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Feb. 7, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
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Wales Bans Delilah Anthem 00:02:51
Tonight, Piers Morgan Uncensored, Wales Rugby bans a legendary anthem Delilah over claims it normalises violence against women.
Does that mean we now cancel violent television, violent movies, operas, even Shakespeare?
We'll debate that.
At first Boris Johnson went on manoeuvres, now lettuce Liz Truss launches the most unwanted comeback in political history of Britain's zombie ex-prime ministers undermining Richie Sunak's government.
Thus Sam Smith shocks, well, he's always shocking, I don't know why it's even a news story, but he's shocked again at the Grammys by dressing up as Satan.
Is he, they, them bravely pushing the boundaries of art or just the boundaries of taste?
We'll debate that.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
There are very few sights and sounds more iconic in British sport than Welsh rugby fans.
Lustily bellowing out Delilah.
It's a legendary 1960s ballad by the iconic Welsh crooner Tom Jones.
And here's the man himself leading a rousing chorus of it at Wembley for the England v Wales game in 1999.
Or spine-tingling stuff like many sporting anthems.
It's nothing much to do with sport.
It's a stirring sing-along anthem which every supporter knows the words to.
It gets their pulses racing.
It raises the roof.
It brings fans together.
But does it incite violence?
Well the Welsh Rugby Union thinks so.
It's just banned the song from the official choir song list ahead of the Six Nations opening fixtures, which just occurred this weekend.
And the victory for common sense, and it was their only victory this weekend, the Welsh fans completely ignored it.
Well, it didn't help their play.
Wales got walloped by Ireland in the opening game on Saturday.
Someone suggested they should have spent more time concentrating on the rugby, a little less time on the virtue signalling.
Well, the Wales winger, Louis Rhys Zamet, tweeted all the things they need to do and they do that first.
He's got a point, hasn't he?
The Welsh Rugby Union said in the statement that the song is problematic, that wonderful new word, that scourge of our society, problematic.
Virtue Signaling vs Violence 00:14:30
Everything is problematic to somebody, trust me, everything.
But problematic and upsetting to some supporters because of its subject matter.
And it's true.
The lyrics to Delilah are pretty full-on.
They're about a jealous lover avenging his unfaithful concubine.
She stood there laughing.
I took my life in my hand and she laughed no more.
We can all agree that's not the way to settle a real domestic dispute, but has any real person in the 55-year history of the song ever seriously interpreted it as an instruction manual?
Does anyone think it has anything to do with domestic violence?
The song's just theatre.
It's a thespian murder ballad telling a fictional story about people who don't exist.
If we have to ban Delilah, where does that stop?
Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
That wasn't very nice.
Bob Marley shot a sheriff.
That was definitely problematic.
And don't even dare think about Britney Spears singing Hit Me Baby one more time.
Happy Valley is the biggest show on British TV at the moment.
It features a lot of violence against women, which it uses as part of its masterful and hard-hitting storytelling.
Movies are loaded with exaggerated violence against men, women, and well pretty much everybody.
Then there's opera, theatre, Shakespeare, the entire genre of rap music.
Banning one Welsh anthem might seem trivial to some, but once you begin to sacrifice art at the altar of snowflakery, as I would see it, the world starts to become a very boring place.
Well, joining me now is domestic abuse survivor and the founder of Stand Up to Domestic Abuse, Rachel Williams, and my PAC, political journalist Ava Santina, taught to be contributor Esther Kracker.
Well, welcome to all of you.
So, Rachel, first of all, you've been through a horrific thing, horrific domestic violence, ending up with you being shot.
And it had appalling consequences.
Your own son took his life after this.
And for that, I'm deeply sorry to you.
And genuinely, I have nothing to offer you but empathy for everything you've been through.
Here's my problem with this: I can understand why you, given what you've been through, given the choice, would say, yeah, stop singing Delilah.
But for the reasons I've just articulated, that once you start going down that road with fictitious art, I don't know where it ends.
Most operas have similar storylines.
Shakespeare's full of it.
Do we literally say that's it?
That all that kind of stuff has to be expunged, cancelled.
Well, I'm Welsh, I lift home.
I used to sing along with gusto, you know, not really knowing the words.
And this is what I found in the last couple of weeks.
People are singing it, not knowing the words.
And I think if it was put up on a big screen in the match, would people really want to be seeing that?
The glorifying of a murder?
No, we know we lose two women a week at the hands of a partner or ex-partner.
Is banning Delilah going to stop a perpetrator?
Of course it's not.
And anybody that thinks that is absolutely insane.
So why bother?
Well, I think, you know, we talk about Happy Valley.
You know, that was great because it showed domestic abuse, showed coercion, showed the murder, showed the violence.
But then it's Good Cop Bad Cop.
He got done for his actions, basically.
This is actually glorifying a song of a murder.
And I think unless you've been touched by domestic abuse and violence directly or indirectly, it's somebody else's business.
But if you took the argument, I get it.
Yeah.
I get it, I totally get why you feel the way you do.
But if you take the argument that if you've personally experienced something, which is, you know, for you a serious thing and it upsets you and it's traumatizing, that no art can ever go down that road because it might upset somebody who's been through it themselves for real.
I just think in the end, I'll bring in the pack here, but I just think in the end, Esther, once you go down that road, it's a very slippery slope to really rampant censorship.
Because somebody somewhere will have a story not as bad as yours, I would hope, because it's horrific.
But somebody will have a story about almost everything, which they could say, look, this is traumatizing me.
This Shakespeare play, this performance of it, you know, this opera, I mean, the operas in particular, I'm thinking of.
This poem, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff where you might recite poetry, you might recite a, you know, I might have a school play of Shakespeare.
I was a Shakespeare performer myself at prep school.
When I look back on it, Romeo and Juliet, you know, these things are, they're all pretty violent.
Yeah, I mean, it's a free speech issue, right?
You know, everything at some point can and will offend someone else.
But at the point where you're infringing on someone's free speech to actually sing the song because you think they're not cognizant of the content of the lyrics or whether they should be singing it, that is where it's a slippery slope.
Because then you have to be able to justify it.
You have to be able to prove that that song is an instruction manual for people that want to solve domestic disputes, which is not.
No one's murdered a woman because they said, I listened to the song Delilah and followed the lyrics, right?
And the bigger issue here is, listen to the films that we listen to today.
50 Cents, you know, Somsie.
Look at the lyrics of all the modern pop songs that we listen to.
They're all full of violence and glorifying horrible things.
But we still sing them.
And most people know the lyrics.
They just choose to ignore them.
That's just the nature of the song.
Right, I mean, that is my feeling about this.
If you're going to start banning Delilah, it's a bit like when they went after the Christmas song, what was it, Baby It's Cold Outside.
And they said, you know, it was basically a license to commit assault on women.
Everybody with a brain knew that was not the case about that.
It was a very innocent song, actually, in a very innocent video about playful flirtation.
But it got misconstrued.
John Legend rewrote the lyrics because it was so outrageous.
But John Legend is best friends with a bunch of rap stars who write and sing the most heinous stuff.
So to me, there's a real double standard too about what we delve into when it comes to censoring music.
But that's interesting that you understand that dichotomy.
And then I understand later in this program, we're going to be talking about Sam Smith and a display that they put on yesterday at the Grammys, a display that I really enjoyed.
You Satan.
You can understand from that.
You can understand how that might be influential on children who are watching on impressionable people.
But for some reason, you can't understand why chanting about murdering someone might be...
You know, the difference here is not murdering someone, it's murdering a woman.
So imagine if Delilah was written and sung by a woman.
Bob Marley shot the sheriff.
What happens with that?
Hang on, hang on.
Wait a minute.
Bob Marley, I shot the sheriff.
So what happens to that song?
Well, what do you mean?
Are we in a situation where we say it's only matters shot?
Are we saying it only matters if a woman is it only applicable to women being on the receiving end of violence?
Well, I think you are very intelligent, Piers, and you know that women are often on the end, the receiving end of domestic abuse.
You know, a woman is killed every three days by a partner.
And how many men are killed by other women?
No, but it dwarfs that number.
The number of men that are killed by other men dwarfs the number of people that are in the number of the men.
No, but that doesn't mean all men are bad.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't mean all that.
It doesn't mean I'm not.
Let me say, Rachel, on that point, I have made a series of crime documentaries involving extremely violent women, just for the record.
Two series called Killer Women.
And they were incredibly dangerous and very violent.
So it's not like dangerous women don't exist.
The percentage is higher, but the highest percentage of killings in the world by a country mile, as Esther said, is men on men, right?
But my point is, okay, you know, Bob Marley, I shot the sheriff.
Did we ban that song?
Yes or no?
No, I understand that.
Well, do we or not?
But can I also present it?
It's like a politician.
But it makes do we ban it or not?
We don't ban it.
We don't ban it.
But can I ask you to get that?
So men getting shot dead, fine.
Women getting killed, not fine.
Let me slightly agree with you.
Let me slightly agree with you and say what I didn't like about this ban was I felt that the Welsh Rugby Union had actually engaged in fen washing, which is essentially like, you know, that sounds like one of those things that you see anyways.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a hygienic product.
But it's capitalising on domestic abuse and women's violence in a way to publicize yourself.
And actually, yeah, banning this song is not going to do anything to combat the way that women are treated by violent husbands who come home from sports games.
If they'd actually done something productive alongside this ban, I'd be more on side with it.
But I think they have trivialised domestic abuse with this, just this quiet ban.
Okay, so my other question, look, you said you sang along with it's been a Welsh anthem for 50 years, right?
It came out in the 60s.
Why now?
I mean, we've all known what the lyrics have been.
Everyone knows what the song is.
Why now?
I think, if I'm truly honest, it is in response to what's just come up with the WIU.
You know, I've been talking about this song for the last few years, and so is Chris Bryant, the MP.
And I had a Twitter debate with a gentleman on Twitter, and he said, you know, oh, it's ridiculous.
And then when I explained to him my reasons of why I think it should not be sung, he said he totally agreed.
You know, 92% of defendants in domestic abuse cases in 2020 were male.
You know, we've got a problem.
Rachel, but here's, again, I come, listen, complete respect, again, for your argument, I get it.
But here's the problem.
To me, there are two issues, domestic violence and free speech, right?
Nobody is saying that these are real people in Delilah.
They're fictitious.
And someone is saying...
It's only happening every week.
They'll put it in the face of the family.
No, I understand that.
But Happy Valley is fictitious.
Yes, but then you had the cop at the end.
So if Tom Jones rewrote the lyrics and the guy who kills the woman gets put in jail, you're fine with it.
So be it, yeah?
Yeah.
You'd be fine with that.
Why is that the standard?
Keep the lyrics.
So your interpretation of it is the standard.
My thing is, at the end of the day, it's Good Cop Bad Cop.
And at the end of the day, you've got a case, like with Happy Valley, where he was actually arrested, put in prison, and, you know, you've got to...
If the story ends the way you want it, that's when it's okay for free speech.
What if Delilah took the knife?
What if Delilah saw the man at the door and said, oh, you know what?
I'm sick of you.
And just went into a kitchen and got a butcher's knife.
No, I think we are trivialising.
No, but that's the thing.
You're happy to manipulate a story to make it more complicated.
No, it's not.
Because at the end of the day, if Delilah killed the guy, then, you know, we could still have the same conversation.
But let me tell you, Richardson.
We wouldn't do it forever.
We wouldn't be having the conversation.
Exactly.
If Delilah killed.
If more women are killed than men in the UK is.
But as we just said, far more men are killed by men.
And the company nominates it.
And it's promoting violence constantly.
This is a sick world.
That's the entirety of the rap job.
That's the entirety of the rapidity.
Rugby itself promotes violence.
It's men smashing into each other.
It's violence.
Yeah, but they choose to do that.
A woman don't have to be killed or smacked the rap.
They also choose not to sing the song, but you don't get to make that blanket banner.
That actually says more about the person singing the song.
I think if I know the lyrics, if you know the lyrics and you're talking about the song.
So that's why I call Freedom of Speaker.
That's fine.
Okay, but would you, though, go over any opera that had problematic narratives or themes?
Would you go over any other songs which have violence in them?
Would you ban all rap music?
Because they're all.
Rebusting, you know, that's a homage to stalkers.
You know, every breath you take, every move you make.
No, I get that.
You're not going to ban every breath you take.
You can.
I would love to ban that song.
That is a terribly frightening song.
I cannot stand it.
Every breath you take.
It's awful.
It's about a man watching his ex-wife forever.
It's stalking.
It sounds nice.
It sounds nice.
It's not very nice if someone knew.
All right, so we're banning that as well.
What else do you want to ban?
I'd happily get rid of that.
You'd happily get rid of most rap music.
It's interesting to hear what you talk about.
Yes, you would.
I'm sure I've been on the show and I've spoken to you before about how...
You've never said it should be banned.
No, I've only ever said, I don't think any of it should be banned.
I think fictitious music lyrics, like everything else fictitious, they should be treated as fictitious.
And I don't see a causal link between Delilah and people suffering domestic violence.
I just don't.
If there was one, if there was a spate of cases of people say, well, actually, I listened to Tom Jones sing this at the rugby and it made me want to go and kill my partner.
Fine.
There's ever been a recorded case of that.
You don't think that chanting it over and over again might normalise lying violence.
I don't think anybody ever has ever gone away from chanting Delilah and thinking, I must go and kill my girlfriend.
Well, then it's okay for Sam Smith to dress up as Satan as well.
My point about Sam Smith is he's become a bit like his heroine Madonna.
He's become this ridiculous attention seeker who only shocks just to create shock and attention.
The reason I had an objection to this is for an economic about it for the New York Post.
There are 210 million Christians in America, 63% of the country, who are actually genuinely offended that Sam Smith was prancing around on stage at the Grammys, family show watched by kids.
He's prancing around devil worshipping and actually making a point of saying, well, they don't recognise trans people, so we view them as hellish, right?
But why do you get to ban free speech or you get to promote free speech when it's Delilah?
But then, when this comes on and it might offend a certain subsect of America, I'm not banning it.
I'm not saying it should be banned.
But it's not appropriate because it might offend people.
You can be critical.
You could be critical.
I just don't believe in this cancel culture all the time.
I don't believe you keep banning things because you don't find them appropriate.
But you can sing Delilah at home.
You can go home and sing every breath you take.
No one is stopping you from doing that.
We're just suggesting that maybe in a stadium full of people where women and children like to take part in the action, it's not appropriate.
You're not suggesting it, you're banning it.
That's the difference.
You're not suggesting it.
Now it's been banned.
I didn't ban anything.
That was a lot of fun.
Well, yeah, but no, but that's the only choir, stop the choir singing.
But my so if your mum was tragically killed by her partner, knife to death, would you be happy singing that in a rugby match?
I wouldn't have any correlation between that and Delilah.
No, none of them.
You wouldn't.
No, none at all.
Unless it happened because of the song Delilah.
My dad's a Welshman and a massive fan of Welsh rugby.
If he suddenly, you know, got over excited watching the rugby because Delilah was being sung and attacked my mother, I might have a problem with it.
But I don't see any causal link between the two things.
And that's where I have a problem with the censorship.
If there was, I'd say, okay, I get it.
And again, I completely understand why you feel the way you do.
But I do think once you go down that road, I'm not sure where it stops because there'll be a lot of people out there who have their own reasons.
Like you say, is every breath you take about stalking?
I don't think so, but there'll be someone who's a stalking victim who has the same powerful argument that you do, who's been through a horrendous experience with stalking, and says, yes.
And I get that.
Censorship Without Limits 00:13:39
And I get each individual case.
I don't think you can really legislate free speech by saying every individual that suffered personal trauma means we have to ban this thing.
And like I said all along, Piers, you know, at the end of the day, perpetrators abuse because they choose, not because of alcohol, not because of drinks, not because of their childhood background, and not because of Delilah.
But the good thing, what's happening here, is we're having the conversation about domestic abuse and violence and it's been brought back into the media.
Rachel, I agree.
And I think that's an important issue.
And I know you've been through an awful lot, and it's great to see you.
So thank you very much for coming in.
Appreciate it.
You're staying with me, Pac.
Next tonight, the fallout to my exclusive interview with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the ghastly return of the most unwanted Prime Minister in history, the lettuce.
Liz Truss, or next.
Well, welcome back to Piers Bulgarian Centre.
Just when Rishi Sunak thought he sailed into slightly calmer waters, the Tory sharks are circling the Prime Minister.
Liz Truss and Boris Johnson are pushing for tax cuts ahead of the budget.
Remember, the last time the government tried the trustway, the pound tank to mortgage rates exploded, and she was gone in 44 days.
In fact, she lasted less time than a lettuce, you might remember.
Or maybe Rishi Sunak needs to take the advice that I gave him during our interview.
Is it time to put the periscope up and unleash a little torpedo to remind Boris who the actual Prime Minister is?
Well, joining me now is the former Conservative Party chairman, Sir Jake Berry.
Ava and Esther are still here, and I'm joined by talk to his political editor Kate McCann.
I'm going to start with Kate McCann down in Westminster.
The Liz Truss comeback that nobody forecasts and nobody seems to want.
Why is this happening?
Why is she not taking a dignified period of silence of, say, 20 years as we try and forget the damage she wrought on our economy?
Yeah, Piers, I think that's a question that actually lots in the Conservative Party, not least in the country, are asking themselves too.
What's clear from the 4,000-word piece that Liz Truss wrote over the weekend and the interview that she's done this evening with Spectator TV is that she feels she's going to play a role in reshaping not just the Conservative Party, but the whole of politics's approach to economics.
She thinks essentially that Rishi Sunak and those in government right now have got it wrong.
And she seems to feel some kind of duty to try and set it right.
And what's fascinating about reading her interview and her reasoning for why things went the way they did is that there's a lot of blame levied on a lot of different people.
The OBR comes in for some not phrased enough in economics.
We're not economically literate.
We play a part too.
She's clearly thought about the reasons why she believes things went wrong for her.
But I think the mood in the Conservative Party is pretty much not right now, thank you very much, even though there are many unnecessary things.
It's not right now.
It's not never, thanks.
It's unbelievable.
And I read this 4,000 word thing.
She blamed absolutely everybody and even found a way to blame the Labour Party, which I hadn't factored into this at all because last time I checked, she was thrown out by her own side, not by the Labour Party.
But also the idea you could be Prime Minister for 44 days, that you can be outlasted by a lettuce in a tabloid stunt, that you tank the pound to record lows, that you cause immeasurable damage to individual households with soaring mortgages and so on.
The idea that you don't even include the word sorry in this 4,000 word piece, that you blame everybody else, and that you very grandly say, I don't think I'll be making a comeback as Prime Minister.
No one's going to ask you.
Sorry?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think she evidently feels like she was unfairly turfed out.
And she's gone away, thought about it, come back and explained all the reasons why she feels it wasn't fair.
I mean, I think the most telling moment for me in what we've seen from her over the last 24 hours was she still doesn't really seem to have an answer to the question of why she sacked her own Chancellor, which you would think she had spent some time thinking about.
And you're right, you know, this does have a huge impact now on the party itself.
I mean, you've got Jake Berry there.
I'm sure that he will tell you that Rishi Sunak will be able to carry on and the Prime Minister is setting his own course.
But the reality is that there are those in the Tory Party, which is kind of what I was about to say before, who would like to see the Chancellor cut taxes in the budget.
And we've had a very clear signal from number 10 that that is not going to happen.
And remember, we're not that far out from a general election.
And there are lots of Conservative MPs worried about whether or not they'll be able to keep their seats who would like to see more action from the Prime Minister, who doesn't feel himself that now is the right time to run.
I'll bring in Jake Berry.
I'm just trying to wonder how stupid you have to be as a Conservative member of parliament to think the best thing that Rishi Sunak could do right now is the thing that Liz Trust did, which tanked the pound, virtually collapsed our economy, almost led to us defunding ourselves and led to her having to leave after 44 days as the record worst prime minister in history.
What part of the brain of any Tory MP, and by the way, if you're one of them, I include you.
So this is your chance to either convict yourself or acquit, but what part of that thinking is anything other than insanity?
I mean, it'd be like the old Einstein thing, the definition of insanity, doing the same thing again and again, expecting a different result.
Well, Piers, look, Rishi Sunak himself has committed to lower taxes before the next general election, looking at the basic rate of income tax.
That's something I support.
I think families up and down this country realise there's a little bit too much month and not enough salary.
And a great way of helping them out is to cut their taxes.
But he said he'll do it in his own time.
We all want what it's right for the economy.
We all want to cut our taxes, right?
Conservative MPs believe in customer taxes.
It's absolutely the sort of mantra of the party.
But the mantra of the party I keep hearing is, and these are people that I know, for example, worship Margaret Thatcher, right?
Margaret Thatcher, I don't know where this myth has developed, that the first thing she did was slash taxes.
She didn't.
The first thing she did with the tricky economy that she inherited was she stabilised the economy.
And when she was comfortable about it being stable, then she cut income tax dramatically.
And it was a huge success.
That's clearly what should be happening here.
You stabilise the economy first.
Inflation is still raging away at these huge levels.
What you don't do is pour petrol onto the inflation bonfire at this particularly perilous moment.
It's mad.
Well, Margaret Thatcher did spend the first part of her premiership reforming the civil service, which I absolutely think we need to do.
And one of the things Liz has said is that the civil service has a sort of, you know, a sort of institutional bias against tax cuts and Brexit, she said recently today.
You know, people will make their own mind up about that.
And she rolled the pitch for tax cuts that led to a sustained period of austerity in the United Kingdom.
Do I wish Liz Truss had taken that approach?
Yes, I think she should have done.
I think it would have been a much better way of dealing with it.
Do as a Conservative, I believe actually we've got the highest taxes in this country that we've known in our peacetime history.
I don't think they can go any higher.
And I think if you accept that they shouldn't go higher, then you are then ultimately cut taxes, not if we cut taxes, Piers.
One of the reasons.
Of course, eventually we want to cut taxes, but one of the reasons they're so astronomically high right now is to repair a lot of the damage that Liz Truss caused with her farcical 44 days.
Her inquasiquaring pulled this country's economy to its knees.
The idea she popped up so soon.
I find it actually insulting to this country to be a lecturer, to the millions of people paying through their nose now for the mortgages.
I find it insulting that Liz Truss has dared to rear her face so soon and is not blaming anybody, not blaming herself, but everybody else is to blame, including the Labour Party apparently.
It's a left-wing conspiracy that forced her to do what she did.
No, it was ignorance of the markets and of the economy.
Full stop, end.
Well, I don't accept your premise that taxes are high now because it's repairing what happened in the United States.
I said they're higher than they would be.
Taxes are high now.
Because we are coming out of a moment of national crisis in terms of COVID.
That's why taxes are high.
There's no point in saying anything.
I said they've had to go back up the way they did to repair.
But it doesn't matter.
It's worth it.
Hello, Jake.
On the issue of this and time.
JJ, one moment, you've questioned me.
So just to be clear, I said the reason they've had to go so stratospherically higher again is because of the damage that she caused, and we've had to repair it.
Jeremy Hunt's had no option, nor's Rishi Sunak.
The reason taxes are so high is because we're coming out of the COVID pandemic.
But on the issue of time, I think, look, it doesn't matter where you think blame lies.
I think the British people wanted to hear from Liz.
I think they wanted to hear sorry.
I think it was a mistake not to say that.
And frankly, whoever is in, you know, wherever the blame lies, the British people look at this and go, my mortgage went up.
You know, there was a problem with the economy.
The bond yields went up.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is.
They blame the government.
They blame this.
You are in charge.
Well, they blame the government because Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwating played Russian roulette with the country's finances.
But that's why it's so important now that we deliver on this pledge made by Ritchie to half inflation.
Well, let's play a clip from my interview.
The inflation is the biggest challenge facing every family.
And that's what interest rates went up again last week.
Liz Truss wasn't in power.
It's because of inflation, and that's why we've got to take it.
I understand.
Let's put another clip from my interview with Rishi Sunak about this very subject.
It's pretty much the worst imaginable hospital pass any incoming prime minister could ever wish to receive, which begs the question, what on earth did you want to do this for?
Even though it was going to be a nightmare job for all the reasons that you outlined, you know, I felt that I could make a difference and I was the best person to make a difference at that moment, especially given the challenges that people were facing and what they were seeing with their mortgages.
And that's ultimately why I put myself forward to do it and knowing that it would be difficult and challenging, but ultimately doing what I thought was my duty in that situation, because I believe deeply in service and thought I could make a difference with the country.
Now, that got well received, that interview.
I think people appreciated seeing a bit more of him than they normally do in an interview.
Able to show a serious side and also a personal side.
But I was quite impressed by the way he said to me, right, I've got these pledges.
Come back and interview me at the end of the year and give me the verdict then on whether I've met them or not.
I like that.
That gives me a genuine, all of us, a target.
Right, okay.
He's laid down his marker.
But the very last thing Rishi Sunak needs right now are the two buffoons who came before him rearing themselves up like we've been so hard done by, going on manoeuvres and trying to damage him and ship away right when the party needs it least.
You've been party chairman.
What would you be doing now with these two renegades?
Well, look, the first thing is we've got to work out what we want former prime ministers to do.
We're all quite critical in the media and politicians alike of Tony Blair and David Cameron virtually immediately leaving office, people saying they're leaving to cash in.
We've then got a whole series of prime ministers who have stayed in parliament and are involved in politics.
Gordon Brown campaigned in the Scottish referendum.
He's in fact writing large parts of the Labour Party's manifesto for them now in relation to devolution.
When we have prime ministers coming in in their early 40s, we have to work out what they're going to do next.
I think that prime ministerial interventions, they uniquely understand how challenging the job is of being a prime minister.
In that interview, I heard Rishi Sunak say to you that he in fact speaks to all the former Conservative Prime Ministers and party leaders and talks to them about advice.
But uniquely, they know how challenging the job is.
So interventions should be infrequent and impactful.
And I think that can actually help the debate in this country.
Ava, I mean, I do find it staggering.
Here is Liz La Lettis.
I do find it staggering that we're even having a conversation about Liz Truss making any kind of comeback yet.
And with no remorse, no apology, just like it never happened.
It was all somebody else's fault.
And by the way, I was right.
Yeah, and I think the other thing I take away that I'm a little bit frightened to hear, Jake, is your defense of Liz Truss and that low-tax policy.
Because the first time that you enacted that, you spooked the markets and you frightened investment away from the UK.
And actually, investors are still frightened to put their money into our country.
And if they think that people on the back benches, MPs on the back benches, are going to still go for this low-tax policy and might frighten the markets again, they're never going to bring anything here.
It's not a low-tax policy.
We're one of the highest.
We're in the highest point.
The nation has ever been under.
Perhaps you think they should go up.
I actually think that we are going to go.
Well, apparently, it does.
People talk about tax cuts.
That's not what I said.
That's why you've advocated for a low-tax policy.
You talk to ordinary working families up and down this country, and what they want is the government to give them a break, to give them a tax cut, to let them keep some of this.
I agree with you, but I think we're conflating two different issues here.
I think, I can't believe I'm defending Liz Truss, but she, you know, investment in the UK was, we were the lowest of the G7 in terms of investment for a decade preceding Brexit.
So clearly, Liz Trust, in her awful way, was trying to fix a structural issue with Britain's economy by trying to attract funds again.
But exactly, but the communication was off.
I mean, the whole strategy was off to anyone.
Exactly.
I think what's the biggest issue with her comeback is the lack of the word sorry.
China Spy Balloon Signal 00:07:30
And I think we have to acknowledge that.
No one is against low taxes.
Conservatives, even traditional Labour voters who are hardworking people, want lower taxes.
But it's the way she went about it, the fact that she's blamed no one, everyone else but herself, and the fact that she's really not kind of reading the room.
No one wants to see Liz Trust back.
No!
No.
Well, maybe you do, don't you?
No, no, but let's come to you.
The Labour Party has agreed with the Conservative Party that they think the basic rate of income tax should fall.
That is now agreed between the two parties.
Look, Liz Trusser's diagnosis of what is wrong with the economy about being a low-growth, high-tax economy that is unable to fund public services is correct.
Was the prescription for that disease right?
No, it wasn't.
Should she have said, sorry?
I actually said earlier, I think she should have done.
I think she would have got a much better hearing for the serious point that she wants to make about we need to talk about create growth in our economy to pay for public services.
Absolutely.
Jake, good to see you.
Thanks for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Thank you to my pack.
Excellent today, as always.
Coming up, how big of a threat is a balloon from China to the mighty United States of America?
Well, quite a big one, according to Vivek Ramaswamy.
And he joins me next.
Welcome back into the balloon that's become a political scandal in America.
This is the moment the suspected Chinese spy balloon was finally shot down over South Carolina after eight days drifting across American airspace.
President Biden has been accused of humiliating America and emboldening China back to slowly.
The commander-in-chief says he decisively commanded U.S. forces to shoot down the balloon, which they eventually did on Saturday, but that was four days after he said that.
Well, joining me now.
Actually, we've got a clip.
Order the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible.
They decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground.
They decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water outside within a 12-mile limit.
They successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.
Nice top gun shades he's sporting there, the president.
But joining me now is the American entrepreneur and commentator, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek, you'll know as the anti-woke scourge of corporate wokery, so it's good to have you on anyway, and we may get to that in a sec.
But just on this issue of China and this balloon, it seemed to me a remarkable coincidence that in the run-up to President Biden's State of the Union speech, which is tomorrow night, you have a Chinese spy balloon just wandering across American airspace for eight days.
And it also revealed, I think, what many people fear is the problem with President Biden, which is his ineffectiveness when it comes to dealing with China.
And you just have this spy balloon there and nothing happening to it for days on end.
So look, I actually think they were purposefully waiting for that spy balloon to fly over the ocean before shooting it down, precisely so they could have plausible deniability because they were afraid of what they would actually find.
So what they're going to be able to say to the public now, if I'm able to make a prediction, is that they weren't actually able to find the information so they can't know, even though they sent these Navy divers down to find it.
The problem is if they had shot it down instantly over land, they would have to deal with what they actually saw.
And my view is that China is not so incompetent as some believe they are.
I think they were sending a signal.
They have sent these balloons in the past, reportedly.
But I think a big part of this was showing who's in charge.
The idea that we can send this balloon over your territory and you're not really going to do a darn thing about it.
And I'm sorry to say that they were basically right because shooting it down after it's over the ocean was the equivalent of doing nothing about it.
And then now the outrage afterwards is just a faux outrage from the CCP for whom lying is but a habit of their culture.
And so that's, I think, what essence of what's going on here.
They flew these balloons over Taiwan last year, reportedly.
Now they're just sending that signal to the United States as one more inch in progressing towards sending their projection of strength over us as a people.
That's, I think, a big part of the subtext of what was going on here.
And what do you think is the likelihood of China attacking Taiwan anytime soon?
A lot of people think it is more likely than not.
So I've been talking about this for a long time.
I think it is quite high.
I think it goes up for every little bit it goes up further.
I think it was not going to happen before October of last year.
That's when Xi Jinping took over his third term as leader of the CCP.
He didn't want to disrupt the apple cart.
But now that he's taken over, it'd be the perfect opportunity to show and project force.
There's a Taiwanese election coming up in 2024.
There's a U.S. election, presidential election coming up in 2024.
If I were in their shoes, you would look at the current U.S. president and say that's a pretty good bet for somebody who's not going to take actually the right actions to deter this.
That creates a potential window.
Add to that the fact that the U.S. is actually retreating and actually even retiring some of its ships in the South China Sea.
That creates a potential nader of U.S. naval capacity in the South China Sea right when China's actually ramping up its shipping production and its naval capacity as well.
So I think it's unfortunately the imperfect confluence, which is to say, from China's standpoint, the perfect confluence of forces and alignment of the stars to say that that moment to go after Taiwan could be coming sooner than we want.
And I think this balloon was really, if I may say, a trial balloon to say that, you know what, we're going to invade your sovereignty, see what you're going to do about it.
If the U.S. didn't do anything meaningful for that, then I think that's a test to say that the U.S. may not do anything meaningful.
Right, and they'll also...
And China will also be watching like a hawk what's happening in Ukraine and seeing how big a stomach for the fight the Americans have, right?
Because there are increasing rumblings on the Republican side in particular in the United States that they shouldn't be spending all this money waging a war, sort of proxy war, helping the Ukrainians defeat Vladimir Putin.
They should be spending it on more pressing domestic issues.
But I would argue against that, that if you let Putin win in Ukraine, that's a green light, I would say, for China to go into Taiwan.
Well, it's one step deeper than that, Piers, if I may.
We don't depend on Russia for our modern way of life.
In fact, even in the last Cold War, the U.S. did not depend on the Soviet Union for the shoes on our feet or the phones in our pocket.
But the precarious position with China, and I think this is the defining aspect of this Cold War in the 21st century, is the U.S. depends on its rival, its enemy, for powering its modern way of life, from the clothes we wear to the electronics that we use.
And that's what makes it so difficult to face down China relative to facing down Russia.
So I actually think that it's in some ways it's a disanalogy, because even if the U.S. could take on Vladimir Putin, that's the easy part.
In fact, you know, do a thought experiment.
Imagine this was a Russian spy balloon.
There is little doubt in my mind that the thing the U.S. would have done was to shoot it down instantly and ratchet up sanctions on Russia.
And the reason they didn't do it on China is because the U.S. depends on China for our modern way of life.
You know, the U.S. declared independence from the folks on your side of the pond in 1776.
I think 2023 or 2024 needs to be the year that the U.S. declares independence from China, or else there's no chance of actually being able to do it.
You know who's been saying that militarily.
40 years, Donald Trump.
Sam Smith Outrage Strategy 00:08:37
It was one of the things he was spot on about.
I remember interviewing Donald Trump 15 years ago and him telling me exactly that.
He said, China is basically pillaging the U.S. without the U.S. really realizing what's going on.
And it looks like he was right.
Vivek, great to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Come back again and talk about anti-woke scourge of corporations.
We need your voice.
It's out of control.
So please come back another time.
We'll discuss that.
We'll do that.
Well, next tonight, Sam Smith as the devil at the Grammys, Madonna looking barely human.
They don't think it was Halloween.
Is this art or obscenity?
We'll debate that next.
It's hard to keep up with Sam Smith's identities.
Last night's Grammys, they, as Smith now prefers to be called, identified as Satan.
A performance riled many views, especially amongst the American Christian fraternity, which there are 210 million in America.
Senator Ted Cruz said it was evil.
Well, one of the scariest moments for me wasn't Sam Smith as the devil.
It came with Madonna's general appearance.
She seemed not to have got the memo that Halloween's in October.
But are they, Sam Smith, pushing artistic boundaries or just pushing the limits of good taste?
Shocking for the sake of it, outraging because why not?
It sells records.
Well, join me now to debate all this.
It's Mazda Rowan, who performs as Tripping Jupiter, and the YouTuber and commentator Lauren Chen.
So Lauren Chen, let's start with you.
I mean, it's called outrage, this Sam Smith performance last night.
He'll be quite pleased about that because quite clearly, a bit like Madonna, his heroine, part of his shtick is deliberately creating outrage because it fuels interest and headlines and sells records.
No, you're absolutely right.
And people have said that this is a controversial move by Sam Smith.
This is not at all controversial within Hollywood.
And I want to be clear that Sam Smith did this specifically to upset the American right and Christians everywhere and to virtue signal to his fellow Hollywood members and elitists that don't worry, he's on your team.
He hates all of the things that he's supposed to hate.
If he actually wanted to be controversial in Hollywood, what he would do is actually come out in favor of traditional values because we know that would never happen in a million years.
Or he would, heaven forbid, actually do something that's critical of maybe Islam.
That would genuinely be controversy, but of course, because that would be popular among leftist elitists, he's not going to do that.
This is actually, in a lot of ways, the safest thing that Sam Smith could have done.
Yeah, I mean, now Tripping Jupiter, do I call you Tripping Jupiter or Madston?
Which one would you prefer?
You could call me Madston.
Mazda, thank you for being on the program.
This reminds me a bit of the Met Gala in New York when they all suddenly wore crucifixes one year.
And as a Catholic, I wrote a column saying, you know what?
You wouldn't be doing this to the Islam religion.
Why would you just do it to Catholicism and to Christianity?
And that reminded me again exactly what Lauren said about last night.
Yeah, you can dress up as Satan and prance about having a bit of devil worshiping just to deliberately outrage 63% of Americans who are Christians.
But given he wouldn't do that with other religions which are likely to lead to more serious repercussions for him, I thought it was a bit cowardly, if I'm honest.
I mean, I don't think there's anything cowardly about Sam Smith.
And, you know, if Lauren's suggesting that they are doing this just for publicity as far as like their identity goes, I mean, people struggle their entire lives with identity and the fact that they can come to a place where they feel secure enough to let it out in the public is an amazing thing and a beautiful thing and a really important thing as far as the red glitter hat with the devil horns.
And I'm sorry, Ted Cruz, if anyone looks at Sam Smith and thinks the word evil, I think that they might frighten a little too easily.
As far as the Catholic Church goes, I mean, I can't think of a better religion to criticize or to tweak because, I mean, there's like decades and decades of child sexual abuse that got covered up.
So they don't really have a right to stand out and be outraged when they're...
But there are decades and decades of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
And the point that Lauren was making, I think, rather powerfully was that you wouldn't get Sam Smith mocking Islam in a performance.
Yeah, but we're here to say that.
Because again, you wouldn't say it's cowardly.
I'd say that is an example of kind of cowardice because we all know he wouldn't do that.
And what he did last night, I'm sorry, he, I think he called they, they, what they did last night was a deliberate act of provocation to a group of people who represent nearly two-thirds of America.
And I find that an interesting strategic decision.
You know, this is somebody who wants to sell records in America.
You know, it's a risky strategy to take on that number of Christians and mock their religion in that way.
I don't think anybody's religion was mocked at all.
And this album by Sam Smith is, it's phenomenal.
It's got really positive messaging to it.
But like, if you're going to talk about artists pushing boundaries, this is what great artists do.
You go back to David Bowie.
He was attacked and vilified when he burst onto the scene.
Lady Gaga over a dozen years ago or more coming out.
Same thing.
You could go back to, so are you going to tell me you don't like David Bowie?
You don't like Lady Gaga because people weren't happy.
And the interesting thing is with these icons, go back to Catherine Heppard, right, when she was doing movies.
She wore pants and people freaked out.
The detractors who push against people who push gender boundaries, nobody remembers their names years ago.
Well, I think the problem, I'll come back to Lauren, but the problem I have with Sam Smith is that they can't seem to work out what they are.
So we went through a period where he was identifying apparently as a straight man.
Then he came out as gay and everyone was applauded.
And then within, I think, 18 months, he decided he wasn't a gay man anymore.
He was going to be non-binary, gender-fluid, and wanted to be called they.
It's quite hard to keep up, Lauren Chen, not to be disrespectful to they, but it is hard to keep up with Sam Smith because every 18 months or so, he seems to, like a chameleon, flip into something, some other new identity.
And then we have to respect those titles that they now want.
No, you're absolutely right.
And it's interesting because I was looking back to interviews when Sam Smith first came out as gay.
And he actually back then would say things along the lines of, there's more to me than my sexuality.
I just want this to be normalized.
This shouldn't be a whole thing.
Which, I mean, by today's 2023 standards, that almost makes him sound like a right-wing extremist.
The idea that his sexuality shouldn't define himself.
But fast forward to today, apparently he's gotten the memo that the trendy thing is to come out as some sort of trendy new gender every other day.
And I just want to say in regard to Sam Smith dressing as the devil, that's not part of your identity.
Your fashion choices are not part of your identity.
Sam Smith deciding to, in his music video, wear a corset doesn't mean he's non-binary.
All it means is that he's desperate for attention, has absolutely no sense of fashion.
And he's talking about his friends around him.
Right, and talking of people desperate for attention, Mazden, I just want to show you Madonna's head at the Grammys.
And I just wonder, is this an example, when you look at Madonna at the Grammys last night, of where plastic surgery takes you if you're not very careful?
If you're asking me, I'm not an expert on plastic surgery, so I prefer to go back to Lauren's comment.
I just have a question for both of you.
Have we got the picture of Madonna?
Sorry.
There we are, yeah.
Sorry, go on, Mazden.
Well, I wish her well.
She's an icon.
She's done great things in music and influenced a lot of people.
My question is, why are conservatives, the ultra-conservatives especially, the only ones who are obsessed with what people wear, obsessed with how people identify, and obsessed with the people?
You know what?
Mazdon, we've run out of time, but I can answer one question.
I'm not a conservative.
So if that helps you, that will help the debate.
Lauren, Maston, great to have you both.
Come back again soon.
That's it from me.
Keep it uncensored.
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