage. | |
| You have to imagine at a time when a lot of people are, you know, have no savings anymore. | |
| Would you want him in an Uber? | |
| I don't want him in an Uber. | |
| What I'm saying, there's somewhere in between an Uber. | |
| I don't think that you're here for his point. | |
| Hang on, there's nothing in between an Uber and a gold carriage. | |
| I don't think for a king there is. | |
| I don't think you can go downsizing a gold carriage. | |
| He would live in a Range Rover. | |
| He's our king. | |
| I think King Charles is a good man. | |
| My point is that I didn't agree with the royal yacht Britannia being taken away. | |
| I don't agree with all these things being taken away. | |
| I don't agree with our prime minister flying an easy jet, whatever it was when David Cameron did it. | |
| I think if you're going to have leaders and heads of state and monarchs, then they've got to have all the trinkets. | |
| I think King Charles has done a very good job so far at combining being regal with being humble. | |
| And his first big speech that he gave, there was humility in it. | |
| He accepted the enormity of the office, didn't come across as feeling entitled to it. | |
| I think he's being very well advised. | |
| They'll find a balance where it doesn't look like a ridiculous splash of cash. | |
| I was in America last week. | |
| Everyone wanted to talk about the Queen's funeral and how fantastic it was. | |
| I anchored it for Fox and they were just raving about the whole thing. | |
| We do this stuff as an example of A, this extraordinary woman, and B, the amazing pomp and pageantry and everything else. | |
| John, quick plug for your book. | |
| Title? | |
| Love, Pain, Money. | |
| Which has brought you more pleasure? | |
| Love, pain, or money. | |
| Well, I think I'm a masochist, so probably the pain. | |
| But the pain and the love go together, don't they? | |
| I've not read your book yet, but I wanted because you actually, I think you're an absolutely brilliant example of a self-made success story in this country. | |
| We should be very proud to have you. | |
| And I'm looking forward to reading it. | |
| I think you will speak common sense, which is a massively overlooked virtue. | |
| Final question for you, Kate, before we let you go about Madonna. | |
| Madonna has come out with a clip of herself wearing a pair of hot pink panties, throwing them into a trash can and saying, if I miss, I'm gay. | |
| It's now her 1.3 million views. | |
| Have we got this? | |
| So my big question for you, Kate McCann, is is she now identifying as gay, or is she, as I suspect, continuing to identify as the most gruesome attention seeker in the history of world celebrity? | |
| I think a lot of people are still very confused about what that video was aiming at. | |
| You know, I think that's that there's definitely a question there. | |
| She's provocative. | |
| That's what she does. | |
| But she's always done. | |
| You don't have to necessarily like it or agree with it, but that's what I mean you're talking about. | |
| I don't even want her to see it. | |
| But you're talking about it. | |
| It's ludicrous. | |
| And you're talking about it because she's provocative. | |
| I know I'm playing into her trap, which is she wants attention and I'm giving it to her. | |
| But honestly, utterly ridiculous. | |
| She, I'm afraid, is my douche of the day. | |
| We've been wanting to do that for ages. | |
| I can't think of a more deserving recipient. | |
| Thank you to my terrific panel. | |
| John, best of luck with the book. | |
|
Emergency Services Under Fire
00:08:02
|
|
| Great to see you. | |
| Please come back. | |
| Kate, what a pleasure to see you so early in the evening in the studio. | |
| I know. | |
| With all our new changes, great to have you here. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And Jenny, you're staying with me to shout out oil protesters or support them. | |
| I haven't worked out with Siddharnia. | |
| Coming next, EcoZealots block a fire engine and an ambulance. | |
| Another day of protests in London. | |
| One of the ringleaders of these oil protesters joins me live. | |
| I'd stick around for this one. | |
| Start spreading the news. | |
| Piers is taking the show to New York City with big guests in the Big Apple. | |
| Heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, the most controversial man in American news, Tucker Carlson. | |
| The man who tried to kill the president, John Hinckley Jr., and many more. | |
| Join Piers Morgan uncensored in New York City. | |
| First time I've seen that, Proma, I'd watch. | |
| Sounds very exciting, doesn't it? | |
| Looking forward to that. | |
| It's going to be a big week from the Big Apple next week, so stick with us all next week, as I'm sure you do every night. | |
| But welcome back for now to protesters from Just Stop Oil, who spent 11 days demonstrating in London, blocking roads, throwing painted shops and restaurants. | |
| Today, a fire engine and an ambulance were briefly caught up in their blockade, prompting the British government to say this kind of protest isn't acceptable. | |
| Well, Jenny Cleveland's still with me. | |
| I'm joined by a talk TV contributor from Satis and from Just Stop Oil, James Key. | |
| Mr. Skee, welcome. | |
| Thank you very much for coming in. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| At what point when you're blocking fire engines and ambulances, are you concerned about lives being cost lost by what you're doing? | |
| Well, the whole reason we're doing this is because we're concerned about the lives of the people. | |
| But you get the irony that if you're actually stopping ambulances and fire engines going to save people's lives, they may actually die because of your protests. | |
| Well, actually, we have a blue light policy. | |
| We let through every emergency vehicle. | |
| But you didn't know that. | |
| And if you actually cared to run the whole footage there, you'd see that that ambulance is advised by one of our people to avoid the roadblock and the fire engine. | |
| Why don't you just do the sensible thing? | |
| Just get out of the way. | |
| You have no right, absolutely no right to obstruct other people's daily lives. | |
| You have the right to protest on the side of the street. | |
| You are unlawfully in the middle of the street. | |
| It's utterly outrageous. | |
| It's selfish and you are putting people's lives at risk. | |
| I appreciate your frustration. | |
| I understand it. | |
| I empathise with that. | |
| But look, we are demanding that the government hold any new licensing and consents for any fossil fuel exploration in the UK. | |
| Now, you know that that needs to happen. | |
| I know it needs to happen. | |
| It does need to happen. | |
| It doesn't need to happen. | |
| If we need to ensure that billions of people living on this planet, the United Nations and the international energy. | |
| More people on this planet are needing longer, clear, healthier lives because of cheap energy from fossil fuels. | |
| You can't get cheaper billions of people. | |
| You can't get cheaper than free, all right? | |
| Okay. | |
| Renewables are nine times cheaper than fossil fuels. | |
| Renewable's not free. | |
| We spend 15 billion subsidising renewables in this project. | |
| We spend £236 million a week. | |
| Sorry, James. | |
| What you're saying is a lie. | |
| Just to bring you back, it's actually my show and I'm doing the interview with you. | |
| I know Piers will happily talk to you. | |
| Well, jumped in to ties. | |
| And by the way, he's not frustrated. | |
| He's furious. | |
| My question remains, though, with you. | |
| Where is your moral line with this? | |
| You say you want to save lives and yet your actions are bordering on potentially costing lives. | |
| You cannot get in the way of emergency services in the way that you're doing. | |
| And if you do want to explain the moral difference between what you're doing and what you complain everyone's doing about the planet. | |
| Well, I mean, look, if we want to talk about disruption, earlier. | |
| No, I want to talk to you about the 40 degrees C. Right. | |
| As a result of that, the fire brigade, the London Fire Brigade had their busiest day since the Blitz, okay? | |
| 60 UK families lost their houses in wildfires. | |
| Why are we not talking about the biggest? | |
| I understand. | |
| Why are we concentrating on such a small bit of disruption? | |
| A bit of traffic disruption is nothing in comparison to what's coming, and you know it. | |
| You know it. | |
| You think it's small. | |
| I say to you, you have no idea the damage you're doing when you get in the way of emergency services. | |
| Do we have a blue light policy? | |
| Why are the lives of the people who you're putting at risk by stopping those fire engines? | |
| Why are you manipulating your audience? | |
| Let me finish my question. | |
| Misframing. | |
| Let me finish my question. | |
| Why are the lives of the people whose lives may be affected by your actions today, why are they less important to you than the lives that you say will be cost by not taking climate change more seriously? | |
| I value everyone's life. | |
| We all value everyone's life. | |
| Stop absolutely. | |
| Stop lying in front of emergency services. | |
| Look, for the record, I agree with you. | |
| I think it's ridiculous that it's down to nurses, doctors, bartenders, and whatnot to be going out in the street and demanding what the government should just be doing anyway, right? | |
| Yeah, but don't just on the side of the street. | |
| All right, let's bring in Jenny. | |
| Because it wouldn't work. | |
| Wait, wait, wait. | |
| Okay, let's bring in Jenny. | |
| Yeah, I think, and I don't want to speak for you, James, but I think a lot of these campaigns have to do with it's a numbers game, that there may be a small number of people inconvenienced today, but they are looking at an existential threat way into the future, which will involve many, many, many, many more people. | |
| And the fact is, this protest is incredibly effective, Pizza, because here we are. | |
| We're talking about it. | |
| Yeah, but I don't think it is. | |
| Here's Mountain Legacy. | |
| Listen, I'm happy to have James on. | |
| I've got nothing wrong with caring passionately about causes, right? | |
| I'm not saying I'm against your cause. | |
| I'm really getting against your methodology. | |
| It works, doesn't it? | |
| I don't think it does. | |
| Open a history book. | |
| I don't think it does. | |
| Suffrages. | |
| It doesn't work. | |
| It's highly disruptive. | |
| Civil rights movement, highly disruptive. | |
| Gay rights, highly disruptive. | |
| You know it works. | |
| You're a journalist. | |
| You've done your research. | |
| You know this. | |
| Let me finish. | |
| We wouldn't be on here if disruption hadn't happened. | |
| Let me answer. | |
| I don't think it works when you're lying in front of emergency services. | |
| I don't. | |
| I don't. | |
| You will lose the British public. | |
| My concern for you guys is you keep thinking any disruption is valid and any disruption works. | |
| And I'm saying to you, yes, you're on this show, but you're on this show because people are absolutely furious that you got in the way of ambulances and fire engines. | |
| And I say you can do both, can't you? | |
| You can make vociferous protests, but you don't have to get in the way of things that are saving people's lives. | |
| Why don't you tell your audience about the actual disruption that's coming down the line? | |
| Why don't you bring qualified climate scientists on here to explain what civilizational collapse looks like, all right? | |
| We've lost a third of our wheat yields this year. | |
| We're projecting to lose 50% of our potato harvest. | |
| If it's this bad in 2022, how bad is it going to be in 2050? | |
| You know, if we have food shortages, that leads to the riots and civilizational collapse. | |
| I'm sorry, I'm sorry. | |
| You're objectively wrong. | |
| You're objectively wrong, and you are lying. | |
| You are lying. | |
| Our wheat yields are down a third. | |
| Agriculture yields across the whole world. | |
| 40 degrees C in this country. | |
| And it was lovely. | |
| It meant I didn't have to go abroad. | |
| It hit 40. | |
| You deranged. | |
| It hit 40 degrees C. Are you selfish? | |
| Why do you want to protest in front of people? | |
| Because we have no choice. | |
| Because we're in a diet situation and you need to pay attention to the people. | |
| You have a choice to protest on the side of the empire. | |
| Because at the moment, you are not paying attention to what's happening. | |
| I'm absolutely paying attention to the pressure. | |
| I think there are a lot of people who would feel alienated by either side of this and the kind of dogmatic nature of the world. | |
| As I have learned myself, screaming at the other side rarely has the effect you think it does. | |
| It makes you feel better. | |
| And I've done it with, you know, people on various debates. | |
| It never actually works. | |
| You don't change anyone's mind by screaming at you. | |
| But I think future generations will probably look back in shock and horror at our ability to turn away from something. | |
| I don't necessarily think that you will be winning over a lot of people that don't already agree with your cause with this. | |
| You will be getting your message. | |
| Are you going to carry on? | |
| James. | |
| They'll hate us, but they'll be... | |
| What we're doing is forcing people to get to the point of the city. | |
| Final question. | |
| I understand the issue is important, right? | |
| That's why I've got you on as well. | |
| Final question, though. | |
| Are you going to continue stopping emergency services going about? | |
| We will continue until the government makes a meaningful declaration to hold any new life. | |
| You shouldn't be putting lives at risk. | |
| I think you should educate yourself about the climate. | |
| Gotta leave it there? | |