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Truss Resigns After 44 Days
00:14:13
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| Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored from New York City. | |
| British politics in complete and utter meltdown as Prime Minister Liz Truss resigns after just 44 days. | |
| We've got a fifth leader in six years, but what about a general election? | |
| And it's a bombshell interview making headlines across the planet. | |
| More from my explosive world exclusive with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. | |
| Tonight he takes on President Biden offensively. | |
| The President of the United States does not have meetings with Elon Musk. | |
| That is hey, here, come. | |
| Come get me. | |
| That's retarded. | |
| From New York, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored. | |
| Well, good evening, and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored live from our New York news center. | |
| Politics can be full of exaggeration. | |
| Everything is unprecedented, a crisis, treachery, a war. | |
| But let me be very, very clear tonight. | |
| It is literally impossible to exaggerate the scale of the bedlam that this government has unleashed on our country in the last few weeks. | |
| It's by far the worst thing that I've ever seen from any government. | |
| These useless clowns have basically ravaged our country, sinking the pound, trashing the market, sending our interest rates soaring. | |
| And it really comes down to this. | |
| This is a lettuce. | |
| And this was the front page of the Daily Star newspaper. | |
| Who had a little bet? | |
| What would last longer? | |
| This lettuce, or one very like it, or Liz Truss the lettuce. | |
| Well, guess what? | |
| Tonight, the lettuce won. | |
| It's almost beyond parody what's been going on to lose a prime minister this quickly after all the chaos we've had this year. | |
| But it's real. | |
| And now the big question is, should the Tories be trusted to actually continue running the country? | |
| Or should, as many of the opposition leaders are saying, there now be a general election to sort this mess out. | |
| One which, by the way, would almost certainly lead to a landslide Labour victory. | |
| I've said from the start of the leadership race back in August that Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor, is the best equipped to run the country in these very difficult, turbulent economic times. | |
| He's the most experienced in the economy. | |
| He understands the economy. | |
| He seems to me to be a man of integrity. | |
| He seems to be someone who understands what it is to be competent. | |
| He should be the leader, in my opinion. | |
| But tonight, there are calls for Boris Johnson, the recently disgraced prime minister, kicked out by his own members of parliament, his own cabinet, that he should be the one who returns in glory just months later to save us from the mayhem he started. | |
| You couldn't make it up. | |
| But that's what's happening tonight. | |
| And that is the state of the Conservative Party. | |
| That is the state of his government. | |
| That is the state of our country. | |
| And honestly, I'm glad I'm in New York tonight. | |
| It feels like I've just got enough thousands of miles between me and Great Britain to distance myself from Ms. Fast. | |
| But tonight, we will be talking to people who are trapped back in the UK and can't escape yet about what's been going on. | |
| And I've got my star, Stella Pack, with me here, who've been with me actually most of the week following this travesty of political carnage as it's unfurled. | |
| Well, let's start by joining Talk TV's contributor Adam Bolton and Talk TV's critical editor Kate McCann. | |
| They're both in London. | |
| So welcome to both of you. | |
| My sympathy is that you're stuck in the UK as all this unfurls and you can't escape to the sunnier climes of New York City. | |
| Let me start with you, Adam. | |
| You and I have been around this political block for a very long time. | |
| Have you ever in all your time seen anything quite like these last few weeks? | |
| No, absolutely not. | |
| I mean, for a start, we've never had such a short-lived prime minister. | |
| Liz Truss has straight into the Guinness Book of World Records. | |
| She's going to be there probably for less than 50 days in number 10. | |
| And of course, we haven't had a turnover of Prime Ministers with what's now going to be five Prime Ministers in six years with only a couple of elections in between. | |
| We haven't had anything like that since the 19th century, you know, pre-Victorian times. | |
| So it's quite unprecedented. | |
| But honestly, Piers, at the root of it is I've never seen such useless people becoming Prime Minister. | |
| You know, Liz Truss was useless. | |
| Boris Johnson clearly didn't have the qualities to run a country and to be a national leader of integrity. | |
| Yet this is what the Conservative Party have kept on serving up on the electorate because remember, it's the Conservative Party which has chosen these leaders. | |
| It's not the whole country. | |
| It's not like winning a presidential election. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, Kate McCann, you're obviously a mere spring chicken compared to Adam Bolton and I, but I'd imagine you would share his sentiment that this has been utterly unprecedented. | |
| I want to show a clip before I come to you of Liz Truss resigning. | |
| She hadn't been there long enough to even get enough emotion about the job to even cry. | |
| Here's what she did. | |
| And we set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. | |
| I recognise, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. | |
| I have therefore spoken to His Majesty the King to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. | |
| I mean, I think as resignation speeches go, Kate McCann, that was probably the worst I've ever heard from the worst Prime Minister. | |
| It had no emotion, nothing heartfelt about it. | |
| Looked like somebody rather peeved that their reign was coming to an end after 44 days. | |
| And yet I think she was lucky to last that long. | |
| The lettuce lived longer. | |
| I think you're right, Piers, that actually the emotion that you saw there was somebody who was pretty cross, someone who was quite frustrated at what has happened, at the way that this has all come crashing down around her. | |
| Because I think Liz Truss and those in her inner circle inside number 10, and I know you may not believe me when I say this, but they thought up until last night when that vote on fracking happened, that they had managed to get enough people inside Downing Street, those backbench Conservative MPs, and that they'd managed to persuade them that the project wasn't over, that she could pull this back and that there was a way to bring the party back together purely because none of them really want to go through another leadership election again. | |
| But actually, the moment when this really fell to pieces was that vote last night. | |
| And what happened in the voting lobbies, if you have your chief whip walking through your voting lobbies, remember the person in charge of party discipline, essentially holding their hands up and saying, I give up, I can't do this job anymore, whatever, I don't care, and walking off, walking off so fast that the Prime Minister is dragged behind, holding her arm, trying to convince her chief whip to come back. | |
| That was the crucial moment, I think, when it all just fell apart for Liz Truss. | |
| And she is annoyed about that. | |
| You know, there is a sense of frustration that it's not really, in her eyes, very fair, that she thought she could pull it around, even though for most people in the party, I think the writing was on the right. | |
| Well, I mean, the problem was she was not just incompetent, she was serially incompetent. | |
| And that messing up party discipline last night in a vote was an unforced error by her. | |
| And, you know, that's the way it goes. | |
| And, you know, what a lot of people are asking themselves right now is how she ever gotten that position at all. | |
| Well, exactly. | |
| I mean, look, all due respect to you, Ms. McCann, but she's angry. | |
| Liz Truss is angry that we've finally got rid of her after the most cataclysmic six weeks in the history of British politics, where she tanked the pound, where she crashed all of our mortgages, so we've ought to pay thousands more, where she made us a laughingstock around the globe. | |
| I mean, the idea is she's angry tonight. | |
| Yeah, we're all angry, Miss Truss. | |
| I'm not defending her. | |
| I'm not here to say the only thing I can say in her favour. | |
| Let me just finish, is that I am told this may be the first prime ministerial rule of 44 days in history where my football team, Arsenal, have remained unbeaten and won every game throughout the tenure of a prime minister. | |
| And for that alone, thank you, Liz Truss. | |
| That's the one semblance of gratitude I can find for the otherwise train wreck of her rule. | |
| Kate McCamb, let me go back to you for a reaction to my rant. | |
| Thank you, Piers. | |
| Very kind of you. | |
| I'm not defending her. | |
| I'm not saying that she has a right to be angry. | |
| Lots of people feel the way that Adam does, that this was a series of unforced errors. | |
| But I suppose at the end of the day, this is a Conservative Party when you step back, which lots of people now think is completely ungovernable. | |
| And that's a really important question when you think about who's going to lead it next. | |
| Because even if the party can coalesce around, let's say, Rishi Sunak with Penny Morden in the cabinet, they have to make such impossible decisions now, such huge decisions, which will affect all of us, our mortgages, our interest rates, any debt, all of our lives, that they're not going to come out of it unscathed. | |
| Boris Johnson thinks maybe he might want to come back. | |
| I don't think he'll manage to get 100 names. | |
| I don't think he'll get on the list. | |
| And that's causing some anger tonight. | |
| The party is already divided, and it will be a real struggle for anybody now to turn that around. | |
| Yeah, I mean, whoever comes in is going to be a lame-duck prime minister. | |
| And a lot of Conservatives are making their calculations on who they support, Conservative MPs, on the basis of who it would be best to lose under. | |
| Right. | |
| I totally get it. | |
| Listen, I've got to move on from you guys. | |
| I'll be back. | |
| I'm sure as we go forward in the next few days and weeks, the carnage continues. | |
| But thank you both very much indeed for joining me. | |
| Joined now by the Conservative MP, Paul Bristow. | |
| Mr. Bristow, you were a big supporter of Liz Truss, and now you want Boris Johnson back. | |
| I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to go on television if those were my two positions tonight. | |
| Well, that's a perfect introduction. | |
| Thank you very much, Piers. | |
| But look, I'm a huge advocate of listening to your constituents. | |
| And at the weekend, I was at a Diwali celebration in my constituency. | |
| I was at the Great Eastern Run. | |
| I even knocked on some doors and did some campaigning. | |
| And overwhelmingly, the response was, bring back Boris Johnson. | |
| And so that's why I've come out early for Boris. | |
| I don't know if he is going to stand. | |
| I think he probably is now, judged by the number of MPs that have come out and said that they will support him. | |
| But we have to get over 100. | |
| And I sincerely hope he does stand. | |
| And I fully expect him to be able to get to the point. | |
| I mean, I've got to say, I don't know you, but I have to say, I think you and any other Conservative MPs who are going to be calling for Boris Johnson to come back as leader after what we've been through in the last few months caused by Boris Johnson, I think you've all lost your mind. | |
| I mean, the polls at the moment show that Labour Party 35 points ahead. | |
| You're heading for an absolute shellacking in the next election. | |
| And if you think the idea of your saviour is the recently departed and disgraced Boris Johnson, who was found to be a liar, found to be a rule breaker of his own rules, who's still being investigated and indeed maybe disqualified from parliament if one of those investigations comes back the right way. | |
| If you think that's the future, you're all living in clown cuckoo land. | |
| What's the matter with you? | |
| Well, Pierce, if I may, let me answer the question. | |
| So I stood in a by-election in 2019. | |
| It was quite an infinite by-election in Peterborough. | |
| I didn't just lose. | |
| I actually came third, which was obviously not a great result. | |
| We were 19 points behind in the polls, but six months later, we elected a new prime minister. | |
| We elected Boris Johnson. | |
| And guess what? | |
| We went on and we won the 2019 election. | |
| We're in a similar situation now where we're poor in the polls. | |
| I think Boris Johnson's got a proven track record of turning that around. | |
| If you look at Boris Johnson's government, the things that he did on policy, I think you think they were very, very popular. | |
| We got Brexit done. | |
| We powered our way out of COVID by having the earliest vaccine of any major developed country. | |
| And we ended lockdown. | |
| And obviously, we were tough when it came to the war in Ukraine. | |
| And we also leveled up in places like Peterborough, my constituency, where we've built a brand new university and we're going for high-paid, high-productive and high-wage, high-skilled jobs. | |
| To be honest with you, those are popular. | |
| I'm having a... | |
| All right, look, let me interrupt. | |
| I'm having a horrible sense of Groundhog Day. | |
| This is the kind of thing that you lot were all saying before about Boris Johnson. | |
| And then the whole pack of cars came tumbling down, where minister after minister queued up to sign his death warrant to get rid of him because he was such a scourge on the party, such a scourge as leader of the country. | |
| The idea that you're all now clamouring for him to come back, I honestly think you've all lost your minds. | |
| Well, you said that before. | |
| You said that twice now. | |
| But what I will say is that you did see a number of people resign, but you also saw a lot of people stay loyal to the Prime Minister. | |
| I was one of those. | |
| That was a significant number of MPs. | |
| I do think he can get onto the ballot. | |
| And if you look at the poll of members, Boris Johnson's at the very top. | |
| What you're citing now are not policy differences. | |
| The policies that Boris advocated were incredibly popular. | |
| That 2019 manifesto was incredibly popular. | |
| I got the best ever location. | |
|
Starmer's Austerity and Hope
00:14:29
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|
| Let me pick on one of them. | |
| Tell me one good thing that Brexit has done for the British economy. | |
| I'll give you 10 seconds. | |
| Well, what Brexit did, it ended the lockdown we had in Parliament, which was starving our country of investment, which was giving no opportunity for us to attract outside people into our country. | |
| In fact, you've actually had more City of London investors come to our country. | |
| Everyone predicted that we all go into Frankfurt. | |
| That just simply hasn't happened. | |
| Brexit was what the British people voted for. | |
| And Boris Johnson was able to deliver that. | |
| And I'm afraid, Pierce, we live in a democracy. | |
| That's really important. | |
| I think, listen, I've got no problem. | |
| I voted remain. | |
| And I said, as soon as Brexit was voted for by the country, I supported the democratic result and I wanted Brexit to work. | |
| But as I sit here now, I do not see Brexit working. | |
| And you lot can all shout as much as you like that he got Brexit done, but he hasn't actually made Brexit work. | |
| And we're years and years down the line now, and it still hasn't worked. | |
| So I'm sorry, I'm rather cynical about Boris Johnson from what he promises and what he delivers. | |
| It's a bit like when he sets his rules in COVID and then breaks them. | |
| But anyway, look, listen, there's nothing like loyalty in life. | |
| So I admire that, Mr. Bristow. | |
| But I'm honestly staggered that any of you think this is a good idea for your party. | |
| But if you do, that is a decision for you. | |
| We live in a democracy. | |
| Good luck to you. | |
| Thank you for joining me. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Well the leader of the Scottish National Party in Westminster Ian Blackford joins me now. | |
| I don't know about you Mr Blackford but listening to that I honestly do think that the Conservative Party has gone bonkers. | |
| Well it has gone bonkers Peters there's no other way of explaining it you know it's actually been really wearisome tiresome just watching politics over the last while we've had a woman prime minister that quite frankly should never have been near the place and I think you've spelt it out rather eloquently at the beginning of your programme. | |
| She's done enormous damage and the fact that what we've really had is a financial experiment with her premiership. | |
| We've had a financial experiment that's been driven by those at the Institute of Economic Affairs and by God have we paid a price for it. | |
| Those are going to be renegotiating their mortgages. | |
| I mean this is not funny what has happened and when you look at the Tory Park I think the only reason this has taken so long to come to pass is quite simply because they cannot coalesce around the candidate to take over from her. | |
| They're split all over the place. | |
| Brexit's done enormous damage to them. | |
| This is a party that's out of ideas, that's out of time. | |
| And actually it's why we need that general election because the public deserves the right to have their say on what has gone on. | |
| We can't just... | |
| You know as well as I do. | |
| I mean look there'll be many people watching tonight who absolutely agree we should have a general election but ultimately that's in the hand of the Conservatives and I mean they why would they? | |
| I mean they know they'd be heading for an absolute drubbing. | |
| Why would they call an election? | |
| So is there a way that they can be forced to? | |
| Well I mean you have heard Tory MPs I mean you saw that last night that were despairing as to where we are and I would say to them that put the interests of those that live on these islands ahead of their own narrow party interests. | |
| They know that this is a party that's run out of role. | |
| They know and you just heard from Kate, we heard from Adam Bolton that whoever becomes prime minister it's going to be a lame duck government. | |
| Are we really going to just meander through the next two years with no firm leadership, with no way of leading the United Kingdom at a time of crisis at home and abroad? | |
| We need to be able to put this to the electorate and they need to think about what they're doing and recognise for them this is over. | |
| They need some time in opposition where they can think about what their offer is because quite frankly at the moment it is not there. | |
| We need to have that election and of course for those of us in Scotland I want that ability to have that debate about our own future because everything that's happened over the last few years has been about Piers. | |
| You talk about respecting Brexit and I take that Piers. | |
| I understand why you make that point. | |
| But those of us in Scotland, we were told in 2014 if we stayed in the UK, that we'd remain as EU citizens. | |
| We've been taken out against our will and we're desperate to find our way back in. | |
| That desire to get back into Europe has become even stronger. | |
| We can see that through polling in Scotland over the course of the last few months. | |
| So we want to be able to say thanks, but no thanks to all of this and to be able to chart our own future. | |
| You know, you and I talked when I was last on with you briefly about economic growth. | |
| We've got a plan to really drive up green energy production, to drive investment, to drive jobs, to drive up living standards, to improving productivity. | |
| When the Tories were talking about growth, there was no substance to any of that, Pete. | |
| There was no detail. | |
| Well, the problem is, you can, as Liz Trust has proven, as Liz Trust has shown, you can talk about growth as much as you like, but if actually everything you do has the complete opposite effect to growth, then I'm afraid the smoke and mirrors game is up. | |
| Ian Batfield, I've got to leave it there, but I do think, you know, I was listening to Nicola Sturgeon earlier, you know, that one of the other side effects of all this will definitely be, in my opinion, a strengthening of support for the SNP and for an independent Scotland, because I would imagine a lot of Scots looking down on this with utter horror and saying, why the hell have we got anything to do with this anymore? | |
| And I wouldn't blame them, even though I don't agree with you about independence. | |
| So I think it's going to be very interesting times. | |
| I thank you for joining me again. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| Thanks, Piers. | |
| Okay, we're going to take a break now. | |
| But coming up, we'll be dissecting this with my pack. | |
| Liz Truss thought she was the Iron Lady, but she melted like a lead balloon that's just been put in front of a fire. | |
| Where did it all go wrong? | |
| Why did it even happen at all? | |
| We'll debate this next as I clutched my trusty lettuce. | |
| Robert Pestel. | |
| Well, welcome back to Piers Walking Uncensored from our New York newsroom. | |
| Joining me now is the editor-at-large of the US Financial Times, Gillian Tent, the former Conservative MP, Louise Mensch, and political commentator Ash Sarkar. | |
| Well, welcome to my guest here. | |
| Here's the lettuce. | |
| It outlasted Liz Truss. | |
| Louise Mensch, when a lettuce lasts longer than a Conservative Prime Minister, dare I say that you have a problem. | |
| Yeah, talk about vote blue go greens. | |
| I thought you were a little bit harsh on Liz Truss. | |
| She did, in the end, do the right thing and went. | |
| She was always going to have to go, and she at least knew that she had to go right away. | |
| Now, as for Boris, he is incredibly popular with the members in the country. | |
| And only one... | |
| You can't seriously think. | |
| No, I don't. | |
| No, I don't. | |
| I think that if Boris wants to stop Rishi Sunak, he should be talking to Penny Morden's people and they should be doing a deal for him. | |
| But I don't care, Gillian, about the petty politics anymore of this party and their feuding. | |
| I care about the country and the national interest and our finances and the fact there's a war in Europe and there's a pandemic still going on, that there's this appalling financial cost of living crisis. | |
| I totally agree, Piet Piers. | |
| And what I'd say is this: what you've basically had is a battle between the populists and what I call the technocrats, the people who are sober and competent and really boring. | |
| So, Boris Johnson, total populist. | |
| A lot of Brexit, I would argue, was a lot about populism. | |
| I think the Liz Trust came in on a populist wave. | |
| It's time to give the technocrats another go. | |
| Rishi Sunak is a technocrat. | |
| He can count. | |
| Yeah, I agree. | |
| I mean, Louise, I tweeted yesterday, and I tweeted today. | |
| To me, if you had Rishi Sunak as prime minister, purely because of his knowledge of the economy, doesn't mind anything else, if you had Jeremy Hunt stay as Chancellor, perfectly competent, it looks to me, and you had Penny Morden come in as home secretary, for example, or something like that, that to me at least looks like a competent team. | |
| Well, I will say that whoever wins, if they don't bring in the big beasts from the other team, we're just going to be back here again in another four weeks, right? | |
| There's got to be compromise. | |
| What I would say, though, is that while you're excoriating Boris Johnson's leadership, you had these three people that were all cheat by jowl with Boris throughout his premiership. | |
| Rishi Sunak was his right-hand man, was his chancellor until he decided to stab him in the back. | |
| Liz Truss was his foreign secretary. | |
| They're all part of Team Boris. | |
| The only thing that's important. | |
| But actually, it wasn't really the policy. | |
| It was Penny. | |
| It wasn't really the policy. | |
| It was actually, with Boris, it was the lying and the rule breaking. | |
| That's what really means. | |
| At the end of the day, all this internal drama, this kitchen sink drama, okay, the population doesn't actually care that much. | |
| We need to move on from that. | |
| It's ridiculous. | |
| I mean, I agree with you totally, Piers. | |
| It's ridiculous. | |
| 80,000 people got Liz Truss voted in. | |
| There needs to be the voice of the people actually hope for change. | |
| But the key issue is this. | |
| Britain is going to face a winter of discontent. | |
| However you look at it. | |
| It's really tough. | |
| What you need above all else is somebody who could stand up, count. | |
| That would be a good start. | |
| And actually try and rally people around some kind of vision and unity and shared sacrifice. | |
| That is going to be the theme of the next few months. | |
| Shared sacrifice. | |
| Let's bring in Ash Sarka. | |
| I've been waiting patiently. | |
| I mean, Nash, I'd imagine you're feeling a little bit smug tonight in the sense that every single thing you've said about the Conservative Party has now been borne into horrifying fruition in the last six weeks. | |
| Thing is, I would be able to enjoy the spectacle if I wasn't so worried about what this meant for the British people. | |
| As has been already said, we are looking at a winter of discontent already with the increases in energy prices. | |
| You've got reports of people turning off their heating, turning off their electrics and saving up that little bit of juice on their lecky card until their grandchildren come to visit. | |
| You've got reports of people riding the bus to stay warm. | |
| This isn't just about a Westminster dog and pony show. | |
| People are really suffering. | |
| And what worries me about the Conservative Party is that they've got two options. | |
| They've got one option, which is sort of go full-on culture war, really try and give red meat to the spectator and no one else. | |
| Then the other option, the technocratic option, is a return to austerity. | |
| Now, those 12 years of public spending cuts have really helped us get into the kind of mess where we are now. | |
| It was just reported today that somebody has died in the back of an ambulance because there weren't enough hospital beds. | |
| Who was the architect of many of those policies? | |
| Jeremy Hunt, who's being praised as one of the grown-ups. | |
| Well, actually, you know, on Jeremy Hunt, I've been very critical of him because he was the health secretary who failed to prepare us for a pandemic, despite in 2016 having a three-day pandemic exercise trial run, which made a series of recommendations he then didn't act on. | |
| And yet there he was pontificating about COVID for months and several years on end. | |
| And I'm like, really? | |
| You were the guy that didn't prepare us. | |
| So I think he's a skillful politician, Mr. Hunt. | |
| But, you know, actually, how good he is, I think we're going to have to wait and see. | |
| Let's come back to Louise and Gillian here. | |
| I mean, it's not just about the Conservatives now. | |
| It's really about the country. | |
| As Sarkar said, a lot of people are really hurting. | |
| I mean, food banks, the queues are getting bigger. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| People are worried about power literally being turned off. | |
| Yes. | |
| You know, this winter of discontent could be one of the toughest winters we've ever seen. | |
| We don't know what's going to happen with Putin in Ukraine to make things immeasurably worse. | |
| That's right. | |
| Well, but the fact is we would be going through this winter of discontent, even if there was, you could wave a magic wand to make Kier Starmer prime minister tomorrow. | |
| That would still be true. | |
| This is why I advocate for Penny because I think she is the queen of compromise. | |
| You certainly need to have either Rishi or Jeremy in as Chancellor, but it's going to hurt no matter what you do. | |
| That's where we are. | |
| Okay, or Gillian, you actually could be very Machiavellian about it and say, we'll go to the country, we'll call a general election, we'll get a massive beating, and then the problems are all yours, Kier Starmer. | |
| Good luck. | |
| Well, exactly. | |
| Well, the reality is that isn't going to happen because turkeys don't vote for Christmas, least of all when the turkeys are in the Tory party. | |
| And so they're not going to do that because they know they're going to lose their jobs. | |
| But yeah, the bottom line is it's a poison chalice. | |
| Whoever wins. | |
| Who do you think should be? | |
| I mean, frankly, that lettuce probably has a bit of a chance. | |
| This would do a better job than Ash Rosh. | |
| Well, the lettuce probably wants it more than anybody else right now because you know what? | |
| It's going to be a really nice... | |
| Who do you think you think Penny Morden would be the best? | |
| Penny is the compromise candidate. | |
| We need compromise. | |
| What do you think? | |
| I prefer Rishi Sunak because I like people. | |
| I work for the Financial Times. | |
| I like somebody who understands and has the credibility. | |
| And what we've learned is Bonford Gelantes, those people who have the ability to push markets around and stuff, they're not dead. | |
| You don't have to bow down to them, but you can't ignore them. | |
| And that's what Liv Truss was trying to do. | |
| Ash Saka, if it does become the case that we have a Kier Starmer Labour government, are you confident that they would have the tools in their armoury to fix all these problems? | |
| Or could it be one of the worst poison chalices ever handed over? | |
| Well, I think the worst thing that Keir Starmer could do is kowtow to the austerity logic and say that the only answer is to cut back on public spending. | |
| Because what 12 years of austerity did is create some very expensive problems for us to fix. | |
| And we did have growth during those 12 years, but it wasn't fairly distributed. | |
| What Starmer has to do, because expensive borrowing isn't really an option, particularly borrowing for day-to-day spending. | |
| We had a 12-year window of low interest rates. | |
| We don't have that anymore. | |
| What he's going to have to do is start making a very clear case for taxing billionaire wealth and corporate profit and redistributing them downwards. | |
| What we've had over the last 12 years isn't really a crisis of low growth, though we have had sluggish growth. | |
| It's been a crisis of money being taken away out of the pockets of workers, stagnant wages, declining worker purchasing power, and being concentrated in too few hands. | |
| And I would rather that Keir Starmer has one term in parliament where he's able to take drastic action to fix some of those things and set us up for a healthier economy in the long run, than not do enough, try and kowtow to this austerity logic and then end up with the worst of all worlds, which is unpopular, not having changed enough and eventually being booted out in favour of a much more populist conservative option. | |
| All right. | |
|
Boris as a Potential Unifier
00:10:56
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|
| And just give me a one-word response to the potential return of Boris Johnson. | |
| I mean, the Conservative Party are like a horrible hybrid of a phoenix and a suicide bomber. | |
| One word. | |
| I mean, I gave you a long sigh, and I think that's the only word. | |
| I'm not a word that's Ofcom friendly. | |
| I mean, it's unaffectable. | |
| No, there's a word. | |
| Impossible. | |
| Well, we'll just leave it as impossible. | |
| That pretty well sums up every base. | |
| Asharko, thank you very much. | |
| Gillian, Louise, thank you both very much indeed. | |
| We're coming next is last words and promises questions were Asta La Vista, baby. | |
| But is Boris going to be back now to Terminators? | |
| I'll ask his father, Stanley Johnson, next. | |
| Well, welcome back to Piers Working Uncensored from New York City. | |
| So could Boris Johnson really be back? | |
| Well, for me, this is a dreadful thought, but the warning signs are here. | |
| And his political hero is Sir Winston Churchill, who famously returned to number 10. | |
| Boris does like to compare himself to Roman statesman Cincinnatus in his leaving speech, who came back as a dictator, by the way. | |
| Johnson also said this at his final PMQs. | |
| I want to thank everybody here and Hasta La Vista. | |
| Baby, thank you. | |
| Asta La Vista was of course the famous signature theme speech of the Terminator, who then terminated everything that got in his way. | |
| Well, joining me now is Boris Johnson's father, not a Terminator, Stanley Johnson, also Conservative Cabinet Minister Anne Whitticomb and the editor of the US Sun newspaper Natalie Evans is with me here in New York. | |
| So welcome to all of you. | |
| Stanley, let me start with you, if I may. | |
| Look, I'm not keen on the return of your son so soon after his ignominious departure, but you are his father and therefore will have very different loyalties, I imagine. | |
| But do you think, as his father and as a Conservative man, do you think it would be the right thing for him and the right thing for the country to even put his name in the ring again so soon? | |
| Well, Piers, I've got to say, I heard your rant about half an hour ago, so I have no doubt about what your position is. | |
| But my position is simply I'm looking at this as a voter. | |
| I'm looking at this, he won't believe this, but I say to myself, I have a vote in this election. | |
| I've just got a message from Conservative Central Office saying I'm going to get an electronic password before the end of the week. | |
| And as a voter, I say, well, what we want is someone who's going to do the right thing for the country. | |
| I say on this point, the country is probably more important than the Conservative Party. | |
| So, yeah, frankly, I have absolutely no idea whether Boris is going to be a candidate in this election. | |
| No idea at all. | |
| But I think he has a very strong record to be considered as a viable candidate. | |
| And I very much hope he will let his name go forward. | |
| So that's where I stand on this. | |
| All right, but look, if he wasn't your son and he was another Conservative Prime Minister who'd had to leave the post in some degree of shame, voted out by over 50 of his own ministers, would you think that within a few months of that happening, it was a good idea that he then become Prime Minister of the UK given the state of the Conservatives right now? | |
| It's a good question. | |
| And I've looked at this. | |
| I've looked at the record and I looked at the things I absolutely care about and I do absolutely care about, as you know very well because you've had me on this program before. | |
| I absolutely care about the environment and I think he made a big effort on the environment, not only with the COP26, which we had in Glasgow, but he made a big effort with the G27. | |
| I'm sorry, the G20 and the G7. | |
| Very big effort. | |
| He made a big effort on COVID. | |
| So I look at those things and I say these were serious achievements. | |
| Now, I'm not saying that Partygate wasn't a blip. | |
| But as far as I'm concerned, I think he knows how to deliver on the environment. | |
| He knows how to deliver on the economy. | |
| And he knows how to deliver in terms of international relations. | |
| So I hope he will put his name forward. | |
| And I hope that the parliamentarians who voted for him this time will realise that, you know, there's joy in heaven over the sinner that repentes. | |
| And I think you'll get that. | |
| Scum off his family. | |
| You can't start bringing the good lord into this. | |
| Let me turn to Anne Whitticomb. | |
| Anne Whitticomb, I say this with great respect, but your party is in a complete state of utter disarray. | |
| What is going on? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I mean, I honestly think at the moment I'd rather vote for Screaming Lord Such than for the Conservatives. | |
| I'm not sure what's going on. | |
| On the issue of Boris, let me say this, that the one thing that would concern me if he came back is that we still have the inquiry being led by Harriet Harmon. | |
| He has no sympathisers on that inquiry and a lot of people on it who've already said what they think. | |
| And I'm not sure that the Conservative Party would be wise to have Boris back when that inquiry could pronounce adversely, having spun it out for some time, then pronounce adversely, and we'd have more chaos, Piers, more chaos. | |
| So regardless of Boris's strengths and regardless of his weaknesses, I think that is a major consideration. | |
| Okay, let me bring in Natalie Evans here from the US Sun. | |
| I mean, it's funny being in New York when this is all unfurling because of modern technology, it doesn't really make any difference, other than you get a feeling from people in New York, wow, we thought our politics was crazy. | |
| Look at these guys across the pond. | |
| That's exactly the feeling. | |
| And I sympathise with you when you say it's great to be thousands of miles away from this. | |
| I don't often miss being home. | |
| And when this kind of thing happened, it's like, okay. | |
| But I mean, yeah, it's not very often that Americans, you know, they're used to the world looking at us and going, what's going on in your country? | |
| So it's quite nice to be able to turn around and go, hang on, someone else has got it as a. | |
| I mean, somebody did a brilliant tweet earlier. | |
| It was actually, it was a political journalist from the Sky News. | |
| Let's see if I can find it because it was very, very funny. | |
| Have we got it up there on screen? | |
| The Sky News one? | |
| It was something along the lines of his... | |
| He said, my son has lived through four chancellors, three home secretaries, two, nearly three prime ministers, and two monarchs. | |
| He's four months old. | |
| And I thought, Natalie, that summed it up, right? | |
| It really is. | |
| Chaos! | |
| I mean, I think we established before, like, Liz Truss's stint as prime minister was for Scaramucci's. | |
| We had the most on last night, and he was saying that he actually feels like he doesn't feel so bad now. | |
| No, he makes it look good. | |
| The Sun, I think, you know, tried to embrace Liz Truss and get behind her, but pretty soon, I think, began to be a bit spiky in the comment pages about what was going on. | |
| Who do you think the Sun might get behind now? | |
| I mean, would they be tempted to go with Boris, or is it more likely they'll go with someone like Sunak? | |
| Well, I mean, I would say Rishi is sort of the frontrunner there, but we've actually been polling our readers. | |
| And I mean, we might find it's crazy that Boris's name has even been thrown into the mix today, but more than 50% of our readers actually want him back. | |
| And these 52% Rishi's choining with 27%, so it might not be so crazy. | |
| Well, it's not, I mean, I mean, Stanley Johnson, I can say my own son, my oldest boy, who's 29, Spencer, is a massive die-hard fan of Boris, thinks he was unfairly done in, and he's absolutely thrilled at the idea that he might be returning in glory. | |
| Well, good for him. | |
| He's a fascinating football films, you know, where there's an action hero who has a pits moment and then returns. | |
| Hey, well, good for your eldest son. | |
| Boris is my oldest son. | |
| This is what I think. | |
| He's going to be crucial in uniting these warring parts of the Tory Party. | |
| And why do I say that? | |
| Because he is probably the only man, the man who pushed for Brexit, if I wasn't very keen on Brexit, as you know, who actually realises now that the crucial thing is to rebuild the relationships with Europe. | |
| We look at the trade figures now and we realize that, as you said earlier, Brexit has not been a good deal. | |
| If we don't really make an effort now to get closer to Europe, we are going to be in trouble. | |
| And I think what Boris may be able to do is tone down the Reese Moggs. | |
| Reese Mogg has got a plan now, as you know, to sunset clause any single law which originated from Europe. | |
| There's about 2,000 of them. | |
| Well, Boris has got to put a stop to that. | |
| Now, as a voter, I'm going to say, who am I going to vote for? | |
| I mean, look, do you know what? | |
| You know how he could persuade me as a remainer? | |
| I have to say, although I respected the result of the referendum, if Boris Johnson actually did come back in charge and said, you know what, I've had time to think about this. | |
| Brexit hasn't worked. | |
| We're going to have another referendum. | |
| I suspect the British people would vote overwhelmingly against Brexit. | |
| Well, that may not be clear. | |
| I'm not actually saying, let's go for another referendum. | |
| I am saying he needs to clamp down on what you might call the theological, ideological view of certain parts of the Tory Party, not only, of course, about Europe, but about China and so on and so forth. | |
| So I think in this sense, Boris really could be a unifier. | |
| And he's probably the only man who can bring back these wings of the party together. | |
| He has to dump the right wing. | |
| He has to fix himself firmly in the centre. | |
| Okay. | |
| Let me bring Anne. | |
| And you've been furiously shaking your head for the last few minutes, which is not an unusual spectacle on my programme. | |
| But why are you enraged by what you've been hearing? | |
| Well, quite honestly, if that was going to be Boris's programme, Boris would be the last person I want back, because I think one of the big problems over the last few weeks has been that we had somebody who appealed to the membership on a completely different programme, on a very bold programme, which she then bungled and mishandled. | |
| Let me concede that. | |
| But she had a very bold programme. | |
| And what we've got now is just more of the same that was happening before that wasn't actually getting us anywhere. | |
| And the idea that Boris is going to ditch completely what Stanley calls the right, by which he means that bold programme completely, and just go back to where we were, I find absolutely horrifying. | |
| But then, quite honestly, Piers, I find the whole darn thing horrifying. | |
| Well, you know, you know what, Anne, and I understand that. | |
| If I was a Conservative, honestly, I would be ashamed of what's been going on. | |
|
Ye's Explosive Two-Hour Interview
00:07:11
|
|
| I saw that clip of Charles Wheeler really speaking from the heart last night, which went around social media. | |
| And it was really quite heartbreaking, actually, to see somebody that upset about what was happening with his party. | |
| But someone's got to get this thing back on track. | |
| And when you have a lettuce lasting longer than a Conservative Prime Minister, let's take a little look actually a bit of Charles Wheeler's comments last night. | |
| More currently. | |
| I've had enough. | |
| I've had enough of talentless people putting their tick in the right box. | |
| Not because it's in the national interest, but because it's in their own personal interest to achieve ministerial position. | |
| And I know I speak for hundreds of backbenchers who right now are worrying for their constituents all the time, but now worrying about their own personal circumstances. | |
| It was Charles Walker, not Wheeler. | |
| Apologies, but the statement speaks for itself. | |
| And the whole thing was worth only two or three minutes, but my God, it was powerful. | |
| And says it all. | |
| I think a lot of Tories are in complete turmoil. | |
| My thanks to Stanley Johnson. | |
| My thanks to Anne Whitticomb. | |
| And Natalie, you're going to say with me and talk about Kanye West, I think, after the break, which the next part of my explosive world exclusive interview with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. | |
| We're going to run the whole interview tomorrow night, but it's already had a million views on YouTube. | |
| Just one small clip. | |
| So a huge, I think, interest in what is coming up tomorrow in our two-hour special. | |
| We'll talk about that now. | |
| Well, welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored, live from New York City, the first installment of my explosive world exclusive interview with one of the most brilliant but controversial artists in the world, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has already hit over a million views on YouTube. | |
| He and I went head to head for two hours yesterday on everything from anti-Semitism to George Floyd to White Lives Matter, the t-shirt he wore. | |
| Kim Kardashian, of course, his ex-wife. | |
| Donald Trump. | |
| Here's a taste of what's to come in our two-hour special tomorrow. | |
| The interview everyone has been waiting for. | |
| You're being a Karen. | |
| Can't you? | |
| Piers Morgan speaks exclusively to Ye, explaining his controversial comments on George Floyd. | |
| As the most influential person on the planet, I am questioning it. | |
| Kim Kardashian. | |
| Would you like one day to get back with Kim? | |
| And his anti-Semitic tweet that got him kicked off Twitter. | |
| It is racism when you say I'm going dead clear for people. | |
| No, it's not. | |
| Interview adjourned. | |
| And then he walks out of the interview. | |
| And then he walks back in and apologises. | |
| I will say I'm sorry for the people that are hurt. | |
| Piers Morgan uncensored. | |
| Exclusive two-hour special. | |
| Friday, 8pm. | |
| And there's a lot more where that came from. | |
| It was two of the most extraordinary hours I've probably ever had, I think, as an interviewer. | |
| Ye is no normal interview subject. | |
| He mocks my British accent. | |
| He delights in being uncensored and then really tests the waters of our lack of censorship. | |
| He's rude about a lot of people. | |
| He's warm in past where I didn't expect him to be. | |
| He's funny. | |
| He's outrageous. | |
| He's shocking. | |
| He tries to defend the indefensible, but then apologises for it. | |
| So it's a really fascinating watch. | |
| That'll be tomorrow night from 8 till 10 on Talk TV. | |
| Natalie Evans, I mean, we knew him as Kanye. | |
| He's now Ye. | |
| Everything about him is kind of fascinating, but he's been through a pretty awful few weeks of saying deeply inflammatory things about the Jewish people, about George Floyd, about White Lives Matter t-shirts, enraging community after community. | |
| What do you think of him? | |
| And what's going on with him right now? | |
| Well, I think he's clearly a very confused, very vulnerable guy who, I mean, as you said in your interview, you know, he has this huge platform. | |
| You know, he's the most influential person in the world. | |
| And perhaps the mental state he's in, we all know he's got, you know, mental health issues. | |
| So he denies he has any mental illness. | |
| He said that to me. | |
| He said his main problem is sleep deprivation, which might well be the case because he's got one of those, I can tell you he's got an incredibly restless, curious, fizzing mind. | |
| This is why he goes off on tangents all the time. | |
| Very hard to interview. | |
| But sort of compelling challenge as well. | |
| But I think there's something about his mind. | |
| It's just not, it's not normal. | |
| Whether it qualifies as mental illness, he says not. | |
| Well, I mean, if it was sleep deprivation, there'd be far more of us running our mouths on Twitter and our social media. | |
| Is there any defense for what some of the stuff he's been saying? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| No. | |
| I mean, it was fascinating to watch your interview, the clips that we've seen. | |
| It was quite a journey with him. | |
| I mean, fantastic scoop. | |
| We'd be very proud of that on our side. | |
| But, you know, for him to come out, you know, this whole concept of I'm fighting fire with fire. | |
| You know, it's one thing to, you know, stand your ground, be defensive. | |
| But he's also, I mean, he's like a kid in the playground that's like, oh, you know, that guy punched me, so I punched him back. | |
| It doesn't make it right. | |
| He can say he's been the victim of racism. | |
| That doesn't mean that he should target other groups. | |
| You know, it incites hate in different directions. | |
| And as someone with that profile, he shouldn't be doing that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, I think it was interesting because he started off wanting to double down everything and was quite belligerent and almost sort of offhand about it. | |
| But then the longer he stayed, he walked off at one stage, giving me an ultimatum. | |
| He said, I'll only apologize for what I said about the Jewish people if all these business people who've ripped him off, as he says, get around a table and apologize to me. | |
| But he went away and thought about it. | |
| And when he came back, he then actually did issue quite a sincere apology to any Jewish people who've been offended by what he said and said they weren't the target of his anger. | |
| I think he's got a lot of pain and anger going on, Kanye, from all sorts of different directions. | |
| His upbringing, the breakup of his marriage, maybe not seeing his kids enough, I don't know. | |
| But I've got to say, there are moments of great levity in this interview. | |
| He's very entertaining. | |
| He's compelling to watch. | |
| And by the end, I kind of felt, I just don't think he's the devil. | |
| He's certainly not the angel you may want people to think he is. | |
| But it'd be interesting what people think. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| I mean, the kind of, it was fantastic the way you actually did kind of tease that apology out of him. | |
| You know, he clearly was not looking to do that. | |
| And yeah, maybe storming off again, I mean, a lot of the parts of the interview were quite childlike. | |
| Well, it's a bit when he says to me, you know, I'm trying to give him advice about if I were you, I think I would think about what I said. | |
| No, no, he says, and then he says, how rich are you? | |
| Well, not as rich as you. | |
| Well, obviously, he said, exactly. | |
| So why should I take your advice? | |
| And somehow, only money is the currency for being able to offer wisdom. | |
| And I've said to him, well, why don't you actually listen to my advice? | |
| And if you like what you hear, then they have nothing to do with money. | |
| Yeah, I mean, everyone is perfectly fine to disagree. | |
| I mean, I completely agree with you. | |
| He's been through a lot, and he's been through it on a very, very public forum. | |
| You know, it's no easy thing to go through. | |
| You know what? | |
| It doesn't defend the indefensible. | |
| He says some indefensible things, but I call him out on those. | |
| And it's an interesting challenge. | |
| Natalie, thank you very much indeed. | |
| Good to see you. | |
| That's it from me tonight. | |
| My two-hour interview with Ye tomorrow at 8pm. | |
| Until then, whatever you're up to, keep it uncensored. | |