Piers Morgan, Matt Wilkinson, and Ava Santina dissect the King's alleged eviction of Harry and Meghan following Spare, debating bans for their title abuse while Ernest Owens clashes with Morgan over unproven racism accusations. The conversation shifts to leaked WhatsApp messages revealing former ministers celebrated Morgan's firing, sparking debates on pandemic handling. Simultaneously, guests Peter Tatchell and Vanity von Glow defend Drag Queen Story Hours against claims of sexualization, contrasting UK traditions with US opposition, before analyzing Boris Johnson's criticism of Sunak's Brexit deal as a failed political maneuver. Ultimately, the episode exposes deep fractures in British society regarding monarchy ethics, free speech, and political compromise. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Harry And Meghan Evicted00:06:58
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Harry and Meghan were booted out of Frogmore Cottage just 24 hours after Harry published his kiss and tell book Spare.
Has the king finally gone to grips with the rogue royals?
Will he now ban them from the coronation too and strip them of their titles?
The lockdown files heap more pressure on disgraced Matt Hancock as he angrily denies claims made by Isabel Oakshot on this show last night.
Tonight she's back with more revelations including what Hancock and the care minister Helen Whaitley said about me when I left Good Morning Britain and when I had a COVID test.
Plus a spade of protests erupt in London over drag queen performances to children that 15 US states consider laws to quash the queens.
Are drag artists really harmful to kids?
We'll debate.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Harry and Meghan, the currently the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, famously gushed about their love of chickens in one of the more saccharin moments of the Oprah Winfrey Sobfest.
Well the chickens are now coming home to roost for these two.
The royal family kept a stoic silence as the poison darts rained down from their Californian pedestal but King Charles is quietly and devastatingly taking charge now.
We now know that he booted a couple out of their palatial Frogmore cottage just 24 hours after Harry's book Spare or Spare Me as I call it was published.
We also now know that Harry and Meghan's popularity is cratered on both sides of the Atlantic with polls showing even Prince Andrew is now more popular than they are in America as well as now being offered the keys to their house.
And we also now know that in America where they've strained every sinew to become much-loved celebrities they're actually viewed like this.
So let me start with you Sam.
You've lived a life with the royal family.
You've had everything handed to you but you say your life has been hard and now you've written all about it in your new book where.
Yes that's right fans.
You see my wife and I are targeting like you should write a book because your family looks stupid and then so are like journalists.
There's now a clear divide in the royal family the workers and the shirkers the heavy lifters and the grifters.
The prince and princess of Wales saluted Welsh guards yesterday at St David's Day Parade.
Camilla the Queen consort recovering from a recent battle COVID was promoting children's literature.
King Charles is preparing to make state visits to Germany and France in his first royal tour as monarch.
Meghan Markle meanwhile made a state visit to a coffee shop which sells superfood lattes inspired by holistic ingredients from around the world and Prince Harry had another outing on US late night television that leftovers of a previous interview taped on his self-pity tour.
Harry what is the best sandwich?
I would say a cheese and ham toasty with Dijon mustard on top.
And a toasty means grilled?
Okay, there you go.
Unbelievable.
That guy's sixth in line to the throne.
On Saturday, he's at it again, flogging tickets to a digital seminar of family trauma, his trauma from his $13 million California mansion.
You have to pay $33, by the way, to tune in online to see him banging on about his trauma again and what a victim he is and how it's all so beastly and unfair that he's making hundreds of millions fleecing his royal titles without doing any royal duty for it.
But that's his level now, isn't it, for Harry?
A gossiping gutter snipe selling out his family to the highest bidders, a wannabe reality star, but that star is fading fast.
Harry and Meghan think they can carry on having their royal cake and eating it.
Using those royal titles, I could say while abusing the institution that afforded them those titles.
And as usual, I'm afraid, they're wrong.
And King Charles is right to draw the curtain on this ludicrous soap opera.
On May the 6th, the King has his coronation.
It will be one of the most important moments in modern British history.
And the very last thing we need or want are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, current titles, rocking up with their camera crews to distract attention and get more material for their next act of money-grabbing betrayal.
Next week, 2,000 invitations will be sent out.
In my view, it's time for Charles to be firm and make sure they're not on that list.
Well, joining me now is the Sun Royal Editor Matt Wilkinson, political journalist Ava Santina, plus author and columnist Maureen.
Callum, welcome to all of you.
Let me start with you, Matt.
Great scoop.
I mean, this was a proper eye-popping scoop, particularly now that we know that the order to evict Harry and Meghan from Frogmore Cottage came from King Charles within 24 hours of the launch of Spare back on January the 10th.
Yeah, no, it's astonishing.
I mean, Charles, I see he's acted very quickly, very decisively, particularly it was so close to after Spare.
And he's seen the family's traumas, the family splits, everything that's happened with Meghan and Harry and Andrew that kind of poisoned the last three or four years of the Queen's reign, sadly.
And you could say that Charles has finally, by kicking them out of Frogmore, he's kind of finally delivered Mexic.
Now, I don't suppose you'll lose much sleep over Meghan Markle disappearing out of Frogmore Cottage.
He probably will lose some sleep over this action in relation to his son because he's his son.
It's very sad that it's got to this stage, isn't it, really?
I mean, we're always told, and he has shown as well that we're always told that he dearly loves his son and the door is always open to his son.
When Harry came over recently, they came over with Meghan and they came over and they met her at Clarence House.
And I think it's an intense disappointment and sadness for Charles that it has actually got to this stage, yes.
Let's bring in Maureen Callan from across the pond over in East Hampton.
Maureen, thank you for joining us.
I was staggered last week to see a poll that said that Meghan and Harry, since the release of this book and the Netflix documentary, are now less popular in the US than Prince Andrew.
I mean, that was jaw-dropping.
Oh, Piers, it's remarkable, really.
There's no love lost here for Prince Andrew, believe me.
I think the real sort of final wallop to their reputation here, one that leaves no doubt where the bulk of the American public stands on these two, was the South Park episode.
So for the South Park episode to air and it went viral and people could not stop talking about it, to then be followed up with this incredibly, it's a sad decision, but it feels very necessary for King Charles to remove them, to send a clear message that what you are doing and what you are continuing to do,
Royal Family Personal Gain00:02:39
as you pointed out with this Saturday's upcoming winch-a-thon online for $33.99 with pre-vetted questions, no live comments, I do believe that's King Charles saying, there are more things we can take away from you if you do not stop harming this family.
Right, I completely agree.
Well, look, Ava, you're in the unenviable position of trying to defend these two, because I think pretty much everyone else we tried to get to do it didn't want to know.
I mean, they've lost even their keenest supporters.
Are you still standing in Team Sussex?
Look, I have never been Team Sussex.
I've always been Team anti-monarchy and anti-royal.
I don't think that any of them actually have a place at the top of the hierarchy in the UK anymore.
I think it's outrageous that they even had entitlement still to this cottage.
I mean, when they renovated it, they charged £3 million to the taxpayer, which I know they eventually paid back.
But the idea that £3 million was taken away, potentially from paying nurses, from paying teachers, and re-wallpapering that cottage.
Well, the truth about the royal family is, though, that the costs of maintaining the royal family are offset by the money they bring in.
Oh, they are.
Oh, come on.
It's so ridiculous.
They're offset by the money that comes in, particularly from Turkey.
Listen, people come in.
They like to see.
People like to see Buckingham Palace.
They like to see the relics.
I'm not a little distressed tonight because you were at the Arsenal Everton game last night.
I am crying.
Yeah, I am.
Have you been crying ever since?
I have been, yeah.
That was the hundredth time that Arsenal have beat Everton that last night.
That was really quite upsetting.
I just want to make sure you're okay.
Thank you.
You're a little delicate tonight.
But the point about the monarchy, though, is you're wrong about that because you may not like the idea of it.
That's fine.
But they don't actually cost the country any money.
They're a net positive.
They cost the country a fortune.
And Prince Charles has a lot of his own money.
Prince Charles has a lot of his own money, actually enough to sustain himself.
He does not need to be taking money off the taxpayers to live his life.
You can keep telling me they cost a lot of money.
They don't.
Okay, but you can tell me how they don't.
Tourism is unfortunately.
But they would come without them.
They would come to see the castles.
But it's also the incredible good work that they do, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the country.
They don't have to go out and work for all the do all this wonderful work for charities.
They don't have to go out and raise their profile for charities.
They're doing it for their own personal gain.
They're doing it because they're members of the country.
You can't even go to a football match without getting upset.
I would happily read a book today like Camilla did and then get to live in a palace off the back of that.
It's a lot harder job than that.
I've never been to prisons and read books to do that.
I'll do that.
Also, every tiny spit and cough of your private life would be spattered across the papers.
Would you be comfortable with that?
Fine, fine.
It's so boring.
Racist Remarks Against Meghan00:15:25
Given I failed to even rally a tiny slither of support from you for the Sussex News, that's obviously the white crowd have all abandoned them.
I want to bring in now Ernest Jones.
Ernest Jones, I'm sorry, Ernest Owens, I do beg your pardon.
Ernest Owens, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
And now, I don't know much about you other than you wrote a piece last week for Rolling Stone magazine saying cancel culture is good for democracy.
So I'm going to come to that ludicrous premise in a minute.
But I also remember you tweeting when I left Good Morning Britain, a series of tweets calling me a racist, including enjoying how folks keep getting Piers Morgan together for his racist tirades against Meghan Markle on Good Morning Britain.
I was just curious, could you remember a single racist thing that I said about her or I've ever said about her?
Well, thank you for having me on, Piers.
I was surprised when I found out I would be on your show.
You're an uncensored show, Ernest.
We take all types on it.
Well, all types.
Well, there you go.
But I think really a lot of it just seemed to be biased.
I think that you was really just harsh on, you know, the Duchess of Sussex.
And I think there was a little bit of bias in the way that you had really gone after her.
But Ernest, to be clear, I didn't ask you about that.
I just said, what were the racist tirades?
What racist thing have I ever said about Meghan Markle?
I'm curious.
You tweeted quite a few times that I was a racist.
I'm just curious, what was the racism?
I said your remarks was racist.
I didn't say for a baby.
What were the remarks that were racist?
I think that it's biased.
I think that you had a sense of bias of how you were speaking about her and how you was really being insensitive to her mental health.
Sorry, being biased.
Being biased or skeptical of some of her claims is not the same as being racist.
What was the thing I said that was racist?
Do you want the person of colour to speak or do you want to just talk over me?
Nothing to do with your skin colour, Ernest.
Sorry, nothing to do with your skin colour.
I don't care if you're black or white or anything else.
I just want you to try and tell me given you tweeted to your many followers repeatedly talking about it.
Repeatedly, you did this repeatedly.
You have called me a racist repeatedly for racist things I've said about Megan Markle.
You've said you may raise yourself.
I'm not calling you a racist.
Stand by what you tweeted.
What was it I said about Megan Markle?
I am.
Can you let me talk?
Ever that's been racist?
Are you going to let me talk or are you just going to over talk me?
Stop asking me.
That's microaggression.
You're asking a black person to explain how what you did could be perceived as racist.
And rather than let me finish talking, you're over-talking me and being highly defensive.
Am I being racist again?
Am I being racist again?
You're being dismissive.
Can I actually talk?
Maybe because you're not answering the question.
Okay, so can I answer the question?
Yes, you can.
Please do.
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
So your targeting of Megan Markle's mental health, gaslighting her specifically, calling to question the legitimacy of her claims about the royal family being racist, you dismissing those claims, you consistently having a sense of badgering her and targeting her.
It's felt like on my end that there was some racial bias there.
Now, you may feel like it's not.
Maybe it's sexism.
Maybe it's misogynist or what?
Maybe it's a combination of both her gender and her race.
But it was perceived by thousands of people.
57,000 people had called Good Morning Britain about some of your bad things.
You've got to be very careful.
You're not mischaracterizing the situation on Fox.
Ernest.
You act like it's just Meghan Markle, but it wasn't just Meghan Markle.
It was people who had concerns.
You do have to be careful when you spew more lies, unfortunately, because 57,000 people.
Weren't you not spewing lies?
I'm about to explain what you just said was wrong, a lie.
57,000 people.
Or you're going to give your interpretation.
You're going to let me answer the question.
57,000 people.
Go ahead, Piers.
Ernest, 57,000 people complained to Ofcom, the TV regulator, and guess what?
Five months later, every one of the complaints was thrown out and Ofcom found in my favor to have my right to free speech and freedom of expression.
But I come back to my initial point about you.
You repeatedly tweeted to many people that I'm a racist.
And I'm simply asking you to name one racist comment.
Ernest, one single comment.
I'm not going to be able to get between racist comments.
So did I say a racist tirade?
What was it?
I felt like your attacking of Margan Markle was racially biased.
Oh, you felt like.
And I believe that it was your feeling.
I felt that way.
It was your feeling that I'm a racist, was it?
I felt like what you did was racially insensitive.
I never said verbatim on Twitter that you were racist.
I said you made what you're doing.
So you just said it's a little bit more.
I'm enjoying how folks keep getting Piers Morgan together for his racist tirades.
We're actually looking at your tweet now, Ernest.
And there were plenty more.
In fact, while I'm talking to you, well, dig the others out.
Let's go and dig them out, folks.
Here's my point, Ernest.
The reason that people think that I may have had a racist connotation to my criticism of Meghan Markle is because people like you, high-profile black people in America, kept saying that without any evidence.
And now I've got you on my show.
I'm finally able to ask you why did you tell lies about me?
You're blaming the black guy?
I'm not blaming the black guy.
I'm blaming you as a high-profile black man for claiming wrongly and defensively.
Towards my criticism of Meghan Markle, which to be clear, my criticism of her and Prince Harry is I think they both tell lies.
They both recently said they didn't mean to call the royal family racist when we heard that was on national television.
So my point to you, Ernest, is you can say these things.
You can say these things on Twitter when you're actually held to account.
What you said about Meghan Markle.
You have a bigger platform than me and you've attacked Meghan Markle and it's impacted her mental health.
And I feel like someone like me as a black person defending her as an innocent black woman, that situation, I felt like I was standing up for her.
You need to be accountable for your impact and your power.
Oh, I stand by everything I saw.
You have a big influence and you're trying to play a victim.
I stand by.
Oh, I'm not a victim.
And it was disrespectful.
No, no, Ernest, I'm not a victim and I'm not a racist.
Are you a victim, Pierce?
Ernest, I'm not a victim and I'm not a racist.
I'm somebody who listens to the people.
I never thought of your racist.
I said, So let me finish speaking.
I listened to the Oprah Winfrey show.
I watched it.
And I identified immediately a number of lies.
And I said that on air the next morning.
Other guests disagreed with me and you were delighted about the way they came after me and that's fine.
But then you said I was racist repeatedly.
That my criticism was racistly racially motivated.
You're being intellectually dishonest.
You did not just say she was a liar.
You questioned other aspects of her mental health.
No, no, I said I didn't believe that.
That was offensive.
Repeat what you said.
I said I didn't believe it.
Repeat what you said.
I said I didn't believe her.
Why?
Because there is no evidence to support the claims that she made.
She said she went to a senior member.
Her explanation was no evidence.
Ernest, I'm about to tell you what I said.
She said she went to a senior member of Buckingham Palace staff and said she was feeling suicidal, and that member of staff said she couldn't get help.
That story doesn't reappear in Harry's 415-page book and has never been substantiated by anybody else, nor has it been repeated by me.
You didn't know that when you said that.
So I'm afraid.
You did not know that when you said that.
Sorry, I didn't believe it.
It didn't sound true.
And by the way, why you didn't believe it?
Ernest, you're allowed to...
So I'm allowed to believe that she's lying and I'm not.
I'm allowed to disbelieve.
I'm allowed to disbelieve.
And I'm allowed to believe that you're not.
I'm allowed to disbelieve Prince Harry.
And I'm also allowed to disbelieve you when you call me a racist because it's wrong.
And you shouldn't do it.
I said that you made racist remarks.
I did not call you racist, Pierce.
You're trying to make yourself a martyr in a situation that you started.
You didn't have to go disrespectful below the belt with Megan.
You chose to do that.
And now you're mad.
I chose to criticize her for what I thought was a disgusting attack on the British royal family.
You made ad homined attacks against her character.
You assassinated her character before the British press.
And you know how the tap wasn't made towards her.
I've been just as scathing.
You understood what you were doing.
I've been just as scathing, if not more so, against Prince Harry, who I actually think is more to blame.
Didn't you...
I want to know if this is true.
Riddle me this.
Wasn't there a point in time where at least you tried to pursue a relationship with her?
You are before all of this happened.
No, absolutely not.
That's another lie.
It's another lie.
I met her once in my life.
Okay.
Okay, what do you mean?
Okay.
We found more tweets while we were talking to you.
You calling me a British media racist darling.
What does that mean, Ernest?
What does that mean?
It means that you have always, you have recently chosen, lately in your career, for whatever reason, you went the road of basically baiting into a lot of the biased coverage of Meghan Markle.
Absolutely.
And a lot of it has been a lot of people.
You see, this is a problem.
A lot of it has been targeted towards her in a biased way.
And come on.
Can you admit that the coverage around Meghan Markle has been racially biased?
Can you admit that?
Absolutely not.
I'm not talking about your work.
No, I think it's general.
I think it's another load of absolute hogwash nonsense.
So you're dismissing the role of race in all of this.
You don't think none of this has a role in the world?
I'm saying the British media, the British media has never been racist about Meghan Markle.
Okay, that's just a lie.
We speak in the library and disagree.
It's not a lie.
I agree to disagree.
It's a fact.
No, it's not.
What is a lie?
What is a lie, Ernest, is you telling people repeatedly, I'm a racist, and then you can't produce any evidence other than you made a racist tirade.
And you're offended.
But here's the thing.
You're blaming me for the criticism.
I'm not offended.
You say you're blaming me as a high-influential black person.
And by the way, you're blaming me for your criticism.
It has nothing to do with your skin colour, Ernest.
I don't care.
But you will be a black, influential person.
You named my race.
You said you're a black, influential person, and that's why people thought that way.
I think when you're talking about racism, I think when high-profile black people like you go public on Twitter.
High-profile black people like me.
Like you go public on Twitter and call me a racist.
Like you went public on Meghan Markle because people believe it.
And you know what?
It's a sickness.
And people believe what you said about Meghan Markle or no?
It's a lie.
Anyway, we've got to leave it there, Ernest.
It's been lovely catching up with you.
Let me go to Maureen again.
Maureen, one of the problems I have with this whole debate, I guess, is the way that Meghan Markle framed all this through the prism of racism and was supported by people like Ernest Owens and others who bought into this.
This whole narrative of the royal family are a bunch of callous racists.
Really striking to me that none of the race claims reappeared in Harry's book, nor did any of the mental health claims.
None of it.
It was like it never happened.
Now he's been giving interviews saying, we never meant to call the royals racist.
And now you have this guy who I don't know from Adam, by the way, other than he thinks cancel culture is good for democracy, which is obviously insane.
He thinks it's fine to just go on social media and call me directly repeatedly a racist.
And when I ask him for any evidence of racism in anything I've ever said, he said it's just a feeling he gets.
Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's very difficult, especially if you were, as I was also, critical of Meghan Markle pretty early on.
I had very much the same reaction to the Oprah interview that you did, where multiple things that she was saying that Harry was saying, Harry was not saying, they weren't adding up.
They didn't make any logical sense.
The idea that Prince Harry, who along with Kate and William, founded Heads Together, right, a mental health advocacy platform, would be told that his wife, who is suicidal, can't get help.
It just, it made no sense.
Not only was that nonsense, but also their little claims like the Archbishop of Canterbury, she said, married them secretly three days before the televised wedding.
That would have been a crime and the Archbishop would have been taken to prison.
So immediately I knew this was all nonsense.
She made a claim that their son Archie wasn't going to be a prince because of his skin colour.
Again, immediately we knew that was complete rubbish.
She didn't understand the succession rules.
So all of it was, to me, garbage.
I mean, I said, I wouldn't believe her if she read a weather report, but it is ironic that the guy that calls me a racist but can't support it just wrote a piece for Rolling Stone last week.
I'm sure you saw this, saying that cancel culture is good for democracy.
Actually, it's the opposite.
It's incredibly damaging to democracy because it's really about feelings, not facts.
He just feels I'm a racist.
You can't actually point to anything which is racist.
He just feels it.
And I think that's one of the massive problems we have in society.
I couldn't agree with you more.
And you suffered a very real world consequence.
You lost your job under the cloud of racism.
And so it's doubly gobsmacking to have Harry on his worldwide privacy tour, right, promoting this book when he sits with Tom Bradby and says, well, we never said they were racist.
We never said the royal family was racist.
And you're going, are you gaslighting, are you just gaslighting everybody?
Haven't we all been laboring under this illusion that you and your wife have been perpetuating while, by the way, your grandfather's dying?
Absolutely unbelievable.
Well, Maureen, thank you.
As always, to join me.
I didn't know Ernest was still with us, but thanks again, Ernest.
I love catching up.
Final observation to you two about this.
I do think that racism charge, Matt, was incredibly damaging to the brand of the royal family and the monarchy.
And for Harry just to simply pretend that wasn't what they meant.
Honestly, it sent shockwave through the royal family when they said that on Oprah.
They were silent for about 48 hours.
I couldn't raise anybody because you knew they were just looking introspectively thinking, what on earth, where has this actually come from?
And they came out with that infamous statement, Recollections May Vary, which now lives on.
And when, you know, when he came out, I spoke to people after, he spoke to, I think it was Amazon Cooper when he did the interview and said, we didn't mean it to be racism.
Everybody in the palace took that original comment he made as Oprah as an allegation of racism.
I mean, Ava, what do you think is that?
I mean, you lend yourself to the woke, so I presume you still identify as woke.
No, come on, that's silly.
Don't open a question.
But one of my big problems with the woke brigade is this thing about they put feelings before facts.
They think it's enough to feel these things, to have a lived experience, even if it doesn't actually happen.
It's what you think happened.
You know, this guy thought I was a racist, so he just tweeted it.
Well, look, I mean, I'm not going to get into that.
I'm not going to start taking part in any of that.
But I think around the palace, I think Megan made a claim.
I don't understand why Harry retracted on that or reneged on that.
I don't understand why he did.
I truly believe her.
I still believe her now.
I did actually think that a lot of the press coverage was racist.
I do think it was, actually.
I think the way that the press went after her was not methodical.
Press Coverage Was Uncouth00:13:06
It was actually, it was quite shocking to see.
It was uncouth.
There was no racist.
You've got to think about what was written in tablets.
You've got to think about what was, you know, we're talking about her exotic blood, this.
And, you know, it was good.
There was one line in a Rachel Johnson piece who is the least racist person you want to see.
No, she is not racist.
I know.
She apologised.
So you accept she's not a racist.
So it wasn't racially intended at all.
There was one clumsy headline about straight out of Compton because you've got to think about the scorn that was going around Megan Market.
They were the only two things that anyone could find in the entirety of tabloid coverage.
And right up to the wedding, it was unbelievably positive.
Unbelievably positive.
It wasn't positive.
We're looking at all different Britons.
No, you're living in Cloud Cuckoo land.
You don't think it was positive.
It was euphoric.
Anyway, we'll take a break.
Lovely to see you.
You're staying, I think, aren't you?
If you can get through it, no, it's the Arsenal game.
It really has upset me.
Great scoop.
Thank you.
Proper old-fashioned eye popper.
Congratulations to you, Matt Wilkinson from The Sun.
We'll sort of come Matt Hancock, another Matt, not so impressive, is fuming for what he calls a massive betrayal.
I talked to these Isabel Oakshot.
He's shameless.
She's unrepentant.
She's back with more revelations, including some about me.
It's after the break.
It's all kicking off just in the breaks here.
Well, welcome back.
It's day two of the sensational lockdown leaks, which have piled pressure on disgraceful health secretary Matt Hancock.
Today's files reveal then Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, the man who was fired three times.
Imagine how bad you've got to be to achieve that accolade.
He blasted teaching unions for looking for excuses not to work during the pandemic.
Hancock called them absolute asses, which is pretty ironic coming from him.
Well, tonight I can reveal what an absolute arse Hancock and his own top team were about me.
Quite extraordinary, this.
First, in May 2020, I got COVID symptoms and I took a COVID test.
And so I tweeted this to say, look, until I get the results back and I get the all clear, I can't do Good Morning Britain.
Hancock immediately tweeted his team with an opportunity.
He wrote to them saying, tempting as it is, I probably shouldn't comment on this.
But a few colleagues pointing out kindly that he can only have a test because of the ramp up of testing in the past week would be good, so beneficial for him if he wished me well.
An advisor wrote, you should tweet him, best wishes, totally straight.
Wish him all the best and hope he's okay.
Be really classy and then get others to point out how classy you're being.
And that's exactly what Matt Hancock did.
If you test positive, I sincerely hope it's mild, he tweeted me publicly.
And other people praised him for being so classy.
And that wasn't his intention at all.
And a series of fawning Hancock followers duly congratulated his commendable maturity exactly as he and his team planned.
Classy stuff.
Well, in March of the following year, this actually gets better.
By which time Matt Hancock had presided over one of the worst COVID responses of any of the wealthiest countries in the world, I'd left my job at Good Morning Britain.
We just discussed that.
You already know the story.
We've just been debating it.
What I didn't know until today is that the health secretary, Mr Hancock, and the then social care minister, Helen Whaitley, during a deadly pandemic, they saw an opportunity here as well.
Helen Whaitley messaged in the WhatsApp group to Matt Hancock, how about we celebrate the departure of peers at or after our team meeting tomorrow p.m.
Just a thought.
Hancock replied with one word, perfect.
Would have been, wouldn't it, if they'd had a big party to celebrate me losing my job after actually holding people like those two to such vigorous account for the previous year.
Only one problem.
If they did have that party, we don't know.
Lockdown restrictions at the time would have meant that that kind of party to celebrate me losing my job would have been strictly prohibited, illegal.
And the people that made that law would have been them.
Well, joining me now is our very own Isabel Oakeshott, who got that sensational scoop.
Talk TV presenter Richard Tice, who probably has known about the scoop longer than most of us.
And political journalist Ava Santina is still with us, struggling with, I think, is a burgeoning cold, which if you give it to me, means you won't be back on the show for at least six calendar months.
Neither will you by looks of how unwell she is.
Obviously it's not COVID.
Fascinating little insight just involving me in these things.
Not significant by any means compared to all the other significant stuff, but interesting into their mindset about how they just were spinning everything and how jubilant they were to get someone who was calling them out on all of their nonsense repeatedly, getting what they saw as his due comeuppance.
I mean, I did a search for your name today, Piers, and I have to say that there were so many mentions of you that I had to give up trying to pull them all out.
Look, they were frankly obsessed by you.
They were continually wondering what to say to you to keep you in the place that they wanted you to be.
They were worrying about the extent to which you were challenging them.
You and I differed over what you should have been challenging them on.
Where we did agree is that they should be held to account.
And they didn't like that.
And they were absolutely overjoyed when you left your job.
I also found, Richard, that the one about COVID, I mean, at that time, COVID was still, this is very early on in the first wave.
You know, one of my Good Morning Britain colleagues, Kate Garraway, her husband, was critically ill and remained so from COVID.
So it was no laughing matter for us if somebody got COVID in their 50s at the time with no vaccine.
So I was pretty concerned.
It turned out I didn't have it then.
I did get it the following year, but I didn't have it when I feared I might and when it was really scary, you know.
Certainly I wasn't laughing about it.
This was a pretty serious moment.
And yet the way they reacted even to that, pretty actually pretty callous.
But that's what we know is that actually they were laughing about lots of things at a time when they had successfully terrified the nation.
And in those first few weeks, everybody, no one knew what was really going on, but they seemed remarkably lax about it.
That was sort of May 2020.
And the idea that they could be wasting time in the nicest possible way, Piers, thinking about you, they should have been focusing on the science.
What's the latest data?
What are the right decisions to make?
What are we getting right?
What are we getting wrong?
What do we need to change?
They shouldn't be focusing about any individual at all.
And I just find that whole thing throughout this process extraordinary.
I mean, what we'll see in tomorrow's Telegraph is the kind of gloating and the gleefulness with which they reacted when people were arrested or got into trouble with the authorities for supposed breaches of the lockdown restrictions.
They were very keen, for example, to see Nigel Farage punished and even went to the extent of trying to get the Home Office involved in making sure that they were not.
Well, it's a tough question for you on this because you obviously come at this from a very anti-lockdown perspective and you're perfectly entitled to.
And lots of people felt so my oldest son was part of that bandwagon and remains so today.
But then he's a young person, doesn't see the need for young people to have taken it that seriously.
My question for you, though, if you were the health secretary or the prime minister, say you were the prime minister, right?
You two were running the country, which God forbid could one day happen, who knows.
If you're running the country and we get hit by a novel virus again, and it was the first time we hadn't been hit by COVID already, right?
It's completely new.
And you see it destroying health systems in Italy, right on our doorstep, one of the best health systems in the world.
People just dying in their thousands every day.
And there's no vaccine.
There may not be a vaccine.
There are no therapeutic drugs.
People are dropping like flies.
We don't really know yet that it's targeting just old people or vulnerable people.
We don't really know anything.
Other than a lockdown to buy time, what else would you do to stop mass death?
This actually isn't a tough question for me because I'm not actually a critic of the initial lockdown.
I think that was absolutely the right thing.
So the ones that came later.
Yeah, I think subsequent lockdowns were not justifiable as we found out more about how this disease worked, what the mortality risks were amongst different demographics.
But absolutely, I would have taken that decision in those early days until we worked out what this was we were contending with.
Imagine if it had been Ebola-like and the fatality rate.
Well, no, I met one of the people involved with the AstraZeneca vaccine up in Oxford.
And he said to me, you don't want to worry about COVID so much anymore.
But if the plague comes back, which had a 30 to 50% death rate, including children, imagine that.
And this is what keeps those guys awake at night.
On COVID, very interesting series of things have been bubbling out about all this.
And we need a proper global look at this, obviously.
But certainly things like the efficacy of masks are now being seriously questioned in some of the reports I've seen.
Certainly, there was a massive U-turn on whether vaccines could prevent transmission.
And I was all for punishing people who wouldn't take it if it meant they could still transmit it.
And if they had the jab, they couldn't, right to the point I was told, well, actually, that was a mistake.
So I changed my mind.
And we're now being told that it almost certainly came from the lab and not from the wet market.
Again, people that said this kind of thing at the time, and I'm not going to absolve myself from responsibility for being censorious.
I was, but I was basing my censoriousness on what I believe the experts knew.
Turned out they didn't really know.
And that was the whole point, Piers.
They didn't know, but they wanted to shut down debate whether it was the Wuhan lab, you know, where did it come from?
The masks.
I mean, I had something taken off YouTube with Mike Graham from Talk TV.
Well, Mike shouldn't be on YouTube.
Because certainly shouldn't be on YouTube.
Because we talked about masks.
And there was never any evidence.
Indeed, let's remember, right at the beginning, actually, our own health experts, the government advisors, were saying.
And then they changed their mind.
And look, there are still different schools of thought, but we should certainly be examining this, right?
Eva, what's your taken it?
I mean, we live in a strange world where this shows aren't called uncensored.
And like I say, I'm not going to take myself out of the blame game for this for being overly.
I was censorious, actually, because I was acting on what I believed to be the fact.
But it turned out that actually, like a lot of stuff in a fast-moving health crisis, the facts change.
I think what the leak has shown is how self-serving and, well, untruthful that entire cabinet was throughout the entire Boris Johnson premiership.
I mean, Matt Hancock just seems, he's come across as one of the most two-faced fake politicians I think that we've ever experienced.
Well, the whole thing about his test, the test, 100,000 tests a day, I was on.
That was very self-serving.
I was on him about that every day on Good Morning Britain because I smelt a rat when he finally got there.
Now it turns out he got told, actually, if we just send them out, it doesn't matter if they get taken, that'll count as a test.
The whole thing was a racket.
Yeah, but also like he was a little child.
Like he needed to hit a goal.
I mean, that's not public health.
And that goal actually disadvantaged the testing of people going into care homes, whether it was from hospitals or staff or patients from the community.
That was the impact of that.
And that's incredibly serious.
And that was all because of his target.
We understand ambitious targets.
We all have them.
But his was an absolute obsession.
And he fixed it at the end with 26,000 rocking out of an Amazon warehouse to make the numbers when he knew loads of them wouldn't be used.
Isabel Matt Hancock's accused you of a massive betrayal, which did make me laugh out loud when I heard that this morning.
But I mean, what's been your reaction to his reaction?
What I would say is the number of messages I have got pouring in from ordinary people saying thank you for doing this because we need to know this stuff and we were never going to get it from a public inquiry that has no deadline.
The betrayal is not me betraying a politician and his precious reputation.
The betrayal is his.
He betrayed the whole country with a flawed response to the lockdown and I make no apology whatsoever for putting it in the public domain.
No, but I do worry about what's going to happen to anyone who's lost someone from COVID.
I mean, can you imagine?
I mean, how trivialising this whole thing makes it.
Matt's movements throughout all of this trivialises.
Why do people die?
Why do people lose their loved ones?
Because of the self-serving idiots.
I completely agree.
It all looks like politics and spin and making himself look good.
I have to say that the book, which you did with him, was a halliography of, look at me, I'm great.
I cracked it, everyone loves me.
But now we look at the WhatsApps and we think...
He actually had quite a lot of revelations in it.
You know, if you read it, there was a lot, to be fair on Matt.
He did lean towards revelation where he could, but it was never going to be comprehensive.
Drag Performance Controversy00:06:22
Not really.
It was basically about what a hero he'd been.
I had seen all the things that he was a hero.
But you remember that expression?
We're following the science.
Yes.
And it turned out to be an absolute sensor.
Well, also, it turns out...
It also turns out that I think in a free country, the science should be challenged from all sides, right?
Because there's no such thing as the science.
And I will never again take it all as sacrosanct and be a censorious in any circumstance because we learned a hard lesson.
We've got to take a break.
When we come back, protests at drag performances for children erupt in London.
Are drag queens a threat to kids?
We'll debate that.
Well, welcome back.
Outrages erupted across America as drag queens leave nightclubs to take over libraries and schools for drag queen story hours for kids.
The events have become too controversial.
But a third of US states are debating laws that would make it harder to perform in drag at all.
So this Frontier and the Culture Wars has now reached Britain's shores with protests erupting and drag events for kids at the Tate Museum and a South London pub.
Well join me to discuss all this is gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, drag artist Vanity von Glow, plus the YouTuber and political commentator Lauren Chen.
Let me start with you Lauren.
So it's been a big thing in America this.
Why?
Well, I think this is such a huge topic right now because parents are frankly fed up of the idea that just because you're going to be called a bigot unless you agree, that you're supposed to be all right with grown men wearing prosthetic breasts performing for your children.
And there's a lot of people who will say, well, they're just reading stories.
We know for a fact that that's just not the case.
There have been leaked videos from these drag performances where there are sex acts being simulated, where there are nudity.
And there's even one going on right now, a viral video that shows someone performing in BDSM gear.
None of this is appropriate for children.
This isn't a gay rights issue.
This is simply what is proper for children.
If this were females performing these acts, it would still be unacceptable.
And frankly, I'm not going to be scared into silence and saying this is not all right simply because I might offend some people.
If you want to do this in your own time with an adult audience, that's one thing, but this is absolutely not family fun.
Okay, so vanity von Glow, I've been to a drag show in West Hollywood.
You can imagine what that one was like.
Very full-on, very outrageous, very funny.
Had a great night.
Wouldn't want my kids anywhere near it when they were young.
Yeah, that's understandable.
I work in Soho in the basement bars, and I wouldn't necessarily want kids at my show either.
It would restrict what I'm able to say.
So should they be going into schools or performing at events with kids in that kind of environment?
Well, we need to be careful to avoid the type of hyperbole that I think is taking place in America.
You know, Cardi B is not the same singer as Barbara Streisand, and the work that she does on stage is not the same as the performances of Barbara Streisand.
In the exact same way, drag is a broad church.
There's a lot of different performance styles, and it's not always this hyper-sexualized, stripper-esque performance that's a big part of the drag of burlesque.
But there's also a lot of drag that I find it a little dull, I wouldn't want to do it, but that's quite Disney princess, quite anodyne actually.
And that's what's happening at the drag queen story hours as I see it in the UK.
Peter, it's a problem that, as with all these things, there are a few examples where drag queens have simply gone too far, they get caught on camera, that becomes the narrative, and suddenly we move to quite a puritanical response.
I mean, for example, when you go to Panto at Christmas, there's normally someone in drag and everyone's laughing and the place is full of kids.
So I don't think necessarily it is always harmful to be in a children environment, but it does depend what they're doing.
And some of these clips I've seen have been, I think, crossing a line.
Well, certainly here in Britain, the drag story time is very much about encouraging young people to read.
It's about using drag as a way to engage people.
Do we have to do that?
Well, it makes it more fun for kids to have this character dressed up, all glamorous and spicy, to tell them stories rather than some boring man in a suit.
Does it prompt too many questions, though, of a sexualized nature?
I mean, there is a whole debate in America, particularly Florida, Governor DeSantis there and others believing you just shouldn't have anything sexualized going on in young school classrooms.
I can assure you, the drag story times in Britain have no sex whatsoever.
It's just simply a man in drag telling stories like anybody else would, wholesome, innocent stories, family stories.
And often the parents come along as well.
And the reports I've heard from parents is they are delighted that these drag queens have managed to get their kids interested in reading.
Piers, you would have taken your kids to see Panto when they were younger, I'm sure.
And Lord knows I grew up loving Mrs. Doubtfire, and I've turned out just fine, Piers.
I think that the problem is we get this cultural hangover from the States a lot of the time.
Of course, there are the odd pictures of people doing the backward splits and all that, where I'm not sure that that's the type of performance that we're describing when we're making a defensive drag queen story arc.
Let me ask, let me ask Lauren on that point.
I mean, Mrs. Doubtfire was a hugely popular movie.
Did that offend you?
Would you watch that with a child?
If so, what's the real difference?
Well, I think there's a very important distinction to be made between cross-dressing and specifically drag.
And I have to say, I think your guests are aware of this difference.
The history of drag is very rooted in sexualized performances.
The person who kind of pioneered Drag Queen Story Hour specifically talks about using drag in order to subvert the nuclear family heteronormativity and in order to implant, I guess, notions of queerness in children's brains.
So I'm sorry, but no, I simply don't believe that this is just about getting kids to read.
There are so many different ways that we could have initiatives to encourage literacy among children, none of which involved an adult men wearing prosthetic breasts, which is exactly what drag is.
Well, ultimately, there may be a slight cultural difference between Britain and America on this because the panto culture is so prevalent here and it isn't in America.
So it might be.
I just want to also add, I'm sorry, in a society where everything is offensive, including a white person wearing dreadlocks, why is it okay?
Why is it celebrated for grown men to be essentially wearing woman face and performing all these caricatures of female sensibility?
So just to clarify, Lauren, you're offended by it, I well, I think it's hypocritical for these people who are often on the left.
Oh, I'm just asking whether you're offended by that.
Offensiveness.
Sunak Wants Boris Gone00:01:55
I don't know, but if you're so anti-people making it up.
Are you offended?
I am offended of this happening in front of children.
Yes, that does offend me very much.
Listen, I've got to leave it there.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you both very much indeed.
We appreciate it.
Coming next, Boris Johnson breaks his silence and everybody wishes he hadn't.
Well, welcome back.
Isabel Richard, quick wrap-up here.
Boris Johnson broke his silence today to try and stick the knife into Rishi Sunak and his plan for getting Brexit actually done.
I just don't want Boris Johnson to break his silence.
I'm going to shut up now and go away.
I think half the country wants that.
But look, the reality is he sees an opportunity.
He's been carefully assessing what he should do, when he should speak.
It's becoming clear that more and more people in Northern Ireland, unionists, probably the DUP, Lord Frost yesterday, Boris coming out today, are saying, actually, Rishi has completely misssold this deal with the EU.
If you read the EU's documents, it's almost like a completely different deal to what Rishi did.
But in the end, Isabel, the bottom line of this, most people, whatever side they were on, they just want this over with.
And if it means a little bit more compromise and they're prepared to stomach, then so be it.
I just see Boris trying to do what he's doing on maneuvers, trying to stiff Rishi.
How does that help anybody?
Well, it was ever thus with Boris.
He's been doing this for the last 15 years, hasn't he?
And I agree with you that most people just, they didn't really understand it if they don't live in Northern Ireland or the Republic and they just want it to go away.
And I'm not surprised.
Look, it was a communication triumph for Rishi Sunak.
The small print as ever doesn't match up, but most people are not going to be too upset by that.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Well, thank you, both of you.
You must have had an interesting few months, you two, knowing about this bomb about to go off.
So I appreciate you both sparing me time and your busy schedules tonight.