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Feb. 28, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:28
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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King Charles And The Windsor Deal 00:14:59
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensor, Richie Sunak visits Northern Ireland to sell his Brexit breakthrough as a row erupts over whether he used the King to seal the deal.
Tonight the unionists say the King's Brexit Tea Party could put the monarchy in jeopardy, but will it?
A record 45,000 migrants crossed the channel last year with numbers set to soar again from spring.
Tory MP Kip Malthouse has a plan to stop the boats.
Richard Tice says the plan is nuts.
They'll debate.
Talking of nuts, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is forced into a humiliating apology for comments he made on this show.
The victim of his lie will tell me why it's important he did apologise.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The late Queen kept her cards close to her chest.
She understood that the majesty of monarchy depends on dignified silence.
That's how the royal family holds the country together even as our politicians rip each other apart.
But King Charles and his laborious apprenticeship as Prince of Wales, we never quite got that silent telegram.
In the 1980s, he rejected an extension to the National Gallery in pretty colourful terms.
But what is proposed seems to me like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend.
Funny enough, a monstrous carbuncle on an elegant friend is how some people view the Duchess of Sussex.
Well, Charles went on to rankle Sir John Major in the 90s with his views on homelessness and poverty.
His black spider letters rile ministers with barbs about everything from human rights to the war in Iraq.
He branded the plan to send migrants to Rwanda as appalling.
It's no secret that the king is, as Prince Philip would have put it, a bunny hugger.
He's a guilt-edged eco-warrior with an Aston Martin, great car, by the way, that runs on leftover English wine.
And he's been very fond of talking about it.
That's why it came as a great relief when he reassured us that once king, he keeps his opinions firmly in the royal vault.
And I think it's vital to remember there's only room for one sovereign at a time, not two.
So you can't be the same as the sovereign if you're the Prince of Wales or the heir.
But the idea somehow that I'm going to go on exactly the same way if I have to succeed is complete nonsense because the two situations are completely different.
Clearly I won't be able to do the same things I've done, you know, as heir.
So of course you operate within the constitutional parameters.
Do you, Your Majesty?
Well, few issues have strained our political parameters more than Brexit.
It's toppled governments, ended careers and turned our political parties inside out.
The Northern Ireland problem has been the most vexed of the lot.
The whole future of the United Kingdom could rest on the Prime Minister's ability to flog his new deal to the arch Brexiteers and the Irish Unionists.
So the King's decision to host EU President Ursula van der Leyen at Windsor Castle yesterday has rattled cages.
Frankly, it smacked of a blatant attempt to strong-arm unionists and Brexiteers, who are also passionate royalists, into backing Sunak's deal.
It's even called the Windsor Framework.
And tonight, the DUP Samuel Wilson launched an astonishing and predictable broadside against Charles' involvement in the deal, claiming it puts the future of the entire monarchy at risk.
I don't know whether it was his choice or whether the government persuaded him to do it, but I think it's a very, very dangerous position for him to have taken.
It is a bad decision.
And if he keeps going down this route and politicising the monarchy, then the status that his mother had, he will never acquire.
And he will put the monarchy, in my view, in jeopardy because people will simply see it as a partisan rather than a national institution.
Well, this debate will only intensify.
Next month, the king's first state visits as monarch will be to France and Germany, the great power brokers of the EU, and not a traditional pilgrimage to the Commonwealth.
It's a far cry from the Brexit dream of global Britain with trade deals burnished by royals voyaging on a new royal yacht.
We don't know whether Rishi Sunak is wielding the king to get Brexit done or if the king himself was itching to get involved.
But just as the future of the Union could hinge on Northern Ireland, the future of the monarchy actually could hinge on the king keeping his vow to be silent about politics and keep his nose out of it.
It's in everyone's best interests, I believe, if he does that.
Well, joining me now is historian Sir Anthony Selden, journalist and friend of the Queen Consort, Petronella Lawyat, and author of The Windsors at War, Alexander Lama.
Welcome to all of you.
Alexander, let me start with you.
It just struck me that this is very good for Rishi Sunak.
If you're trying to get your deal through, positioning the new monarch of the United Kingdom as somehow supporting all this is great politics, great optics.
It's not so great, though, if you're King Charles, in my estimation, and you want to make a statement about impartiality, which is what his mother was, of course, renowned for.
Well, what I think is very interesting is that the call didn't come from 10 Downing Street to bring in King Charles for the meeting with Ursula.
It was from Buckingham Palace.
Do we know that?
We do know about it.
It was said yesterday that it is from Buckingham Palace, not from Downing Street.
Which is really, to me, even more problematic, to quote the word of the millennium.
I think it's deeply problematic because I think what essentially King Charles is saying is, no, I'm bored of being on the sidelines.
I want to go into the centre.
I want to have my voice heard.
And this is the man who, as you said a second ago, was the black spider memo man.
This is the person who's always, always wanted to have his voice heard.
And now we can see that his sitting down with Ursula for a cozy tea together is something that essentially he's saying, I am involved in this.
I want to have.
Petrona, you want to get involved in this?
I do want to get involved.
First of all, I'm interested in what you say, but this is not quite what I've heard.
And as we know, the monarch cannot meet a political leader without the PM's permission.
I heard that it did come from Danishy and he was happy to do it.
And he is simply carrying...
I mean, either will it.
Wait a minute.
Can I just finish?
Yeah, you can, but I want to, just on that one point.
I think either way, the fact is he did it.
So whether it came originally from Downing Street.
Charles has been around a long time.
Here's my point, though.
Before you finish, my point is it doesn't really matter, actually, to the optics.
The optics are he did the meeting.
Yes.
And this, in my opinion, Petranella, it flies in the face of his vow not to get political.
No, it hasn't.
It hasn't because he cannot avoid meeting political leaders and hosting them.
His mother hosted monstrosities.
She hosted Robert McGarby.
She hosted Nikolai Chadcha.
It's very different.
It's not very different.
You're implying that Charles, by hosting Ursula van der Leyen, is somehow sanctioning a pro-EU.
Sending if he does it on the very day that the British Prime Minister announces his new proposal.
He didn't have any choice in the matter.
Of course he did.
He doesn't have to do it.
If he had refused to do it, then there would have been a constitutional.
All right, well, let's talk to the constitutional expert, Sir Anthony Selden.
Now, listen, you know your history better than any of us put together.
Has this happened before?
Not like this, no.
And therefore, it is without precedent.
The monarchs have always seen distasteful people.
Sometimes they became distasteful after they were seen.
So it is interesting territory.
And I would agree with Petronella that he would not have seen it without the Prime Minister's endorsement.
And he is clearly below the Prime Minister.
I did read today, may have even been the spectator, actually.
I did read today that in 1974, Edward Heath persuaded the Queen to go to France to endorse our entry into the EU.
So that, if that is, I wasn't aware of that.
If that is true, and that was what happened in the way that it was reported, that would seem to be not entirely different to this.
And doesn't that therefore Piers slightly undermine your argument that this was without precedent?
Well, it would make me think that I was surprised the Queen did that and maybe she shouldn't have done.
Because I don't think the monarchs should ever get involved with Pot.
We saw the huge row when it was reported that the Queen veered towards a view about Scottish independence.
It doesn't exist.
And Michael Gove's claim at one point that she was pro-Brexit.
Right, which is the same thing.
But these things, they can be very self-serving, those claims.
But my point is, the monarch has to be impartial because the monarch represents everybody in the United Kingdom, not just singular groups of people who supported political...
But the monarch is doing his best.
Charles is doing his best, in my view.
Was it smart timing is the real question?
Well, look, I think that history will judge this to have been a wise and a prudent thing because, Piers, this is where we'll disagree again, because this Brexit thing has gone on and on.
Here is an agreement, this is my view, which brings together most of the nation.
Northern Ireland, for goodness sake, voted to remain.
We just need to get over with this.
I mean, we're all bored with Brexit.
We need to move on.
The reason I have a problem with the timing, Alexandra, is that this is not a done deal yet.
This is a proposal from Rishi Sunak, which has the support of the EU.
But the real issue will be, say the DUP decide, you know what, we're not having this deal, and they reject it.
Then you have the King supposedly embracing all this, and then the DUP saying, forget it.
Excuse me, but the DPP.
Then he's into a real political deal.
Hang on, Petr.
You must let Alexander speak.
I'm terribly sorry.
We don't have any interrupting on this program.
But you might say it was an ALGA-ready deal, because ultimately Rishi has raised the game a bit since Boris Johnson's lamentable efforts.
Yeah, but the reality is, is that King Charles probably shouldn't have met Silverbundale yesterday because the optics of it, the short-term advantage is that the Windsor Agreement, sanctioned by the King, it looks something which is given the stamp by the establishment.
Before Parliament is debated.
And we don't know what the DUP are going to say.
We don't know what the awkward squad of Conservatives are going to say.
I mean, I'm sure we're all waiting with bated breath for Boris Johnson's view on it.
Actually, I can't think of anything I'm waiting less than Boris Johnson sticking his big nose into this once again.
As you said, you just finished a tome on Boris Johnson.
Literally.
I have.
I have.
You put the final brushstrokes today.
Today.
Which I hope is in some way reflective of a wider closing of the chapter on Boris Johnson, because I felt in his tenure, he was actually very damaging to the office of Prime Minister in many ways.
And I tweeted today, not from a political perspective or partisan perspective, because I've actually voted for both parties over the years, but I did tweet that I find it reassuring that in Rishi Sunak, compared to his two predecessors at least, we at least have somebody who looks conscientious, eloquent and intelligent and thoughtful.
Like he's trying to think these things through and also quite collegiate in the way he's embraced the EU to try and get a deal done to get through all this.
Okay, I think that's what history will say.
And look, Boris Johnson had an amazing opportunity after Brexit to make Britain's new role in the world and to remake the government.
But he blew it, didn't he?
He blew everything.
He didn't even get Brexit done.
He did.
But he didn't even expect Brexit.
He didn't.
He didn't.
To quote Michael Kane, he blows up, he goes off.
So history will say that Boris Johnson had an opportunity, blew it because he wasn't serious enough, didn't know what he wanted to do, didn't know how to take people with him, didn't know how to be prime minister, and wasn't serious enough.
The only bonus for Boris Johnson is that it turned out his immediate successor was even worse and couldn't even.
He couldn't even outlast a letter.
A low bar, Pierre.
A very low bar.
Will history, I mean, you will be part of how history judges Boris Johnson.
Will history be very scathing with him?
I think history will see it as just an incredible wasted opportunity from somebody who had in significant ways.
He had the ability to connect with people.
He was a funny, great, amusing orator.
He made people feel good.
He had a great spirit about him.
He had a sense of the country, but he couldn't put it into practical policy.
He couldn't make Brexit.
You know, I've interviewed him.
I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating.
I once interviewed him for GQ magazine when he used to do interviews, not run into fringes and hide.
And I said to him, you know, Boris, I've always said that lurking beneath the buffoon exterior lies a really smart, calculating political brain.
And I think you want to be prime minister.
And he went, well, it's very kind of you, Pierce.
He said, but you must consider the possibility that lurking beneath the buffoon exterior lies an actual buffoon, which I thought was actually very precious.
Yeah, I know.
You know Boris better than most of us, President.
That is partly true.
I mean, but Boris, Boris thinks, but he doesn't think deeply and he gets bored with things terribly easy.
Like women, unfortunately.
Excuse me.
No comment.
No comment at all.
But the trouble is that as a prime minister, he was a disaster-waiting tab because he's not conscientious.
He is not collegiate.
He doesn't believe in compromise and he doesn't like boring hard work.
The truth is, Alexander, it was always all about Boris, right?
And it drove him.
Let's be fair.
A bit like Donald Trump in America, that kind of caricature populism drove him to the highest office in this land, as Trump did in America.
Doesn't mean it's a good thing.
But the fact is, is that we should look at Boris in context with his fellow Aldertonian Prince Harry.
They're both people who reached for the sun.
I mean, never quite got it because what they thought they could achieve was to essentially take this institution, in Boris's case, prime minister, in Harry's case, the monarchy, and tear it apart.
Yeah, but institutions exist for a reason.
The reason why Boris failed so dramatically was because ultimately he was weak and he thought he was strong, he thought he was charismatic.
But Boris also failed because Boris similar to Tarry in the sense that they're not a whiny brat like Harry whines about him.
I mean, Boris does, to be fair to him, he doesn't whine all the time.
He confuses, I hear, he confuses celebrity with doing a job and being liked.
And he thought he was editing the spectator, and you can't run the country like General Boots.
He was editing the spectator.
He was editing spells.
French Crossing And Migrant Crisis 00:13:40
You've got Kilt Morkhouse coming on next.
I mean, serious people there he had in City Hall.
He just didn't know how to use people in numbers.
I mean, I do think having interviewed, I interviewed Rishi Sunak at number 10 last month, and I did find his seriousness reassuring.
I felt like this guy, he may not survive the next election simply because of where the Conservative Party is, but this is indisputably, if this deal goes through, that is a massive launch pad for a grown-up.
And it's a great pity he won't get a chance to be.
Still too young, but I think that's a good question.
The author Sebastian Faulkner said today his most significant political achievement he'd seen since 97.
Right.
And I thought that was very interesting.
Yes, because this has come through in a way that very little has since Brexit.
Actually, I was looking at it yesterday and thinking, when's this going to dissolve?
When's this going to fail?
It didn't dissolve and it didn't fail.
I agree.
And just finally, actually, on Rishi Sunak, there are still potentially just under two years to an election.
Is that enough time historically, you look at all the previous elections, is that enough time in the cycle for him to turn things around, to use this as a launch pad for the brave new world of the Conservative Party?
Potentially, yes, but no prime minister has ever won five elections on a trot for their party.
Since 1832, never been done, one party doing that.
So it makes it really hard.
I suspect he will end up being a really sound, competent prime minister who, despite all that, will end up losing it.
Not unlike John Major, who turned out to be a much better prime minister.
And he might find.
He might find.
He could still.
Well, he might find also that a few years of being in opposition as leader of the Conservative Party against Kiostama, who will inherit a very difficult situation probably, may not be the worst thing that happens for his ability to transform the party.
If he's willing to stay on.
Yeah.
I mean, it needs a deep forming.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Sorry, I have to stop ripping each other apart.
Great debate.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
Great to see you all.
We're coming next tonight.
Tragedy in Italy is more than 100 people are feared dead in a migrant boat.
Disaster.
How do we prevent these kind of things happening on Britain shores as the channel crisis here continues to escalate?
We'll debate.
Walking back to Piers Morgan says, the deadly consequences of a small boats crisis has been laid bare again with fears that 100 people, including many children, have died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy.
Well, nearly 3,000 migrants are crossing this channel in the first two months of 2023, with warnings as many as 85,000 could make the journey this year at this rate.
Rishi Sunak has promised to tackle the issue head on.
My next guest reckons he has got the answer, proposing an exchange agreement between France and the UK.
We're joining me to discuss his plans.
Conservative MP, former cabinet minister Kit Moorhouse, and Reform UK leader Richard Tyson, it must be said, thinks this idea is completely crackers.
So this should be a good debate.
Kit Moorhouse, simple terms, what is the idea?
So essentially, Piers, as you know, the trade across the channel is incredibly dangerous.
You've highlighted today the risk to life and limb.
But it is basically prosecuted by organised criminals, right, who are trafficking these people from where they've come.
They pay money to come.
And this is a business, right?
And so everything we've done in the channel so far, whether it's military cooperation, whether it's...
That's fair.
We can all agree it's all failed.
Yeah, yeah, it's all failed.
And the reason is because the gangs basically just alter their price.
And even if we arrest a gang, they're replaced by other gangs.
And even if we change their way in, the channel tunnels are not.
So the key thing, I think...
We can all agree on all that.
So the key thing is to remove their ability to cross in the first place.
So they haven't got a product to sell.
So that would mean that the moment somebody lands, either is on the beach or in the sea or on our beach, they get returned to France.
At the moment, quietly, because of military primacy in the channel, we do intercept about 95% of people crossing, either on the beach in the sea or on our beach.
So we return 100% of them.
Now, why would the French, how do we?
Every single one.
Every single one gets returned immediately.
So there's no product.
Nobody crosses.
Just on that point, even if they're genuine asylum seekers.
They just have to be returned.
Because there's a separate question about whether they should be allowed to stay.
What we want is to save lives in the channel.
So we have to stop that route.
How do we persuade the French to do it?
Well, we say to the French, tell you what, in exchange, every person that we return, we will take a settled refugee who wants to resettle in the UK in return from within.
Who qualifies by our criteria or asylum?
By our criteria.
And then we take people in a controlled way.
Now the key leap of faith is to realize this, is that by returning everybody, nobody will think it's worth crossing.
And so we won't have to do any exchange.
You're naive.
We won't have to do any exchange in the first place.
No, I don't think so.
Really?
Absolutely.
You think they'll all just stop?
I think they will.
If you can't get across, and don't forget, as I say, we're intercepting 95, 96% of the time.
But before I get to Richard, I can see the immediate flaw here.
Unless you're guaranteed when you get returned to be one of the lucky ones who then gets picked.
No, no, no.
Why does it stop the police?
It wouldn't be the same people.
So France already has an existence.
No, I understand that.
But if you're desperate to get away and desperate to come from France into the UK in any way, why does it deter you if you're not going to be one of the ones who then gets plucked and brought here?
Well, because you paid whatever money to the gang and you're not succeeding.
If you stop the boats, if you catch them.
Yeah, which we are doing 95% of the time.
The reason that Manston is so full, or has been in the past, is because we're intercepting nearly everybody.
Okay, is that figure right?
95% that Kip Moore House says?
I mean, is it intercepting?
It's probably definitely over 90%.
Right.
And the truth is...
So we are stopping them with the vast majority.
We're not stopping them.
No, no, we're controlling them.
Sorry, we're not controlling them.
We are completely out of it.
We are apprehending in some ways.
We are apprehending them because actually they want to be apprehended because they know that they're going to be put in nice accommodation.
They're going to be free.
So what is the actual flaw with this?
The flaw in this argument is it will do exactly the opposite.
What will happen is the people traffickers will say to people all over Europe, come to France and you might get the big lucky dip of going to the very generous UK.
So your argument is it wasn't that.
That's the first thing.
But I'll come to a response to that.
But on that, though, are you saying that it would disperse the problem to other parts of Europe?
No, it'll basically act.
France will act as a bigger magnet from the 300 plus thousand who are coming into Europe.
That's the first problem.
The second problem is the people smugglers will say, you still want to go to the UK because I'm going to get you there.
You won't be apprehended.
We'll land you in the middle of night, whereas currently they land you at about between 10 and 12 in the morning, so you get apprehended, and then you'll disperse into the black economy.
But the UK is still a great place, and you've got all the lovely lawyers.
There's two valid points.
Yeah, so on the first one, of course, and I realise it's difficult to get your head around it sometimes.
If we are intercepting everybody and returning 100%, nobody will cross, which means we won't take any exchanges.
So the pull into France wouldn't be there because nobody is being exchanged because nobody is crossing.
So in the initial stage, in the first few months, we might have to take a few, but then we're in no worse position because we're swapping one for one and the French are in no worse position either.
But critically, it removes the ability to cross and therefore the gangs have no product to sell.
But now, on your point about diversion, you do have a point about diversion.
One of the problems that the government's had so far is that everything they've done, they haven't predicted what the gangs are going to do in reaction.
And so we would have to look at interception at night, much greater presence on the French beaches, particularly at night, if people did attempt those crosses.
And critically also do a deal with other countries because it's only 50 miles on the Belgian coast.
If it's so obvious, Kip Moore has, why have you waited until now to come up with this master plan?
Why has nobody in the brains of the British government, Conservative British government, for many, many years now, not come up with such a simple solution?
Well, I have been talking when I was in the cabinet before, I've mentioned it before and talked to a number of people in number 10 about it.
But the way the government works, these things take time to surface.
I'd said it in private.
I'm now saying it in public.
And I think it, you know, the other thing just to say is that the reason I wanted to say it now was because on the 10th of March, Rishi has a summit with Emmanuel Macron, the first summit for some time between the UK and French leaders.
And they will undoubtedly be talking about this issue.
And I can't see in the short term, and you're right that this summer may be the worst on record for numbers, particularly given that the government's got legislation coming through.
So the gang...
Well, no.
One of Richie Sunak's five pledges to me, which he repeated them to me, made them public, obviously, but when I interviewed him at Downing Street, one of them was, come back to me by the end of the year, and we will have substantially reduced the number of migrants coming over.
If it gets to 85,000 this summer, this could almost be a resignation issue for us as a matter of fact.
The stakes are high.
You make it one of your five big places.
It's already 100% more than last year, which was a record year.
We're only two months in.
Where we agree is you should pick everybody up.
And you safely take them back to France and you say to the French, we'll have a joint processing center and we will process them rather like the UK used to do 15 years ago within a fortnight, the genuine, legitimate claims who have been persecuted, then we would accept them.
The rest would be immediately returned from where they came.
That is the only way this stops.
You see paradoxically, that does give people an incentive to cross, because they'll get crossed, they get returned.
They get returned, but they get depend, they get deported more easily immediately.
People who are crossing effectively, we have to remove the the chance that they will get the objective of what they're coming for, that there's some reward for going that route.
Now there's a whole other conversation to be had about how uh, refugees access this country and we obviously have some bespoke routes, but whether you ought to, that's a separate conversation.
My primary objective is to stop people crossing because we don't want bodies, I mean.
The irony of all this, it seems to me, is that yes, it's clearly an increasing problem.
Yes, it's potentially absolutely tragic.
If we just seen in italy 100 people dying, we don't want anything like this to happen across on our, on our shores.
However, we also have an acute lack of legal immigrants in our country right now.
Right, I mean, this is the irony is that we're making all this noise and fuss and debate about actually a relatively small number of people when, if you talk to anyone in the hospitality business in particular restaurants bars clubs, whatever they are crying out for legal immigrants to come into the country.
Last year was a record lawful immigration, 1.1 million gross, 500 000 net.
The population's never been higher.
That is a completely flawed assumption.
The right stats.
But have you asked people who work in the NHS?
Yes, if you ask people who work in hospitality, why is that, Piers?
It's because we've got 5.2 million people on out-of-work benefits, a million and a half more than Pre-COVID.
For too many people, work is not paying.
You've got to make work pay.
We've got to get two million of those five million back into work.
Also true, a lot of people work in those businesses.
They went back home during the pandemic and haven't come back.
That's true.
Well, certainly there are um sectors that are struggling for people.
There's no two ways about it, and hospitality, I think is yeah, is one of them.
I mean the HOME Office would say to you that they've got.
I mean i'm not at the HOME Office anymore, but they would say to you, they've got specific schemes, for example, with agricultural seasonal workers.
They've got schemes to allow people to to come in.
But the whole idea of of uh, the new immigration system was to allow us to pick and choose the skills that we thought we needed in particular areas.
But, as Um Richard says, you know, one of the things coming out of the pandemic is we do have a higher than normal people who are economically inactive for various reasons.
We're trying to discover why.
I think Jeremy Hunt said something, well, i've got a lot of things.
They're body, they're bone, idle.
Well work, it's very simple.
Work doesn't pay.
You've frozen the tax.
We've encouraged a work-shy, Workshy mentality.
People can stay at home, they're not putting the yards in they used to, and they're being embraced for it.
And if anyone complains about it, they're accused of toxic bullying.
And an over-generous furlough scheme for too long absolutely accentuated that.
Yeah.
I want to just play clear: this is you on the daily politics that I happen to be watching.
And one of your co-panelists.
Obviously, follow you assiduously, Kip.
Jackie Smith, the former Labour Home Secretary, was on, as was Isabel Oakshop, your other half, Richard.
And Jackie, who's the chairwoman of the Joe Cox Foundation, obviously set up after the appalling murder of Joe Cox, the female Labour MP.
But she was on to talk about the Foundation Civility Commission.
And the only reason that I chuckle as I say that is because this is what then happened.
We were told that this was all sorted, that we were now in the sort of open waters of Brexit.
That clearly wasn't the case.
Oh, Isabel, shut up.
Excuse me.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Let's not, let's not dissent.
Let's not dissent doing this.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Civility in politics.
Well, we'll come on to that.
I mean, you're an example of politeness and politics.
And I'm in low and the re, oh, come on, Isabel.
Was that the best way, Kit Moorhouse, for Jackie's missed to make the point about civility?
Well, I think that's what they would call an unfortunate incident.
I think obviously Jackie's temper got the better of it.
She did, actually, to be fair to her, apologise later on.
I'm not surprised she's on to promote civility.
We were all in the middle of the day.
We were a bit taken aback.
Have you?
No, I have not.
You never said to Isabel, shut up.
You know, I wouldn't survive all this job.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We were all very taken aback by the what I call a spectacular political own goal.
Yeah, I think exactly.
And although the point she came on to raise about civility is an important one, as you know.
It is, but maybe practice what you preach.
Yeah, exactly.
Don't take a leap out of that.
On the small boats idea, just dwell on it.
Scarlett Lewis Political Own Goal 00:03:52
Most people have dwelled on it for a few days and thought, actually, do you know what?
Maybe once you get your head around the logic of it. I'll tell you what I think.
It doesn't stop the money from it.
I've just said, guys, I've got to finish it, but the point I would make is: I think nothing has worked so far.
I don't think the Rwanda plan will fly because simply the numbers will be far too small.
So we've got to come up with something.
So at least I always, I used to have a saying when I ran the Daily Mirror, we used to have a morning conference.
There is no such thing as a bad idea.
The only bad idea is acting on a bad idea.
But bad ideas often, and this may be a good one, but bad ideas often may sometimes fuel a good idea.
The enemy in this situation is no ideas.
Right?
So I just think the more ideas out there, the better, because frankly, nothing at the moment is working.
So let's have another idea.
Thank you both very much indeed for this.
Coming up after the break, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been forced to apologise to a Sandy Hook relative of one of the victims for a vile lie that he repeated to me on Uncensored about that victim's relative and the shooting.
Scarlett Lewis, his six-year-old son, Jesse, was murdered at Sandy Hook.
We'll be here next.
Well, earlier this year, I interviewed Alex Jones, the world's most notorious conspiracy theorist who made millions of dollars peddling sick lies about the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
It was that horrific incident in which 20 children and six staff were murdered.
Well, Jones told his many followers it was a government hoax, a deep state plot to justify seizing guns.
He said the grieving families were actors.
Every time he lied, he made more money.
But Justice caught up with Jones.
The Sandy Hook family sued for defamation.
They wiped the floor with him.
He's been hit with damages of more than $1.5 billion.
So what are they interviewing?
Well, he's influential, continues to spout conspiracies unchallenged to millions of people online.
Challenging people like Jones is, in my opinion, more effective than pretending they don't exist.
And as a direct result of that interview, Jones was hit with another legal rebuke from Scarlett Lewis, a grieving mother who's done more than most to hold him to account for his Sandy Hook lies.
This is what he said on the show.
When I was in the Texas trial, you can look at this.
They had one of the mothers on who lost her son.
And I went on my show that morning and taped it before I went to court.
And I said, I think she's real.
I think her son died.
I'd seen her testimony the day before.
And I'm very sorry that Adam Lanza did this.
And then she went on the stand and said, Jones attacked me and said I'm an actress.
It's all fake today.
And I walked over to her during the break and I said, watch my show from today.
Your lawyers lied to you.
And the next day she came up and cried and shook my hand.
Scarlett Lewis had said, oh my God, it's true.
I saw you did say that.
So there's a lot of manipulation here.
Well, there certainly was a lot of manipulation because after a complaint from Scarlett Lewis, Alex Jones then had to issue a groveling apology.
I do not wish to harm or damage Miss Lewis in any way.
And if she does not agree with my recollection of her response to me, I will defer to Ms. Lewis' recollection of her statements.
And I do not wish to cause them any further grief, harm, or embarrassment.
Well, I'm joined now by Scarlett Lewis.
Scarlett, great to talk to you again.
I just wanted to get you back on so that you could just once and for all clear this up.
Because when he said that, I wasn't in a position to know if that conversation had happened.
But it turned out to be another one of his lies.
Hi, Piers.
It's nice to be on your show again.
Yes, every interaction that we had was actually on videotape.
We had, I think it was broadcast on YouTube to the world.
And so everybody saw what happened in that courtroom.
And there was never that interaction ever.
Words Have Consequences Now 00:03:08
And he even got the Times wrong.
Yeah, it just never happened.
I mean, the lies just don't stop.
He has the potential to do so much good.
And I don't know why he continues to lie.
Does the fact that he issued this really, by his standards, pretty groveling retraction?
Does that suggest to you that perhaps he is beginning to realize that words have consequences?
Well, he is definitely beginning to realize words have consequences because we held him accountable for that.
But again, if you listen to what is supposed to be a retraction or an apology, it is never going all the way.
He is retracting with another lie.
And it just, it's very disappointing because, you know, I feel like every day that we get up, we have an opportunity to what we call, what I call now in my movement, choose love, be part of the solution.
There are so many things that are going wrong in this world.
And he's got such a following.
He has such an opportunity to do what's right and have the courage to do that.
And he just, he hasn't done it yet.
You know, Scarlett, St. Cuvie, I was in New York last week and then I was in Missouri and Dallas in Texas the week before doing various interviews.
And I just noticed a statistic.
There have been 80 mass shootings, i.e. where four or more people are hit by gunfire in America this year so far.
We're not even in March yet.
And in the UK, by comparison, there's been one, which was a gang-related, drug-gang-related thing where nobody died.
And last year, I think one person died in a mass shooting in the UK.
And obviously, there's no comparison culturally between gun ownership in modern America, modern Britain.
But when you see those kind of statistics, what will it take, do you think, to change the thinking in America?
Because 80 mass shootings in under two months just seems to the rest of the world to be unfathomable.
Well, it really is.
And the fact that we can have 20 first graders in two first grade classrooms and six educators be massacred in an elementary school that happened 10 years ago, my son being one of those six-year-olds, that is unfathomable as well.
And it continues to happen over 350 school shootings in the past 10 years.
And I really think at this point, it's what I started advocating for 10 years ago.
It's not going to be a law.
It's not going to be a pill.
Nothing as easy as that.
We're going to have to address the root cause of the suffering that leads to violence, substance abuse, mental illness, and all the other escalating diseases of despair.
And that's what I've been attempting to do for the last decade in the Choose Love movement.
Keir Starmer Accountability Moment 00:10:46
Well, you do a fantastic job, Scarlett, and it's great to talk to you.
I remember talking to you around the time of the Sandy Hook Massacre.
It was one of the saddest things I have ever, ever had to report on.
And the courage of you and other parents, honestly, it was incredibly inspiring whilst being also utterly heartbreaking.
And what Alex Jones did to compound your misery and compound the mourning process and make it worse, not better, I thought was unconscionable.
So I'm very glad that you all took action.
I'm glad he's being held to account.
We'll see how much he ends up paying, but he's certainly been made to account for his words and made to realize they have consequences.
And I'm grateful to you for coming on to talk about at least a part retraction from him for once again lying about you, but this time in a court of law.
Thank you, Scarlett.
Great to talk to you again.
Thank you.
Extraordinary people.
I can't even imagine Kenny going through something like that.
Just imagine it.
The child's six and goes to school and never comes back, riddled with bullets.
And it happens again and again in America.
Well, next tonight, a question nobody has ever asked before.
Is satire dead?
Could be.
We'll debate with comedian Matt Ford, plus my pack next.
Welcome back to Piers World Sensor.
I'll be talking to you presenting Richard Tice, who's remaining with me, journalist and author Jenny Kleeman.
And comedian and podcast host Matt Ford is touring with his Spitting Image live show, Idiots Assemble.
One of those idiots, of course, is me.
But I'll think, you're right, if you're in Spitting Image, you've made it in life, he says desperately.
We'll come to that in a little moment.
Matt, great to welcome you to the pack.
How do you feel about being part of Piers' pack?
Nervous?
You should be.
I don't feel nervous at all.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm sort of disarmingly calm about it.
I don't know what's going to happen now.
Let me ask you as a comedian.
I've had this conversation with other comedians lately.
Is real life becoming almost impossible to parody?
Is the world going so nuts that actually it becomes almost impossible to lampoon it?
I don't think so.
I think I can see how people think that.
But purely from my point of view, working on shows like Splitting Image and impersonating people.
I was doing political comedy at the time of Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband, where, you know, people would come to political comedy shows, but having Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, being able to impersonate them, Piers, I will never eat.
What's going on with you?
Having like big characters.
Several bit of Trump, go on.
You're the fake news media, Piers.
You're a bad person, very, very bad.
And I'm sad about what happened between them.
You know what he does, Trump?
When I used to interview him, the thing that used to really, really annoy me, it's so difficult when you interview him.
is when you interview him like this and he keeps saying, as you know, as you know, Piers, and it says something completely outrageous.
And I know you agree with me.
It's like, what?
No, I don't.
It's a technique he does.
And it's incredibly dangerous because he lulls you in.
He goes, as I know you think too, you know, and says something terrible.
But that's what he does a lot of flattery up top whenever he's anywhere.
It's great to be in France and Paris, which I think is still the capital of France, by the way, Scripp.
He used to always introduce me as my chab.
Because I want celebrity apprentice.
And I literally was his chab.
I don't know if I mentioned it before.
I think I think I have.
But so every time I spoke to him, when he became president of the United States, I rang him in the Oval Office to hear the president go, is that my cham?
And I was like, I can get used to this.
I seem to distance myself from that, obviously.
It's interesting because Bill Maher in America is one of my favourite hosts over there.
And he talks often about how the right used to be the rich material vein for left comedy, right?
But now he said the left woke have become so nuts that he finds most of the funniest stuff is from lampooning the woke nonsense.
Well, I always took the mcout of both sides.
I never saw the sense in restricting myself to just dealing with the Tory Party.
If you look at what happened to the Labour Party in the last few years, plenty's gone on.
And you can still also tease people that you would vote for.
No, Kier Starmer is someone that I think has really calmed politics down, but I impersonate Kier Stubber Piss.
I think it's important that the government realises that.
That's very good.
You can still impersonate people that you'd vote for.
Can you do me?
Because I'll tell you why.
Because Rory Bremner once said of me, I'm one of the more difficult people.
And he said, it's people like you, Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsey, who have these kind of, they don't have much in their voices, actually quite bland, non-accented voices.
Do you have that problem?
No, I would describe you as bland.
I know.
I was horrified.
But he made a point that they're actually more difficult to do the impersonation.
Sometimes it's meeting the person.
I've never impersonated you.
Luke Kempner does you very well.
But being near you, there is definitely a sort of squeakiness that you can sort of...
Now that's just the first time I've ever thought, but you can tell sometimes...
I remember interviewing William Haig.
And obviously many people can do William Haig.
But it was only when I interviewed him as he kind of hungs in between every word.
I thought sometimes it is just hearing that.
They used to do me on Saturday Night Live in America.
He used to have a guy come on and he used to go, I'm Piers Morgan.
Who won't wear when white?
And he kept doing it again and again.
Who won't wear when white?
I was like, I don't say that, do I?
You become to second date yourself.
Richard, I want to just play a clip.
This is George Santos, a US congressman in America, who tells more lies, I think, than anyone, even Boris and Trump are together.
And it's a clip of what he said when I finally said, well, just admit what you are.
I've been a terrible liar.
I mean, would you be prepared to say that?
Sure.
Like I said.
Well, I've been a terrible liar on those subjects.
What does it say about life that this guy's sitting in Congress and he's, I'm a terrible liar.
And that's the only truthful thing he's probably ever said that anybody can remember.
What does it say?
I think it says masses about Congress's inability to get rid of people.
I mean, if that happened in the House of Commons, surely that person would be forced to resign.
I don't think, Jenny, I don't think anyone could seriously be an MP and just admit in a television interview, I am a terrible liar and get away with it, give me a moment.
Well, I don't know.
We have had some MPs that have been shown to be liars.
Who actually brazenly admitted, almost proudly, I'm a terrible liar.
Well, maybe that's just the power of you interviewing him, Piers, that you managed to get me to say that.
But things like, you know, you know, the House of Commons.
I'm now trying not to squeak because of him.
You know what he does?
Literally, you start to think, well, now I'm going to start squeaking.
We're not allowed to call people liars in the House of Commons, even when it's obvious that people are liars.
We're a very strange, quaint country, I think.
I hope we're more honourable that you couldn't carry on being an MP if you'd admitted that you were a liar.
But I don't know anymore.
I think Boris Johnson has kind of blown everything up.
I mean, are we living in a post-truth society now?
I hate to say that, but are we living in a place where people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, a large constituency of people, don't care if they tell the truth?
I think that's probably always been the case.
It was just that those people ended up in positions of power, that effectively people used to regulate their own behavior in a way that perhaps modern leaders haven't.
But if you look at Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer, whatever you think of them politically, that is definitely a return to politics more as normal.
It is.
And actually, I mean, you've got to say, Richard, whatever side of the divide you're on, they're both serious-minded people with serious backgrounds.
They're not buffoons.
They take their jobs seriously.
They're conscientious.
They're hardworking.
You know, I just think I do feel reassured by that.
I'm kind of done with the buffoon caricature stuff.
Oh, I think the country's done with the buffoon caricature stuff, without question.
And people want serious politics.
We've got some massive, massive challenges ahead of us.
But it's interesting, you know, neither of them are great characters, but they're both diligent.
They're both trying in their respective ways.
I mean, Jenny, do we need a great character to run the country?
I think everyone would just like a bit of stability and a bit of integrity, which we have had neither of.
And, you know, I think there was a sense that Boris Johnson's a winner because he's charismatic and that's why people vote for him.
And I think people have seen through all of that.
I think people just want someone who can get us out of this terrible mess that we're in on so many different levels in terms of Brexit, in terms of the strikes.
There's so much that an intelligent, sensible mind can get their teeth into.
I think that's what the country wants.
And Boris won because he was up against Jeremy Corbyn and because Richard did him a favour.
You know, there are reasons why Boris won.
It wasn't purely that he was up against...
Had he been up against a decent opponent and not been trying to get Brexit through, I think things would have been very different.
But Rishi Sunak is an interesting person.
Do you do him?
Kind of, you know, he's very energetic.
You know, I think that's pretty good, right?
And it's a lot of management speak.
You know, ours is a government of integrity and professionalism and accountability.
And I think people say, hey, guys, that's what we want.
Which is the one when you're on your tour or do the podcast and you start doing your impressions.
Which is the one that is the biggest crowd, pleaser?
So it used to be Boris and Trump.
They were the ones.
And I would say, Trump.
Right to the end.
You've got to do that, by the way.
By the way, it may not be the end.
We might see him be the end.
We might see him back in the White House.
People are saying it's the greatest ending ever appears in the morning.
You're one of those people.
You're a mick, yeah.
So my favourite bit with Trump was when he actually looked at his own inauguration and saw half the size crowd that was there for Obama and said, it was the biggest crowd ever seen.
And when he was asked, he went digital.
Because people have watched online.
But he is hard to follow in terms of if you're structuring a comedy actor.
Who's the big crowd pleaser now?
Keir Starmer at the moment.
Really?
The moment I do Keir Starmer, honestly, the moment you say, can the Prime Minister accept?
I think it's partly because no one else is doing him.
And it's obviously Boris was impersonated to death, as was Donald Trump.
So when there's someone new around, and you've maybe, you're doing observational comedy about a person's behaviour, even the way he has his hand out of Prime Minister's questions at the Metropolitan Police and the way that he says certain things.
Can Keir Starmer carry through two more years and win this election?
Or is Rishi Sunak got his gander up with Brexit now, getting the deal actually done?
I think Rishi Sunak, this is the base level of what he had to achieve in order to stand a chance.
I think with Nicola Sturgeon no longer being in position, it's a really unique position for Keir Starmer.
It's his to lose.
He's got to show us what country he wants, Keir Starmer.
He's got to stop now being the opponent and be, this is my vision for the country.
Judge me accordingly.
Great to see you.
Matt, come back.
That was great.
Lovely.
Another bit of comedy.
God, we need a laugh, don't we?
We do need a laugh, absolutely.
You put some yarns in today.
Good to see you, Daniel.
And Jenny, lovely to see you, as always.
Well, that's it from me.
Whatever you're up to, remember the most important thing in life.
Keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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