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March 7, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:38
20230307_piers-morgan-uncensored-stanley-johnson-knighthood
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Boris Johnson's Honour List 00:15:08
Tonight our Piers Morgan Uncensor Boris Johnson strips the honour from Britain's honour system with a packed list of gongs for cronies and even a knighthood for his father.
Is it time to abolish the Prime Minister resignation list?
TikTok faces bans, blocks and probes across the world.
As fears grow in Britain, the Chinese spy cameras are trained on our government and perhaps even our king.
Is it time to wise up to the rising threat of China?
We'll debate that.
Plus comedians face protests, boycotts, even physical attacks for jokes about controversial social issues.
Can comedy survive cancel culture?
I'll talk live to a comedian who somehow has more Twitter followers than me.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening, just before we get going, here is what is called, well Tottenham Hotspur fans won't know what this is.
It's called a trophy.
And this is from last night's Oscars of British Sports Journalism, the Sports Journalism Awards at the Park Plaza Hotel in Westminster.
And Piers Morgan Uncensored won the coveted Scoop of the Year award for our Ronaldo interview.
And I just broke the news to Cristiano, who of course has won more trophies than any other human being alive.
And he's very happy for all of us and sends his best to all the teams.
So congratulations to the Piers Morgan Uncensored team, the first of many trophies.
And hopefully this augers well for my own football team, who are now 12 games away from the Premier League title.
That's going to stay here all show.
Anyway, let's go up the top, please, because I've lost my thread.
Good evening from London and welcome to the award-winning Paul's Piers Morgan.
God, I wanted to say that as a solo.
The honour system is a peculiar quirk of British history.
And for the most part, it's one we can be proud of.
We dole out brilliantly British titles like Commander of the Empire to people who've led charities, built businesses and toiled in their communities for decades.
We honour the finest athletes and lavish the artists and musicians who've blazed a trail in culture.
We give an unforgettable red carpet moment with the monarch to our hard-working British heroes.
At least that's the idea.
But there's a major quirk in the quirk and it's a rotten one.
Prime ministers get to hand out honours and peerages when they resign, even if they resign in ignominious shame.
It's supposed to be a way of thanking a choice few public servants who've dedicated their lives to good government.
Instead, it's become a grubby exercise in backslapping for cronies.
David Cameron has rightly lambasted for packing his resignation list with 62 pals after the failed Remain campaign ended his career.
And not to be outdone on entitlement and impunity, Boris Johnson is planning a staggering 100 honours, including reportedly a knighthood for his own father, Stanley.
Well, Labour Sakir Starmer is rightly sticking the boot in.
It's classic of a man who liked Johnson.
I mean, I think the public will just think this is absolutely outrageous.
But the idea of an ex-Prime Minister promote, you know, bestowing honours on his dad for services to what?
Well, Stanley Johnson's many things.
He's a friend of this show.
But a knight, Commander of the Empire should not be one of them if it's his own son who's recommending it, should it?
I mean, is that right?
His daughter, Rachel, Boris' brother, explained that her brother's latest act of brazen self-service was this.
Maybe he thought my dad's 81.
He has never been acknowledged.
His service to the party and to the environment has never been acknowledged.
This is the one thing I can do for him.
And I'm jolly well going to go and do it.
And I don't care what people say.
Right.
My father is also around that age and he's never received a knighthood for services to his vegetable patch, amongst other things.
That's not how this works.
You don't just give your dad a knighthood because he's your dad and because he's got to 80.
Is that how this system works now?
But that's the problem with Boris Johnson.
He doesn't just care what people think at all.
If Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un pulled a stunt like this, we'd all howl with laughter at the scale of this comedic corruption.
It beggars belief that it's happening here.
If you resign in shame and disgrace, as Boris Johnson did, for lying, and after you've been fined by the police for breaking one of your own laws in a health crisis, you shouldn't be allowed to then dish out honours to a hundred of your mates and relatives.
Liz Truss, who was outlasted by a lettuce and created our economy, shouldn't even think about nominating anybody either.
There'll be no one left in our honour system if it's abused by leaders who failed us, and it's a slap in the teeth for the many people who deserve recognition.
Rishi Sunak should reject this list and scrap resignation honours before this source of national pride becomes what is rapidly becoming methanational disgrace.
Well, join me in our telegraph columnist Madeline Grant, talk TV contributor Paula Roan Adrian and by Talk TV's political editor Downing Westminster Kate McCann.
We'll start with you, Kate.
Are you in Westminster or are you in Downing Street?
It's so dark and mysterious.
I'm in Downing Street.
Downing Street in Westminster, in fact.
It's a double one.
Welcome to the award-winning Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Congratulations for your role in our scoop of the year.
I'm not sure what it was, but I'm sure you'll find one as everyone clambers onto the glory trail.
Let's talk about two things.
I want to start, first of all, with this honours scandal, which is what it's becoming.
Because I don't, for the life of me, think that there should be a system where prime ministers who have to resign in disgrace should then be able to issue honours to cronies and in this case apparently even to his own dad.
Yeah, and look, I think there are a lot of people who will share that sentiment.
And one of the things that Rachel Johnson, Boris Johnson's sister, said there, which I think rings true, is that actually her brother doesn't really care about the reaction that people are having in Westminster to the nomination of his dad, despite the fact that some people are saying, you know, it's not just the fact that Stanley Johnson is Boris Johnson's father, that there are questions over what exactly he has been nominated for, but there are some fairly personal reasons why maybe he might not be the type of person to be named on an honours list, some allegations of domestic abuse, for example,
and inappropriate behaviour.
You know, on the front page of national newspapers, too.
I think what this says really is that Boris Johnson is determined to do something for those who surrounded him while he was in number 10.
He doesn't really care that much about the reaction to it.
He's nominated around 100 people.
His predecessors usually nominate around 60, so it's a bumper list anyway.
And I think it's fair to say that this decision has actually just pushed him further out of some people's minds in Westminster as a viable Conservative leader of the future.
I know, Piers, you might think, I can't believe we're even talking about that, but people do talk about a Boris Johnson comeback.
I think after his perceived misstep on the Northern Irel Protocol deal that Rishi Sunak struck and now this, it just makes it more difficult for people to see that happening.
Right.
So Madeline, look, you identify as a Conservative, do you?
Yeah, I would say so.
And you identify as a woman?
I have to ask you.
Definitely a small C rather than a big C.
And a woman.
Okay, we have to check these days.
You're a Conservative woman.
We asked 54 people today.
We counted.
54 people who we would normally use on the show to defend the indefensible when it comes to Boris Johnson.
It's a kind of list we have on a file.
Can you defend the indefensible when it comes to Boris?
And 54 people's names come up and they normally say yes.
Not one of them would come on to defend this, to defend him giving his own father.
And I'd nothing against Stanley.
I like Stanley personally, always got on very well, and he's been on the show a few times.
But for Boris Johnson to be hounded out of office in disgrace and now dish out a knighthood to people, including his father, seems to me absurd.
It's fabulously tone-deaf, isn't it?
Yeah.
And it's sort of, you know, of course it's going to renew people's doubts about the very office and the very honour system as it currently stands.
I mean, as with so many things in this country, it relies on a host of unwritten rules and conventions that people are expected to honour in not just letter but the spirit of these rules.
And it's so typical of someone like Boris Johnson that he would attempt to overstep the mark to the absolute maximum degree.
You know, it's like it's not quite Caligula nominating his horse as consul.
He's not far off.
It's not far off.
And, you know, perhaps the Times cartoon yesterday is right and perhaps Dylan the dog is next on the list.
I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Paula, I speak as somebody who has obviously turned down a knighthood.
And if you'll believe that, you'll believe anything.
I remain honourless at the moment, but there's still time.
I always believe everything you say, Piers.
Exactly.
And also, I actually don't think working journalists, I sort of consider myself one, should ever accept honours anyway, because it means that you grease the palm of a government a little too closely, in my experience.
But what do you, I mean, can you no one will defend it, but I'm more interested about the whole system of allowing outgoing prime ministers.
What if Liz Truss, after the 44 days of total mayhem in which she created the economy, created the pound, basically brought us to our financial needs?
What if she wants to suddenly start rewarding people with her own resignation honours list?
The problem is what Boris Johnson has done to himself and to the Conservative Party, some may say, is dragged our eyes down to the equivalent of the lower part of the human body.
We are watching the diseased sphincter, aren't we?
Spewing out.
We don't know where he's been.
That stuff that we don't tolerate ordinarily, but Boris Johnson is expecting us to just say okay to.
And Rishi Sunak is expected to sign off on that.
And Rishi Sunak said to us that his government is going to be one about professionalism, one about integrity.
But whilst our eyes are down so low on this human body, whilst we are wallowing in the cesspit that has been created by this lower part of the body, that is what Boris Johnson has done to the honesty.
I'm really struggling with some of your analogies here because the whole idea of thinking about Boris Johnson anywhere in the lower abdominal region is causing me to feel quite nauseous.
Well, some people may have used the A-word to describe a bit feisty off your holiday, but no.
There's kind of another issue here.
Kate McCann, come back to you at Downing Street.
Big, big speech tonight by Rishi Sunak, really owning this issue of the small boats, one of his five pledges.
But he was there on his own, Home Secretary, who's come up with this plan sitting in front of him along with the media.
But let's take a look at what Rishi Sunak said.
That if you come here illegally, you can't claim asylum.
You can't benefit from our modern slavery protections.
You can't make spurious human rights claims.
And you can't stay.
And once you are removed, you will be banned, as you are in America and Australia, from ever re-entering our country.
Now, I understand there will be debate about the toughness of these measures.
All I can say is we have tried it every other way and it has not worked.
You know, I watched it all, Kate, with great interest.
I mean, once again, I'm going to say this.
I do find it quite comforting we have a Prime Minister who can string a sentence together and doesn't sound like a blithering idiot.
And he made a passionate and pretty eloquent argument really for nothing else has worked.
Let's try this.
The problem, it seems to me, is I'm not convinced it will work either.
What's the general consensus about it?
I think that's right, Piers.
Look, there are two questions here.
One of them is a legal issue, and one of them is a practicality question.
On the first one, Suella Bravman, who, as you said, was in the front row of that press conference watching the Prime Minister give that speech, she's written on the front of this bill to say, look, I can't guarantee that what we're trying to do will meet the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Now, that's a huge problem.
That's basically the Home Secretary admitting that this is probably going to get dragged through the courts.
And we know what that means because we're seeing it play out with the Rwanda policy, which, by the way, is a key part of this new pledge.
It requires the Rwanda policy to make it work.
So that's the first issue.
How does it work legally?
I think there are lots of MPs tonight who would like to see this work in practice, but who still have big legal doubts.
And I asked the Prime Minister, well, look, if it does get gummed up in the courts, would you be prepared to leave the ECHR?
That's what some Tories want, what reportedly the Home Secretary wants.
And he said, no, no, we won't need to do that.
I think we can get this through.
So we need to see whether that's possible.
The second issue is the practicality of this, because what the government is proposing is that if you arrive here in the UK illegally on a boat, you will be detained, you will be processed quickly.
Now, they're saying days, and then you will either be removed to a safe country or you will be accepted into the UK in some exceptional circumstances.
Now, the government can't give me numbers for how many people would be accepted, nor can they give me numbers for how many people would come here via those safe routes.
But what I think is really problematic is that if you think about the numbers, Piers, 45,000 people came to the UK last year.
If anything near that scale continued to come, the government would have a real problem trying to process that number of people within days.
It would take weeks, months, maybe even years.
And we don't have the capacity to detain that many people in detention centers, which, by the way, haven't yet been built.
Also, we're saying that this legislation won't apply to the people who are already here.
It applies if you make that journey from today.
It is retrospective, but it's not going to apply to anybody who's already made that journey.
So we still have the issue of people in hotels around the country that the government hasn't yet solved.
Yeah.
So a bit of a mess.
All right.
Well, Madeline, sell it to me.
Do you believe in this?
Can it work?
Well, I've yet to see evidence that this policy has kind of teeth that previous efforts to do precisely this don't have.
I've yet to see how it would not be subject to being completely gummed up in the courts, as Kate says, where other policies have failed.
However, I do wonder if, you know, wait for the experts to properly decode this, but I do wonder if there might be something more substantive here, because if it is just as toothless as previous attempts, then the Prime Minister has created the most tremendous rod for his own back here.
You might end up with something, a policy that is seen very publicly to fail right before the next general election.
So it's quite a gamble.
And I suspect that he would not have spoken in such a sort of strongly worded, positive way about this policy if he didn't think that he had a reasonable chance of actually...
Labour Party Policy Gamble 00:06:08
I mean, when I interviewed him last month in Downing Street, he was emphatic that by the end of this year, he would have significantly reduced the number of people coming over in these boats.
And he wanted me to go back and interview him again at the end of the year and mark his card.
So, I mean, Paula, he is, you know, today he was there, centre stage on his own.
Siwella Bravo sitting in front of him, not on the stage with him.
Quite interesting optics.
He's really owning this, which makes me think, because he's no fool, British Sunak, that he must think, a bit like with his Brexit deal, he's got a reasonable chance of this working.
I don't see what other choice he has than to believe in himself.
Because we were told that Brexit would work in terms of immigration.
It hasn't done.
We were told that Rwanda was going to work in terms of immigration.
And it hasn't done.
And now we are told something again by the same administration.
Oh, okay, so we got it wrong that time and we got it wrong this time, but this time it's going to work.
And unfortunately for me as a voter, the optics aren't enough anymore.
Having said that, I mean, there's no doubt, Madeline, that I don't see much from the Labour Party, which makes any sense to me either.
I mean, I think this has been a collective mess now for a very long time.
And these numbers are getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the gangs realize we are weaker and weaker and weaker.
And one of the big problems, I mean, Kate talked about processing.
We're just not processing people.
So they're all living at vast expense in quite nice hotels in many cases.
That winds everybody up.
I think most of the public are basically like, sort this out.
Whatever you need to do, it's transparently ridiculous that we're allowing tens of thousands of people to just come on shore on these boats run by criminal gangs.
You know, a third of them, as it turned out, from Albania, not a war-torn country.
People probably joining gangs already in the UK in many cases.
None of this makes sense to the average British voter.
Well, quite.
I think, you know, the first responsibility of a government is first and foremost to defend our borders.
And from that, everything else springs.
And once you've shown that borders are porous and we have no real control over it, then I think it leads to great doubts about the ability of government to do just about anything competently and successfully.
And, you know, your point about Labour, I think, is spot on because, you know, say what you want about the Rwanda policy and it hasn't worked.
Not a single flight has been sent.
It is at least an attempt to look at the incentives and the business.
Yeah, but here's the problem with it.
The problem with it is it's supposed to be a disincentive to people, to the smuggling gangs, the trafficking gangs, to do this.
But they're looking at it and see it completely frozen up in court and they're laughing their heads off.
They're saying, well, this isn't a deterrent to anybody, right?
I mean, that's the problem.
The deterrents aren't working because they're not working.
So they don't deter.
And please, let's be clear, this is not the fault of my brethren lawyers who are doing their job.
Well, always blame lawyers when in doubt.
You know, this is the fault of a failed government and its failed policies.
And you talk about the Labour Party and what the Labour Party has been able to offer.
And I can see that you're concerned about that.
I did hear Stephen Kinnick say recently in an interview that it's about reaching new agreements.
And that's what this government's got to do.
No matter what we do here, unless we are able to reach agreement with other countries, it's never going to work.
Right.
I mean, Kate McCann, finally back to you.
I mean, that seems to me the big problem with this, is that it's all very well saying we're not going to accept anybody.
They're all going to go back.
But you've got to make sure that where you want to send them back to agrees to take them.
And that doesn't seem to have been agreed in advance.
So I'm not, you know, we've got one deal with Albania, but I'm not aware of any other deals where countries have agreed to take anybody back.
Yes, there's two things here, and that's a really interesting point because Rishi Sunak during that press conference today made the same point a number of times talking about returns agreements and the importance of them.
He also said this legislation isn't a silver bullet and it's part of a package of measures the government is going to need to introduce.
He said it wouldn't happen quickly.
And the reason he said that, he's going to meet President Macron in France in Paris on Friday.
Now we expect that this, you know, the issue of cross-channel migrants will come up.
Unlikely to be some big deal unveiled about a returns agreement, but that's certainly what the Prime Minister is hoping for because they believe that that would also help disincentivize people.
And because I think that's the point.
What you guys were just discussing there in the studio, the government sees this just as much as a deterrent, as a publicity campaign, if you like, as it does as a working policy.
What they hope is that the people smugglers and those listening to this conversation will hear the government saying we're going to apply this retrospectively, so it's going to start straight away.
Even if you try and push loads of people through the channel tomorrow, this will apply to them.
So don't think you can get around it.
And that in doing that, they will make it more difficult for people to want to make that journey.
Effectively saying to people, look, don't waste your money.
These smugglers are not going to be able to give you what you want.
The Rwanda policy is a key part of that.
And the government believes that actually lawyers have said that it is legal, it does meet the terms of the legal agreements that the government has signed up to internationally.
It is now being, it's going through the appeals process.
They're going to have to wait to see how that comes out.
But the government did win the first stage of that battle.
So I think there is some optimism that they can get that through.
They need to in order to make this new legislation.
Well, that's it.
And the problem for Rishi Soon is behind the scenes are saying.
Right.
The problem for Rishi is the clock is ticking and he hasn't got much time.
You know, he's got a call election within 20 months.
So he hasn't got much time.
K McCann, thank you very much indeed.
Pat, you're staying with me a little later.
Next tonight, the TikTok surveillance balloons by cameras.
Is it time to take the threat from China a little more seriously?
Debating that next.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored, your award-winning nightly show.
Conor Benn vs Eubank Jr 00:02:05
A couple of sports updates for you.
One is that USA powerlifting must let transgender athletes compete in the women's division after losing a discrimination case.
Think about that.
So people who were born male with all the physical power and strength advantage of their physiology from being born male will now compete against women in powerlifting.
How could that possibly be fair?
How can the discrimination not now be against women born to female bodies?
How can it be the other way around?
This is nuts.
The other sporting news is that last night I interviewed Connor Ben, the British boxing hope, who failed several drug tests.
And he said this to me on air last night.
When you say you didn't think you'd make it, what do you mean?
I didn't think I would.
I didn't think I'd, I was taking it day by day.
I didn't think I'd see another day.
You were feeling suicidal.
Yeah, I'd say so, yeah.
Well, some people were moved by that.
Others were not moved by that.
One of those was Chris Eubank Jr., who Connor Ben was supposed to fight just before he, well, just up in a moment he failed his two drug tests.
So today, Chris Eubank Jr., who'd watched the interview on this show, tweeted this.
I was 99% sure that Connor Ben was a cheat, but after watching that interview with Piers Morgan, now I'm 100% sure.
Imagine failing two drug tests and then trying to play the victim.
The balls on this kid, or should I say, the eggs on him?
To which Connor Ben responded, you're sat there trying to play the victim, but tried blackmailing me for a million pounds.
You bleep.
So, I think one thing's for sure: if Conor Ben does get cleared to box again in the UK, and I think that will depend on whether he ever hands over the so-called dossier that will exonerate him, which only he has, that fight with Chris Eubank Jr. could be a little bit tasty, as they say in the trade.
Okay, let's move on.
TikTok Ban and State Control 00:15:15
China has accused the US government of overacting after it banned federal employees from using TikTok, the social media app, has more than a billion users worldwide.
Critics fear it's a Trojan horse that's mining masses of data for the Chinese state.
Well, China's faced asteroid criticism over spy balloons it's been using over the US, claims that its surveillance cameras are spying on the UK government and property, and even the royal Sandringham estate of our king, plus a sensational claim from US government sources that COVID most likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory and not in a wet market as first thought.
Is it time, many are asking, the West got wiser to the rising threat of China?
Well, joining me now as chair of the UK's Defense Lecture Committee, Tobias Elwood, and geopolitical analyst Cyrus Janssen in the United States.
Tobias Elwood, let's take TikTok really as a kind of emblem of all this.
TikTok is a phenomenal success story.
There's not a young person and a few old people in the world who's not either familiar with it or using it.
A billion users, one in seven on the planet, are using this.
But China controls TikTok.
There is a belief that China's state has a direct involvement in TikTok.
Should we be more worried than we are about TikTok basically being used by the China state to hoover up information it can then use against us?
Yes, absolutely.
China is taking advantage of the fact that it doesn't distinguish between military or civilian companies.
It has a law that says that any company has to share data with the state.
It uses TikTok as a way to control its own people.
And this is spilling out to be able to watch what else is going on around the world.
When I saw this story break that Canada, the United States, and indeed the EU were banning TikTok, but Britain had decided not to go down this route.
I had flashbacks to that debate about Huawei that you might recall, where it took backbenchers likes myself, Tom Tuckenhat, and others to get the government, the UK government, to flush out Huawei, this Chinese company from British telecoms.
And it's a, I think, a sign of the bigger picture that we're failing to grasp here of how China is becoming more assertive, more abrasive, and exploiting the limitations, if you like, of our international rules-based order to further its own aggressive agenda.
And we need to wake up to where all this is going.
We're focused on Ukraine at the moment and Russia, but worst-case scenarios that Russia and China start working together in this access to redesign, if you like, our rules-based order, which, as I say, has become rather wobbly in the last 30 years.
Okay, let's bring in Cyrus Janssen.
You don't agree.
Why?
I don't agree because what we have to fundamentally understand is how TikTok is actually two ecosystems, right?
When we think of Facebook, for example, that's one platform.
But the way that TikTok is structured is that there's actually two versions.
You have one that is located domestically within China.
The other one is actually TikTok that is around the world.
So the one that is around the world, their servers are not located in mainland China.
They store their data separately.
The Chinese government does not have access to that.
So it's a very, very clear thing that we need to understand: there's two ecosystems here.
Within mainland China, they use a version called Doin.
Now, Doin is the domestic version that the Chinese government most definitely has control and access to.
They'll be definitely censoring content there.
But TikTok is a very different animal.
And most people don't understand that distinction, Piers.
Well, you seem very trusting of that distinction and the separation of church and state when it comes to TikTok.
But how can you be so sure?
I mean, I wouldn't trust the Chinese in this kind of area of ownership of data, particularly of Western data, as far as I could throw them.
Why are you so trusting?
Well, I think the main reason is up until this point, there has been no evidence of actually any harm to any American or foreign citizen in relations to national security.
You know, there's a huge evidence gap, and that's what we're seeing: is that many of these concerns are completely overblown.
Well, Tobias, you're shaking your head.
Why?
Well, because some American journalists were actually, their locations were found by the Chinese because of their use of TikTok.
So I understand this call to say that there are two separate ecosystems, but can we trust the Chinese not to sort of equate the two or take advantage of the fact that they are owning this both of the ecosystems in the future?
And this is what we need to wake up to, is where is our world going?
What is China doing with all this data?
It's as important now as terrain on the battlefield.
And we need to recognize that we need to start to stand up to China.
China is not abiding by our international rules and norms.
When they do so, absolutely they should be included in the international community.
But until they do so, then absolutely we should be joining the United States, Canada, and the EU for blocking TikTok for the moment.
You know, when I was in Shanghai doing a documentary a few years ago about Shanghai, I'll address this to you, Cyrus.
It was interesting because the Chinese government had tried to ban young Chinese kids, teenagers, from using social media.
And they had 3,000 government employees, mainly based in Beijing, whose only job it was was to stop the kids getting onto Twitter and, I guess, TikTok and all these other things at the time.
But they were way behind the kids on this.
The kids were way ahead of the government.
They were leaps ahead of them.
So they're all able to do this.
So is it a case that the Chinese would like to have more control, perhaps, than they have, but they can't actually guarantee it because the kids are ahead of them?
Well, first of all, I actually watched that documentary you did in Shanghai.
That was a fantastic insight.
Really enjoyed that.
Thank you.
And I think this case is what's interesting is that Chinese social media is so popular within China and it is absolutely part of the culture with young people now.
I mean, I'm a creator on Chinese social media as well.
I've made many videos on there and it's an entire system that is very intertwined into society right now in China.
So, you know, social media is a part of everybody's life in China, including young youth right now.
I mean, many of them are on the platform and do so.
What's interesting, though, Piers, is that the Chinese government has recognized that social media is a very big problem for all of us, right?
We all have this social media addiction, this cell phone addiction, and they have started to put in regulations.
For example, if you're under the age of 18, you know, you're going to be regulated to, for example, using Monday to Friday.
You're going to have access for about 45 minutes a day on that social media platform.
So it's different certainly than we have in the UK and Western nations where we have unlimited use.
But what's interesting is a lot of parents that I talk to are like, wow, that's actually pretty good standard.
I mean, that's ideally what we want to have happen.
It's just different.
China's government is able to put in.
I mean, Tobias Edward, there is another way of flipping this coin, isn't there?
Which is use of social media, I think, is pretty much out of control in the West.
Young people are spending inordinately long periods of time on this, probably to the detriment of their mental health.
Certainly anxiety levels are through the roof because of things like Instagram and the algorithms and so on.
You know, there is a different way to look at this where you say, actually, a bit of totalitarian state control of usage of social media may not necessarily be a bad thing for a country.
I'm surprised to hear you, Piers, promote a totalitarian state answer, a solution to very carefully, that when it comes specifically to the amount of time young people should be allowed to be exposed to these things, is there an argument that a totalian regime like a totalitarian regime like China, the way they've gone about this in putting on a time control, is that a mad idea for, say,
Britain to actually impose a similar time control on young people?
I think young people spend way too much time on this.
I'd love to disagree.
I don't disagree with the amount of time people are spending on social media, on screens, indeed in front of TV.
But I don't believe the state should be imposing its rules.
And I certainly wouldn't be taking lessons from China that takes full advantage of in the cover of these rules to then spy on its own population, to actually control the message and to destroy any criticism, to arrest people who they say something against the state.
That's not a direction of travel I would like to go down.
The argument about how much we're on the screens every day, absolutely.
That is something that culturally we need to discuss and address because this essentially is a new concept.
Did you and I have these screens when we were growing up?
No, we didn't.
So yes, we've got to come to terms with a new society.
I don't believe anybody should be on social media who's anonymous.
I believe you should actually be able to be accounted for.
That way you wouldn't get all the horrible messaging that no doubt you get.
And parliamentarians are not.
Well, yeah, but the trouble is that I've got to leave the debate here, unfortunately.
But the trouble with that argument, unfortunately, is you go to a totalitarian state, you go to somewhere like Iran or China or whatever.
Actually, the anonymity allows people that live there to post things they want to post, which may be critical of the government.
The moment they get arrested and get arrested if they dare to criticize what the government is doing.
We really don't want to go to that.
Obviously, it's completely wrong, but the one way the public in these countries can post stuff publicly is to do so anonymously.
So that is the argument against removing anonymity on social media.
Final words.
It's in fairness, though, Piers.
Yeah, and in fairness, though, I mean, if you're going to be using Chinese social media, you do have to register your national ID card.
So it actually, there is an advantage into there because it does reduce the amount of spammers and people that are doing this.
And the other thing that we need to make sure that is heard is that Chinese citizens, they use social media to give feedback and criticisms to the Chinese government to help improve the society.
Very common for Chinese government to make public policy adjustments based on outrage and outlashing of people on social media.
Very common throughout China.
It's also very common, as it is in Russia, for people in government to read those messages and put the people who oppose them in prison.
We'll discuss that another day, gentlemen.
One at a time.
Thank you both very much indeed for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Coming next, a question being asked on both sides of the Atlantic.
Is polarized two-party politics broken beyond repair?
I'll talk to the former Democratic presidential hopeful who blew up in 2020 and was a household name around the world at the time.
He's now quit the Democrats to start a new independent movement.
Why and can it work?
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Censor.
Andrew Yang raised tens of millions of dollars as an upstart Democrat candidate for U.S. president in 2020, bolstered by appearances on podcasts like the Joe Rogan experience.
He even gave the support of billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk, who said at the time, I support Yang, adding our first openly goth president.
This is very important.
I'm sure we could all agree with that.
It's a reference to Mr. Yang's teenage musical tastes.
Well, now he's quit the Democrats to begin a new movement claiming two-party politics has failed.
And he joins me now.
Andrew Yang, thank you very much indeed for joining Piers Morgana-Censor.
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me, Piers.
So look, everyone basically agrees American politics has gone slightly bonkers.
You now appear to be heading to a situation where an octogenarian may be shaping up against someone who would become an octogenarian if he was to get re-elected in a presidential race.
Out of 320 million people, this does seem to be at the very lower end of ambition for a country like the United States.
You've gone off now on your own path.
How is that going?
Is there really a place for someone like you and a movement like you to cut through America's apparently intransigent two-party system?
Well, tens of thousands of Americans have already signed up for the Forward Party, Piers, because they know that the two-party system is crumbling before our eyes.
And you're talking about a potential matchup between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
About 60% of Americans are not excited about either of those choices.
And it's a very clear emblem of the dysfunction you're talking about, where you have two parties that claim to represent the majority of the American people.
Meanwhile, about half of Americans are political independents and unrepresented in this system.
That's what we're trying to change with the Forward Party.
Your critics would say you started with a bit of a bang, but you're not getting much traction.
In fact, it sort of appears to be slightly running out of steam.
Is that true?
And what can you do about it if you are?
Well, the Forward Party is growing by leaps and bounds every single day.
I travel around the country and millions of Americans are fed up.
And they're figuring out that there's something we can do about it.
We can come together, form this new movement, the Forward Party, and create more choices for ourselves in the half a million elected races locally around the country, but also at federal races and at every level because at this point the discontent is so high.
Now, you've been vocal about the woke brigade.
I think you share my view.
A lot of it is lunacy.
But so is someone like Governor Ron DeSantis, for example.
How do you find any kind of real traction on policy or ideology which will take you away from the conventional politicians?
If you dig into these issues, Piers, you see that there's generally a consensus middle ground.
And unfortunately, on either side of the aisle now, you're getting more currency and points for land-basing the other side than you are in solving the problem.
It was a U.S. senator who said to me at this point in the American political system, a problem is worth more to us unaddressed politically than it is addressed.
And I want you to think about those implications.
So even if someone on one side of the aisle might have the right approach, they're actually going to be rewarded not for reaching across and trying to compromise and craft a solution, but they'll be rewarded if they just stay on their side and throw rocks at the other side.
But I would say, and I've got a lot of respect for you and what you're trying to do here, and I agree with a lot of the points you make.
But as you know, in politics, you can only get things done if you actually win power.
And I would say you've got two hopes of winning power, certainly in terms of winning a presidency, and that's no hope and bob hope.
So what is the end game here for you?
Because you're not going to win the White House.
How are you going to get power?
Are you hoping to do it at local level and then build up or what?
So Piers, of these 500,000 local elections around the U.S., about 70% are uncontested or non-competitive.
In 75% of the country, you essentially have one-party rule.
Chris Rock Draws the Line 00:07:35
So an example in California, we just kicked off with the Common Sense Party of California.
We're registering new members every single day because they want a choice in their state.
The same is happening in South Carolina and other states around the country.
So we're going to get hundreds, even thousands of locally elected officials in office over the next several years and just keep on heading up from there.
Okay, and if it all works the way you're selling it to, and it sounds very exciting, as I'd expect, if it works and you end up becoming president of the United States, you've got 20 seconds.
How are you going to fix America?
We're going to fix America by bringing us together on the things Americans can actually agree on.
And that is 75, 80% of the problem right now, Piers.
If you get a group of Americans together, you're going to be shocked at how much we can get done when we get rewarded for solving problems, not just yelling at them.
And what's your number one priority?
Our number one priority right now is to remind Americans that we're all still one people and that your fellow Americans are not your enemy.
I rather like that.
Andrew Yang, great to have you on the program.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Piers.
Appreciate it.
Good to see you.
Well, next to that, as comedians face protests, boycotts, even physical attacks and jokes, can comedy survive canceled culture?
Welcome back with my pack, Paula and Madeline.
Also delighted to be joined.
I say delighted.
I've just found something out which may make that look ridiculous.
But I'd delighted to be joined by a very famous comedian.
He's an Egyptian comedian called Basim Museth, who somehow has 10.9 million Twitter followers, which is more than me.
He's currently on tour in the UK with a new show.
So Basin, I was about to congratulate you on having more followers than me.
And I went to look at you on Twitter and discovered I blocked you.
Yes, you blocked me.
And I booked you to discuss cancelling culture.
Why did I block you?
Well, I was mean to you.
What did you say?
You see, I'm already, I admitted that was mean.
So it was during the 6th of January insurrection, and you were, of course, angry, and then I was angry.
And then I said, like, said the guy who had Donald Trump with him on his profile picture.
Ah, and then, of course, you blocked me.
Well, okay, I've unblocked you.
I've now followed you.
So you're uncancelled.
Although I don't think being blocked on Twitter is cancellation.
No, it's not.
It's not.
Because you're still able to do what you want to do.
You're free to do it.
You shouldn't be forced to listen to me.
No, right?
No, democracy is a noisy place.
But I don't have to be there when I don't listen to something at all.
YouTube blocks people.
Not much, actually.
I prefer muting people.
Muting is quite fun.
They don't even know that meeting.
They keep yelling into the voice.
I don't know, and I don't care, and they don't know.
They just keep yelling.
It's great.
I want to play a clip.
This is Chris Rock.
So we're only a few days away from the Oscars.
And it was a year ago that the slap that went around the world was seen, where Chris Rock was punched by Will Smith for apparently mocking Will Smith's wife, Jada.
This is what Christmas Roth Rock said in his Netflix special this week about this.
Strike, you say the wrong thing!
Get scared.
Gotta watch out.
You know what people say, they always say, words hurt.
That's what they say.
Gotta watch what you say, because words hurt.
You know, anybody that says words hurt has never been punched in the face.
Okay, so Basin, look, you're a comedian, highly successful, but you come from Egypt where, you know, a lot of censorship goes on, but a suppression goes on.
Not unknown, I suspect, for comedians to get, you know, punished or even put in prison on occasion.
Well, I got my show cancelled a couple of times.
Right.
And I had to eventually to leave.
So that for me is cancelled.
But you fled to the West where you hoped there would be liberation and freedom for people like you.
And you've come to a place where comedians are now getting punched and assaulted, not just Chris Rock.
I think Dave Chappelle happened to on stage and others.
Often for expressing, in Chappelle's case, you know, a view about, say, the transgender debate, which seemed to me completely reasonable.
What does that say about comedy and where we are?
And how does comedy come through this attempt to basically physically beat it into submission?
Well, first of all, people say, can comedy survive cancelled culture?
My question is, can cancel culture survive comedy?
Because comedy will always be there.
You cannot cancel comedy.
You could be outraged, you can punch, you can slap, but these are isolated cases.
Have you heard someone try to attack you?
No.
No.
What would you do if they did?
I will punch back because I work out in the gym.
You do look quite handy, actually.
Should Chris Rock have punched Will Smith back?
No, I think Chris Rock got his revenge a year later with a $40 million check from Netflix.
Yes.
So that is something that will last longer.
I would have loved if Chris Rock had sued Will Smith because that was not cancelled culture.
This is assault.
No, but it's interesting, isn't it, Madeline?
Because I remember at the time writing a piece almost defending Will Smith to a bit where I thought that if he genuinely believed Chris Rock, who had a history of doing this to Jada Pinkett Smith, Will's wife, of mocking her, if he genuinely thought that Chris Rock at the Oscars in front of a billion viewers was mocking his wife's alopecia because she'd lost her hair, I think a lot of men might have stepped in and given him a slap.
So it may have seemed insane, but it didn't seem that insane to me of a husband defending his wife against what he may have thought was a very personal attack.
I don't know.
I mean, it's the Oscars, isn't it?
It's not the WWE.
In principle, though.
Well, you can't go punching people.
I'm not saying he's right.
I'm just saying I could understand.
He's got two kids.
He's got to set an example to his kids.
He has.
I'm watching Yellowstone at the moment, the cowboy drama with Kevin Costa.
Every time there's any argument, they punch each other.
So, I mean, it's something quite, you know, it's a throwback, but I'm not against it if people behave badly.
And as a martial artist, I can understand the need to...
You're a martial artist.
I am a martial artist.
Wow.
I can understand the need to want to defend yourself.
But I think Madeline is right.
You defend yourself in a smart way, and Chris Wok has been smart in that he's now got that paycheck.
But if you allow people to have a leeway of using physical force to stop people, where do you draw the line?
I agree.
I think when you cross the lines when performance is performing, if you try and do that, it's completely wrong.
But where are we with the woke culture in comedy?
Because Bill Maher in America says they've become now a much better source of joke material than the far right.
Well, you know, with the pendulum, the pendulum theory, it goes so far to the right, it comes back too far to the rest.
Now, a lot of people make fun of the woke culture.
And I think if people...
Do you use that?
Do you mock them?
Yeah, sometimes.
But my comedy is more about my personal journey, but I do sometimes in comedy because when a group of people feel themselves too entitled, too isolated, too protected, that's what happened.
This is what happened with Dave Chappelle.
I mean, like, why would transgender people, or Muslim people, or gay people, or women, be immune to satire?
Well, there used to be a comedian here called Bernard Manning, who was a rough northern comic, very inappropriate by today's standards, very offensive.
But his view was he used to mock everybody because he couldn't understand why if you started making exceptions, well, where do you stop?
Yeah, there is a kind of purity to that argument.
Absolutely, because a lot of people say, where do you draw the line?
The better question is, who will draw the line?
Satire and Group Immunity 00:00:23
And how do you guarantee that tomorrow that line will not proceed on your own freedoms?
Well, I'm going to draw the line here.
Bassett, you're on tour at the moment.
Good luck with the tour.
I'm so glad I've unblocked you.
Oh, thank you.
I'm so glad I now follow you.
I'm happy that I came to the point of the case.
Can you now follow me and tell your followers to follow me?
That's nice.
Thank you both very much indeed.
Well, that's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it award-winning and
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