All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Feb. 6, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:38
20240206_piers-morgan-uncensored-pm-and-pm-bet-harrys-reuni
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Sunak's Bet and Backlash 00:14:36
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, first the bet, now the backlash.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's wager with me on the Rwanda plan sparks a frenzy of headlines and an impassioned debate.
Was he gambling with vulnerable people's lives or putting his money where his mouth is?
Prince Harry lands in Britain after bombshell news of his father the king has cancer.
The Duke of Sussex we're told will not be meeting his brother Prince William.
Is Harry's visit an unwanted distraction?
And teacher Warren Smith goes viral for calmly and critically educating a student on the difference between being offended and what is actually offensive.
More than 40 million have watched that video.
It'll give me his first interview.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
It's the bet that rocked Britain.
Two guys making a wager doesn't often become a global news event.
But my challenge to the Prime Minister on his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda triggered an enormous reaction and appears to have triggered an enormous number of people.
Here's a reminder of what actually happened.
I'll bet you £1,000 for a refugee charity.
You don't get anybody on those planes before the election.
Will you take that bet?
Well, I want to get the people on the planes.
Of course I want to get the people on the plane.
£1,000.
Right, well, I want to get the people on the plane.
And you say you're scratching your head.
Albania is an example of why it's working.
We created a new returns agreement with Albania.
It meant that if people came here illegally, we could send them back.
And you know what?
They stopped coming.
And Rwanda will do the same thing for us.
I do not think it's going to work for you.
Okay, well, we'll have to advise you.
That's my disagreement.
That's my grim prediction.
You don't have an alternative way to solve that problem, then?
No, I'm not Prime Minister.
Yet.
And here's just a small sample of the fallout, which has vied with news of the King's health for headline coverage and even made it to the Houses of Parliament.
How frustrating for you that yesterday our Prime Minister said that he was willing to risk £1,000 on the basis of a bet.
And it was a charity bet, wasn't it?
I don't have a problem with it at all, to be honest with you.
I think two multi-millionaires having a bet amongst themselves.
It was absolutely appalling.
I've never heard such garbage come out from a politician in my life.
Was it deeply distasteful, as Labour have called it, or would he have been criticised for not backing the bet, as one Conservative commentator has argued?
Can you confirm for the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, that a £1,000 direct pecuniary personal interest is one which should be registered and declared to the House authorities?
Well, Rishi Sunak's political rivals are feasting on the moment, as you'd expect.
The Lib Dems called it shameful.
The SNP said it's grotesque and rather hysterically, I thought, reported the Prime Minister from breaching the ministerial code, as they put it.
Labour says it proves he's out of touch.
They also posted this ad saying, while your pockets are bare, Rishi's betting with a grand he has to spare.
Not the greatest poetry I think I've read in a while.
But first things first, they didn't actually use the right handshake there, Labour Party.
They want to think about that.
That's him thanking me at the end of the interview, not accepting the bet.
And where I come from, Mr. Prime Minister, you might try and wriggle off the hook, but a handshake is a sealed bet.
Secondly, it's worth noting that Rishi Sunak has now braved two extended uncensored interviews with me while he's been Prime Minister.
Sakir Starmer, who wants to be Prime Minister, has repeatedly told me to my face he'll come on the show and has appeared precisely zero times.
So when a lot of the Labour MPs hit social media today, led by Jess Phillips, saying, my God, if he can't even cope with Piers Morgan, what a hope has he got with Vladimir Putin?
Well, your leader doesn't appear to be able to cope with me at all.
Former Labour spin Dr. Alistair Campbell, you may remember him, he spun us into an illegal war that cost the deaths of over a million people, posted, most of the audience at my book event tonight were unaware of the Sunak-Rwanda bet.
When I described the exchange, there were literally sharp intakes of breath and reactions of disgust in the audience.
I wonder if it crossed Alastair's mind that that might have been the moment they remembered what he did when he was in Downing Street with Tony Blair.
So, a lot of reaction.
And I don't know how I feel about this other than to say that when I see Carol Voldeman, an old friend of mine, used to work with me at the Daily Mirror, tweeting hysterically, resign Rishi Zunak about the bet.
You're an utter disgrace to this country.
And forgotten sitcom actor Robert Lindsay, he was good, don't get me wrong, loved him as Wolfie Smith, lamented, dear anyone with an ounce of humanity.
A PM and a TV presenter having a bet on desperate people's lives and so on and so on and so on.
I do think a lot of people may have lost the plot in the maelstrom of pearl clutching in the last 24 hours and forgotten actually that I did start the process of this wager by saying the bet proceeds would go to a refugee charity.
I was actually trying to flush out the Prime Minister's conviction and a policy that I believe has always been doomed to failure and is bad for this country.
He was trying to underscore his genuine belief that it could work and I guess you could say he was putting his money where his mouth is and we all know he has plenty of money to do that with.
But like I say, no one ends up with any money here other than a refugee charity.
And what is almost certainly going to happen, I suspect, is that I will win this bet.
Nobody will end up being sent to Rwanda on a plane and a refugee charity will be a thousand pounds better off.
You could argue that's quite a good win-win all round.
Well, the Prime Minister himself was asked to clarify the wager this morning.
I'm being totally honest.
I'm not a betting person and I was taken totally by surprise in the middle of that interview and the point I was trying to get.
Was it a mistake to shake his hand?
No, no, well, the point I was trying to get across, I said I was taken totally by surprise.
Was it a mistake to take my hand?
Well, I'm not Hannibal Lecter.
The best questions are always a surprise, even for prime ministers.
It should be noted he has not officially withdrawn the bet and I wouldn't let him.
A handshake's a handshake.
Former Tory leader William Haig, though, has some interesting tips on how he would have handled this.
He said he'd have attacked me with his martial arts.
What do you do there, William Hague?
Do you shake his hand?
Do you make the bet?
Do you think that's all right?
Or do you avoid that landmine?
It'd be really nice to do a judo move on him, wouldn't it?
Holding out his hand.
However, that's the sort of thing I can fantasise about today and couldn't have done when I was a party leader.
So I ought to bat the hand away.
Fantasizing about grappling me in a judo hold.
This is the man who wanted to be prime minister.
It should be known as the same William Haig, who once boasted of drinking 14 pints a day.
Obviously a tough cookie.
And Sam Coates over at Sky News gave this analysis.
You know, the point about that exchange with Piers Morgan, and actually, you know, listening to Richie Sumak try not very well to defend it this morning, is like he just gets dragged into stuff.
You know, but you've got to deal with more difficult people than Piers Morgan.
You could deal with Vladimir Putin.
Who says that Putin is more difficult than me?
What do you base that on?
Shame on you, Sam Coates.
I was going to mention James O'Brien over at LBC.
He was ranting away about me, but he does it so often.
And he's so insufferably irritating.
I'm going to spare you, my own viewers, from having to even see his face.
Now, at the heart of all this is a serious issue.
I've said repeatedly, I don't believe the Rwanda plan is either practical or affordable or indeed humane.
I think the PM is finally making some progress on illegal immigration with the boats.
He's got them down substantially thanks to a deal with Albania.
But this Rwanda plan, as I said to him to his face, is a cack-handed plan that is just never going to work.
And the bet, Prime Minister, most definitely stands.
Well, joining me out and discuss this is talk to V contributor and lawyer Paul Larone Adrian, the author and journalist Paul Mason, and talk to V international editor Isabel Oakeshott.
Okay.
Right, well I've got Paul and Paula and I know where you're both going to come at me from.
Paul, look, I was surprised it blew up this big, if I'm honest with you, because really the point I was making was it's for charity of this bet, but are you going to put your money where your mouth is?
And I can see the way it's played out, obviously, very differently to how it felt in the room at the time.
What was your view of this?
Well, like you, I'm against the Rwanda plan.
I don't think it'll work.
I think it's unfair.
I think it's probably illegal in international law and it costs a lot of money.
But if I was in favour of it, I would try and present it to the public in a little bit more sober way.
I thought it trivialised it because it may be that British Sunak doesn't know this, but there were some migrants put on a plane in June 2022, refugees, to go to Rwanda, stopped by the courts.
They were dragged onto that plane and chained to the floor.
And I accept that deportations have to happen in a fairer migration system.
Some people have to be deported.
But when we do that, on all our behalves, we've got to maintain the idea to the rest of the world that we're humane and we care about those people, even if they fail to deport.
Well, you said you found it morally vacuous.
I did.
Rebels or whatever you said.
I said it was morally vacuous.
Right, and a lot of people said similar sentiments.
I think there's a YouGov poll that says 72% of Britain think it was unacceptable for Sunak to accept my bet.
But I haven't seen much reference to the fact the proceeds are going to a refugee charity.
People may have missed that.
It was a newsbreaking interview.
Let's accept that.
The point is, first, it's a grand.
You know, I was in my local Tesco just now and watching young mums looking at whether or not they can afford what's on the shelves.
A grand to such people sounds like a lot, even in North Allerton and Richmond.
You know, I'm not sure how many of Rishi's constituents would have found that very tasteful.
But then they all know he's thinking rich.
I called him Stinky Rich.
Of course, last time I interviewed him.
But the issue then is, let's not trivialise the fate of a lot of people.
A lot of Tory MPs, not just Mr. Sunak, often say we can't wait to see the planes take off.
When I hear them say that, I think, what about the people in the planes?
As a journalist, I've been to Morocco, interviewed people on wastelands, people from Niger, and said to them, look, when you get here, you're going to risk dying to get here.
There'll be a lot of racism when you get here and you'll be poor.
Why are you doing it?
And they say, come to Niger and you'll find out.
The idea that the deterrent effect is going to stop them coming.
Well, I don't think it'll be a deterrent effect.
I mean, Paul, I'll bring you in here.
I just don't think it is.
I don't think it works on any level.
They've already admitted the government pretty much that even if they do get it through Parliament and get these people onto planes, we're only talking about a couple of hundred people at vast expense, maybe three, £400 million to the British taxpayer.
It makes no commercial economic sense whatsoever.
But my biggest problem with it is I think we should be a country which can deal with illegal immigration properly with a proper policy and the far bigger problem at the moment of a soaring legal immigration issue, which is exploding our entire population.
But also we should be a country which can take asylum seekers who warrant coming in as asylum seekers.
And if we send people to Rwanda, and even if they fulfill the criteria for entry as a sidekick, we don't let them come back, what have we become as a country?
Absolutely.
And I think I just want to be able to answer your question in terms of you being surprised at the reaction to this bet.
I'm disappointed that you're surprised.
I'm not surprised.
It was crass.
It was crude.
You were playing with people's lives.
No, I was.
That's ridiculous.
That's a ridiculous thing to say.
People have died.
I wasn't playing to come to this.
I'm actually trying to stop those people's lives being played with.
But you played.
No, I wasn't.
No, no.
What I was doing.
What I was doing, Paula.
That's too wealthy.
What I made.
What's the wealth got to do with it?
I suggested that, oh, let's just put our hands in our back pockets and pull out a thousand pounds.
To a refugee charity.
Finish the sentence.
But we lost the refugee charity.
Well, you shouldn't use it.
Let me lose it.
That's why we lost the refugee charity.
It seems to me your solution isn't a good question.
No, because Rishi has already spent £240 million of the British taxpayers' money on this failed event.
Well, he didn't say, to be fair, in the interview, where the thousand pounds was coming from.
It seemed to me, did you watch the interview?
Did you see the whole debate about Rwanda?
I didn't, I didn't.
So the idea that I'm playing with people's lives, when I was actively trying to stop the British Prime Minister from going through with a policy which I think is playing with people's lives, I find that offensive.
Well, what's what's happened is, Piers, is that you're a slick interrogator.
And what you're a journalist.
And what you did was you led it to.
You led Rishi onto that policy.
I asked him a question.
And he was like, it was reminiscent of Bambi on ice skates.
It was just a car crash.
And how he can really contain himself today is boredom.
He must be cringing.
So, yes, it was.
He spoke.
Maybe not to you, but clearly to me.
To get a word in.
I did what people do, pretty many of his constituents, up and down the country all the time, right?
They have an argument, they reach a place where they're not agreeing and they go, I'll bet you you can't get this to work, right?
I didn't mean it as any insult to people.
I was trying to stop people being, in my view, mistreated by this country.
Now, the surprise to me was only that the Prime Minister accepted the bet.
Now, that may have been a misjudgment on his part.
He was probably calculating in the moment, you know what, if I don't, it looks like I don't believe in my policy.
If, you know, damned if I do, damned if I don't.
And maybe that was a sharp moment by me to flush that out, that hesitation by him.
But I do think, I mean, Paul, I do think some of the reaction has been ridiculous.
Well, I haven't seen all the reaction, but what I would say is I don't share your criticism of you, Piers.
You know, as a journalist, when one makes a newsmaking interview, you know, you want to make the headlines.
You spent a long time with him.
NHS Reaction to King's Cancer 00:15:25
I watched the whole interview.
It was a long time.
And what was clear to me was that the Prime Minister was in many ways accepting your premises at every point in the argument.
And that as a human being, let alone journalist, when you find someone doing that, you do start to wonder, should this guy be running the country?
And let's see how far he'll go.
I've done that in interviews with people where I felt that really they're out of their depth.
Now, I don't want to be unfair to Prime Minister because any live interview with a senior journalist is a tough thing.
But in the end, I just think he's out of touch.
And the out of touch.
I have no problem with you offering him to bet a grand for a refugee charity.
But what I do have is the idea that he thrown that sort of funny enough to sort of think, oh, I can do this.
Well, I think you flummoxed him, actually.
I mean, to be fair, I think you flummoxed him in the moment.
He didn't really know what to do.
And people are criticised and say what he should do.
He's only been Prime Minister.
He should have exerted his authority.
Of course.
Every Prime Minister will tell you, and I'm sure you've had conversations with him, that they are at their best the day after they lose their jobs, right?
They get fully trained, probably experienced, and then they get fired.
Let me bring in Isabel Oshaw, who's been listening patiently to this.
Isabel, a lot of hysteria about what I thought was a fairly sharp piece of journalistic stuntery to elicit a genuinely fascinating response, which it did.
Well, what a load of sanctimonious twaddle from both Paul and Paula.
I mean, Paula hasn't even watched the whole interview, so it's rather difficult to imagine how she can possibly be pronouncing on it.
Paula said she was disappointed, and I too am disappointed, Piers, because I think you could have bet a whole lot more on that policy not working.
Have you fallen on hard times or something?
I mean, honestly, I just came up with a figure in the moment.
I had no idea what I was really going to come up with.
I just thought it'd be interesting to see you can afford.
Interesting to see what he just thought it'd be interesting to see.
You could have afford a lot more.
Well, probably look, I don't think it's a problem.
I mean, both of you could have afforded a lot more.
And at the end of the day, which whatever the outcome of the bet, whether you're right and the policy doesn't work, which I happen to completely agree with you, I think it's a very safe bet, or he's right and he manages to get this policy off the ground, refugee charity is a thousand pounds better off.
So I'm really struggling to see how anyone can genuinely criticise that.
It's the first time I've ever heard either a successful TV presenter or a prime minister being criticised for being too generous in donating money to charity.
Well, that's exactly what I thought.
I thought, honestly, and they all deliberately left that bit out of it.
They're all ranting away about rich people spending all this.
Nobody mentioned in their critiques that this was actually a bet for charity.
That's how I prefaced the whole thing.
What was interesting, I think, about the interview, Isabel, I know you've seen it all now, was there were other things in that interview that I felt were much more newsworthy.
One was where he basically called Keir Starmer a terror sympathiser over this banned group.
We had that NHS doctor on the show who leads the UK arm of that now prescribed terror group in this country.
And he basically called Starmer a terror sympathiser for trying to stop them becoming a prescribed group by acting for them.
And the other thing I thought was really newsworthy was the confirmation by the Prime Minister that one of his key five pledges to get NHS waiting lists down, which he actually coupled with sorting out the crisis in the ANE, he failed on.
Let's take a look.
NHS waiting lists.
We have not made enough progress.
You failed on that pledge.
Yes.
Because you said NHS waiting lists will fall.
But the waiting list is still nearly half a million more than it was at the start of last year.
So my mother is 79 and she had a heart attack three months ago.
And she was taken to a local hospital and she was seen when she got there and then she was put on a trolley in A ⁇ E in a corridor for nearly seven hours.
The heart monitor battery ran out.
Nobody fixed it.
At one stage, no nurse came for three or four hours.
And she was also terrified, of course, having been told you've had a heart attack, that no one was putting her into the unit and actually trying to fix her.
Now, once she got up there, the treatment she got was world-class.
But I bought this one picture to show you.
That's my mum.
And when she really needed the NHS, yeah, eventually the NHS came through.
But she could have died on that trolley.
And I think that's shocking.
Yeah, that is a shocking story.
And I'm really glad that she's feeling better now and send her my best.
And I'm glad she got the treatment that she needed.
This was a Monday night, Prime Minister.
This wasn't even the weekend.
Yeah.
And it's not even a major city.
This is Brighton.
And there were 40 odd people on trolleys in a corridor.
Well, you know, I got an email today which we're trying to corroborate, Isabel, but it was from somebody else at exactly the same hospital whose mother died on a trolley in that AE and was there 24 hours.
And I think this is going on up to the point of the world.
I really want to pick up on that.
Yeah, I really want to pick up on that because if I were the Labour Party or any opposition party, I would play that particular clip of your interview on a loop and look at the Prime Minister's reaction.
To me, this is the most insightful bit of the interview.
There is something very, very wrong about the Prime Minister's reaction to your story.
He just has, he shows no empathy.
There is no form of shock in his reaction to your story.
He's robotic about it.
And that really, really jars with me.
And, you know, I am so glad to hear that when your mum was finally taken up onto the ward, that she got the treatment that you described.
You said it was world class.
But you, in a sense, you were lucky.
Look, my mother recently died in an NHS hospital.
I am sorry to say that she died in front of a lot of people, that none of us had any privacy.
And in the seconds after she died, my sisters and I were taken into a store cupboard because there was nowhere private for us to go.
So I wasn't planning on sharing that story, but the Prime Minister's reaction to your story has, if you like, triggered me to do that because it was so lacking in any real empathy for the many, many thousands of people tonight who are on hospital trolleys and are not getting the treatment that they deserve.
The NHS is failing and he's admitted it and it's failed on his watch.
Yeah, well, I'm very sorry about it, Mum.
You and I have talked about that before and it was incredibly sad for you.
And I feel very fortunate that my mother was able to come through it.
Have a heart attack in your late 70s and then spend seven hours on a trolley thinking, what is happening to me with the heart monitor regularly running out of batteries and no one seemed to notice him was scary.
Awful.
Paul, what did you make of that part of the interview?
Again, I was looking at his face and thinking, look, Prime Minister doesn't get to meet a lot of ordinary people.
And when he does, you know, you were very measured with him.
But imagine, we can all imagine a voter saying the same story.
What would happen in general is that the people behind him would just gently edge him away.
And I think that if he can learn anything, it is listen to these ordinary stories.
I bet every single one of us, including all your studio staff, could tell the same story.
I've got stories of 48 hours in ANE.
I've had so many in the last few days.
But so the NHS is failing.
It so happens that we've had one party in government for 14 years.
But I'd say, you know, there's a long-term problem with the NHS.
I actually think my hunch, I don't know about you and Isabel, my hunch is that people care a lot more about these stories of everyday hard dupe than they do about whether the Rwanda scheme deports 200 people.
And they actually care, Paula, more about the reality of human stories than they do about the over-top line statistics.
You can hear 7.6 million people on a waiting list.
You can hear AEs out of control.
When you actually have a loved one trapped in that nightmare of waiting for an op to save their life or waiting to get into through AE, it is terrifying.
Absolutely.
And I think there's two things here.
The first is that you're right.
You know, when he's approached by a member of the public, we saw it just a couple of weeks ago.
He laughed in response to that thing that he was called of God.
He didn't know what to do.
But this is the problem.
Well, that claim was cut unfairly, actually.
They then showed the longer claim.
And that also happens now.
The second point that I wanted to make, though, was about the disconnect.
It's the disconnect that we recognize in this story about your mother.
And it's the same disconnect that we recognize in terms of the bet.
We're talking about our prime minister who doesn't have the capacity to be sensitive enough to understand that when he's asked about making a bet on what is something that for many is a life or death situation, be it about the NHS, be it about Rwanda, that he can just limply shake your hand on a policy that we know or we are being told, aren't we, that he doesn't even agree with, but he's happy to push through.
Look, I like Isabel, I wasn't going to say this, but I think I will just to be balanced about it, because the idea that he doesn't care, for example, about my mother and what happened to her and whatever facial reaction he showed at the time, I can tell you, he sent her a big bunch of flowers yesterday, and then he followed up and called her without any recourse to me whatsoever.
Called her for 10 minutes and had a really lovely chat with her.
The problem is there, you're you.
Yeah, of course, but it was not a nice thing to know.
You know, if only he'd sent my mum a bunch of flowers.
Of course, but he can't sell everybody.
But my point being that I don't think he's a harmless person.
I don't think he didn't care.
I don't think he's heartless.
I think he does care.
But I think that, you know, I give them a little bit of slap politicians for facial expressions when they're being jumped with stuff, which they're not really sure what it's all about.
And I can just say that my mother was very touched by both the flowers and the phone call and greatly appreciated what he said to her.
And she certainly came away thinking this guy does care.
Now, I completely accept I'm a television presenter and it was a big interview.
Everyone's talking about it and not everyone gets that prime ministerial treatment.
But he did do that.
And I've not had a prime minister do that to any of my family before.
We're not voting for the Conservative Party on the basis of whether Rishi has sent your mum flowers.
Of course.
That's not what I'm saying.
We've run out of time.
I'm simply trying to balance up the he doesn't care narrative, which I don't think is fair.
He does care.
I saw it.
I spoke to him afterwards for quite a while, actually, after the interview.
He definitely cares, right?
But we'll have to see whether...
What are you doing about it?
The question is, can any leader right now fix the NHS is a much bigger question.
I'm not sure.
Well, maybe, maybe, and he may get a chance before the end of the year to prove it.
We've got to leave it there, guys.
I'm sorry, we've run out of time.
Thank you.
Paula, Paul, and Isabel, thank you all very much indeed.
I appreciate it.
Uncensor next, Prince Harry returns to the UK to visit his father, the King, but he has no plans to meet his brother, Prince William.
What does that mean?
I think we know what it means.
William would rather shoot himself back after the break.
Welcome back to Uncensor.
King Charles and Queen Cambilla were seen publicly for the first time since the news of the King's cancer diagnosis yesterday.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, fluent overnight from Los Angeles.
Father and son had a brief meeting at Clarence House this morning, about 45 minutes from all accounts.
However, any hope this can be the beginning of a royal rapprochement seemed dashed this afternoon.
Harry apparently told us no plans to meet up with his brother, Prince William, so that feud continues unabated.
Is Harry's visit an unwanted distraction at a time of crisis, or was he damned if he came and damned if he didn't?
My pack, the royal historian and author, Tessa Dunlop, royal biographer and expert, Tom Bauer, author of Charles III, New King, New Court Robert Harbin, number one best-selling book, congratulations.
But first, let's talk to the Sunday Times as Royal Historic Roya Nico Roya.
The big developments it seemed to me today, well, obviously Harry flying in, meeting up with his father at Clarence House, but only for about 40 minutes maximum before the king went by helicopter with the Queen up to Sandringham.
And then this briefing that there was going to be no meeting planned between him and William.
So my first question really, do we know any more yet about what this cancer is?
Are we likely to know what it is?
It's sort of a mounting speculation, but is that going to lead to any clarity?
I don't think, Piers, that's going to lead to clarity anytime soon.
I think the thinking on that probably is, first of all, privacy for, yes, Charles is hella state and a very public figure, but also a man who's been diagnosed with cancer.
But secondly, I think, you know, the king and the palace team and the queen will want to see how Charles's treatment go before we think about going into any more detail about what cancer he actually has.
In terms of that meeting today, I'm not sure we should read too much into the length of time.
I mean, you know, Charles has had his treatment, he wanted to get back to Sandringham.
I think the key thing is that Harry saw his father for the first time really in person, face-to-face, chatting since the Queen's funeral, because they didn't speak at the coronation.
We know that Harry came and left, he didn't go back to the palace reception.
And, you know, it's been very strained and barely existing, that relationship in terms of face-to-face.
So I think it's a good thing that father and son have seen each other.
But I mean, William and Harry, absolutely no thawing of the ice whatsoever.
I don't think that comes as any surprise to anyone though, does it?
I don't think anyone really who knows what's gone on there and the status quo thinks that Harry flying in to see his father is going to open up some huge reconciliation with his brother.
And I don't think Harry would have expected that.
And I think, of course, you mentioned the fact that it was briefed out that William had no plans to see his brother.
You know, that's sending a very strong message.
But I don't think that comes as a huge surprise.
I don't, you know, everyone's sort of speculating about a thawing of a rift, but actually, this is just a father and a son seeing each other after a cancer diagnosis.
What is going to happen with the royal schedule for this year?
Do we know any more yet about the length of time this treatment is likely to take?
So again, they've been quite unspecific about that and queries that we've made about, you know, will overseas tours go ahead.
We know there was supposed to be a tour to Canada and further afield and the autumn, that huge trip to Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa and there was expected to be a trip to Australia too.
All of that, I think, will hang in the balance just so that Charles, until Charles knows how his treatment goes and how he feels after all of that.
So at the moment, the only thing the Buckingham Palace will confirm is that the king continues with all his state affairs.
Things like overseas visits and his engagements, we just don't know.
Roya, thank you very much indeed for joining us again.
Charles' Treatment Uncertainty 00:02:28
I appreciate that.
We'll have a short break and come back and debate all this with our superstar pack, including the number one best-selling author, Robert Harlan.
How lucky are we to have him here?
Even Tom's looking at him going, wow, I'd love a piece of that action.
Welcome back to our sense.
So with me is the royal historian and author Tessa Dunnell, royal biographer and expert Tom Bauer and the Royal Et and Author of Charles III, New King, New Court Robert Harvard.
We're just comparing who's our more number ones, best-selling books.
I came in at three.
Robert, obviously, with his first one, I think.
Yeah.
I've had one more that got to number one.
So two, and then in came Bauer with six.
Congratulations.
I couldn't be less happy for you.
All right, let's talk.
Robert, you've written this amazing book.
It's a magnificent book about the new king.
You could never have predicted when you wrote this that within 17 months he would be facing such a serious challenge, not just to his reign, but to his life.
No, I mean, he always seemed someone who's very abstemious.
I mean, over all the years I've been following, writing about him, even made a programme with him once.
You know, here's someone who's very fit for his age, lives a very abstemious life, doesn't drink much, is almost fastidious about point, doesn't even eat lunch, actually thinks lunch is bad for you.
Um and uh, and and and is very fit, and and there can't be many people who have celebrated a 70th birthday with both parents still alive.
So, you know, do you have any inkling from your many great sources about what it this cancer actually is?
No i'm i'm, i'm not privy to to, to the sort of, but it must be serious for them to be taking the action they're taking.
All cancer, you know, is serious.
I I, i'm what I, what I am hearing is that he's proving to be not a very good patient and that he is still expecting to have all the paperwork coming.
All the, all the stuff, all the non-public interaction stuff is continuing.
Um, when I was doing the book, I mean you know you talk to people who who have or do work for him and he does, he keeps very late hours.
I mean, he is, he is a hard worker, he has, you know, Tom will know Tom's written about, you know, some of his peccadillos and uh, and and over the years he's had a, had an extraordinary life.
Monarchy Suspicion Flies 00:07:15
I mean a unique life, but the one thing that that that runs through it is that, whether good times or bad um, he has this capacity to.
He likes mountains of paper.
Uh another, another thing that I think we've all been so busy over the years um studying his interest in other faiths.
You know the, the long-standing thing about him wanting to be a defender of faith, that I don't think we've paid much attention to.
His own faith, and that actually is is much deeper and stronger, I discovered anyway, than I was aware of.
Uh, and and, and I think that's something that's going to stand out probably never more important than it is right now.
Absolutely Tessa, let's talk about uh, the inevitable.
Harry's flown in.
Uh, he had a 40-minute maximum meeting with his father.
That might be it, we don't know.
Maybe he flies back again.
Um, no sign of any rapprochement with his brother.
I mean, what do you make of this?
Um, I think that Harry's been itching to build bridges with his father really from the, the birthday call at the back end of last year I think the Omid Scoby book scuppered any bridges being built before christmas and I think that Harry, as quick as he was out of the cracks is indicative of a son who wants to find a way back in, certainly with his father, against whom he's never really had the beef the beef was always predominantly well, he did attack his father's wife in his book.
It wasn't.
It wasn't pretty and, i'm sure, ugly as it gets.
I mean, if one of my family did to me, they would be done.
I mean Tom, we've talked a lot about this, but what do you make of this, this grandiose gesture?
I mean I wonder if we could say, well, it shows it must be a serious situation, because he didn't fly two weeks ago when Charles had his benign prostate uh procedure, but he's flown straight in here.
That does suggest to me it must be serious.
But this rift with William looks pretty implacable.
If you can't come together at a moment like this, when can you?
Well I, as I said last night to you, I was very suspicious about the dash and I won't be surprised at all, as I hinted yesterday, if he flies back tonight or tomorrow.
I think it was all just for show.
I think that it was an impromptu way of getting attention.
I think he's a very suspicious man.
He's wrote his book for money, he's been very disloyal and i'd be very surprised if he met Camilla when he met the father, when he met the father, and I think the only person he might now would be Beatrice or Eugenie.
But otherwise he'll go back and I think that there's absolutely no hint of reconciliation.
His wife is the most bitter, unreconciled woman there is.
He'll be told that in any case, there's no future for him and I'm told that William's real rage is about what Harry wrote about his right.
But he's absolutely right yeah, he is.
What he wrote was actually grotesque.
Yeah, only for money yeah, and and he's been terrible about his father as well.
But I don't think we should be too suspicious about a son wanting to have contact with his aging, ill father.
I think that is a very simple familial transaction.
Whatever water's gone under the bridge, I think it's all too easy to cast aspersions and one hopes that Charles is largely.
Aspersions are cast because of the track record of Harry and his wife in the last four, five years.
Cashed up after the coronation.
He was pretty uncomfortable, sell trash about their family and not only that, he's.
He briefed her Midskobi for the second book, which was a disgraceful book.
We discussed that at the time.
He wouldn't he, he would have got it in the neck if he hadn't come.
I mean, you said you know, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
I think um the the the, the jury stays out until we see how uh, you know this, this trip is over.
Does he use it as an opportunity to grandstand or is it the king really feel about this situation with Harry and also about the situation between his two sons?
With Harry, it's door is always open territory, it's it's.
He is forgiving, he is not one to to feud on this.
I think he'd much rather uh, take a uh, a bit of a hit and and and and have a much more normal relationship.
When it comes to the, the brothers, I think he views it as, look like that's for William.
I can't sort of step in here.
What about Camilla in all this?
Because she's had to step up now, not just with the duties she's performing may take on some of the kings but also this is the love of her life who is facing this enormous personal health challenge.
Sure, but as you know piss, Camilla's a broad-shouldered woman.
She's a mother herself.
Things get complicated.
We know that Harry retreated into his bedroom.
He well, i'm really talking to you actually about her feelings about what's going on with Charles, all right.
Well, I think what's interesting about Camilla is the way in which she's risen to the occasion.
She's had these solo events.
She looks impeccable.
You doesn't even look like she's having this sort of personal storm going on in her private life and I think that this will reframe her in many ways and it will also, I think, help set the tone for Harry's re-entry.
They all those two, they're mature adults, Camilla and Charles.
They want this.
Well Tom, one thing's for sure, they will know better than anybody that you can be very disliked by the British public and bring things back.
Yeah, they're both massively more popular, Charles and Camilla, than they were in the aftermath of Dinosaurs.
But you're assuming Harry wants to come back.
Well yeah, I don't believe that for a moment.
I don't think he wants to.
I don't think Meghan wouldn't dream of wanting to live in really London.
She loves California and that's where their life is and I think he just felt.
I mean, you know, this is a man who a couple of weeks ago went to Jamaica, which he knew is a sensitive spot, just to stir up publicity, just to earn some more money and cause A lot of trouble for Britain there.
You know, that couple are just intent on causing trouble.
That is their meal ticket.
Tom, I don't think that we should cast everything they do through the prism of Great Britain.
Well, actually, we should judge them on that.
And their actions have been extremely damaging to the monarchy, the royal family, and to this country.
So if they change their behavior, I'm prepared to change my view of them and the criticism.
Robert, just finally, this is a big thing for the country to have to deal with this again coming so soon after the Queen's death, Prince Philip's death.
You've got Kate, who's just been in hospital.
Fergie, Duchess of York, has had two bouts of cancer now.
It's a tough time for people who, like me and you, love the royal family and the monarchy.
It is a tough time, and it's come just as the monarchy had sort of consolidated itself.
I mean, he had enormous shoes to fill, King Charles, you know.
I mean, and a lot of people predicted it was going to be an uphill challenge and he would stray off into politics, he would blunder here and there, there'd be a rise in republicanism.
That hasn't been.
I think the monarchy is in a very solid place.
I think he's done a good job in less than a year and a half of consolidating it.
And along comes this.
But he's had plenty of other shocks that's beyond his control.
I mean, when you think of, you know, not just two rounds of the crown, plus the Harry Megan's Netflix thing, plus saga of Andrew.
And not to mention, we haven't even gotten to republicanism in the other realms and all that.
And yet, up until last week, we weren't really thinking about the monarchy because it was doing what it always does.
It had got boring, which is where it just be.
Listen, we've run out of time, but if you want to know more about the monarchy, read this.
New King, New Court, Charles III, the inside story by the inside man, Robert Harvin.
Great to see you.
Congratulations.
Great to see you too.
Thank you very much.
Well, I'm sensitive next.
Critical Thinking on Republicanism 00:05:47
More than 40 million people watched a video this weekend of teacher Warren Smith delivering a masterclass in critical thinking to a student.
He joins me after the break.
Welcome back to Arnold Senator.
A school teacher in Massachusetts, United States, who uses Harry Potter in his storytelling course has gone viral for his response to a student questioning about J.K. Rowling's supposed transphobia.
Warren Smith was asked, Do you still like her work despite her bigoted opinions?
What happened next was a very swift and forensic lesson in critical thinking.
Let's define bigoted opinions.
What opinions are bigoted?
Live your best life.
Do you find that transphobic?
I'm just going with what a lot of other people have said.
At the beginning of this conversation, you said, given the fact that J.K. Rowling is transphobic, how do you feel about Harry Potter?
I feel like an idiot now.
Well, after the video was shared by Elon Musk, it's now been viewed over 40 million times on Musk's platform X, with tens of thousands of comments heaping praise on Warren for his masterclass in how to think for yourself.
And Warren Smith joins me now from Massachusetts.
Warren, well, first of all, congratulations on having one of the biggest viral things I've watched all year.
Secondly, are you surprised?
Because it's really captured, I think, a mood of people desperate to see teachers behaving this way where you didn't take a position.
You simply laid everything out and let the student reach their own conclusion.
Yeah, I am absolutely surprised by this completely.
I never expected this at all.
This came out accidentally.
We have interactions like this on a daily basis.
This one just happened to be captured on camera.
We were conducting a broadcast at school.
I teach multimedia and I teach students how to work with camera and how to be on camera.
And the student was getting cold feet to do the newscast.
And so I said, I'll show you it's not difficult.
We'll do a little warm-up and here, I'll just sit here.
Ask me whatever you want.
It's just a conversation.
What's something interesting that we could talk about?
You know, what's on your mind?
And that's the question that came out.
And you saw the rest unfold.
It was really fascinating to watch the student.
And credit to the student who was prepared to listen to you.
I think because of the non-hostile environment you immediately created, was able to go on a kind of journey of exploration.
Now, I've been crying out for schools and universities to follow this path where students can actually debate these things in a good environment, hear other sides to an argument, and reach maybe a better conclusion than the echo chambers that fly around fueled by social media.
And it was great at the end that he sort of realized in the end there was nothing really as offensive as he'd presumed from the kind of toxic atmosphere around J.K. Rowling.
I think that's why the video resonated: you see in real time a transformation, a journey with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And he does come to a realization.
And the realization is larger than J.K. Rowling.
This is about more than J.K. Rowling.
It's the realization that he is his prior assumptions.
He was going off of, well, I've heard that this is true.
So many people have told me that this is true.
And when you experience that for yourself and it crumbles, then you have to question logically, what else am I assuming to be true that perhaps might not be?
And that changes the way you view the world.
Yeah, completely.
It'd be some great reaction to you.
A guy called Vincent Linderboom said, let's build an AI version of this teacher, duplicate him as many times as needed, and have everyone learn and understand how to think, not what to think.
And a guy called Lance said, interesting, I don't see him dressing with multicolored garments or weird hair, no piercings or visible tattoos, looks in relatively decent shape, in control of the classroom and discussion.
Is this what the left calls toxic masculinity?
Because we need more of it if it is.
That's such a coincidence that you brought up that quote.
That's the quote that actually stuck out to me the most because he said reasonably in shape.
And I thought, reasonably in shape?
In reason to what?
Perhaps we'll provide some critical thinking on that.
Well, trust me, compared to me, you look in Olympian shape.
What's your message to other educators around the world who maybe have been heading to a bad place where they've been almost teaching dogma, fueled again by maybe what X is saying or what Instagram or TikTok is saying?
What do you say to them?
Do not be afraid to allow these conversations to occur because these students have the ability to do what you saw in that video and to reason their way through these things and to learn new ways to advance through life.
But they will not be able to do so if not given the opportunity.
Sometimes it just takes the right questions, just a little bit of prompting and leading by example.
It's pivotal.
Allow them to happen.
Don't live out of fear.
Not dissimilar, actually, to the art of parenting, I can tell you.
I'll believe you.
I don't have kids at the moment.
Yeah, I've got four of them, and I can tell you the same strategy actually works.
If you just shout at kids and bark at them and tell them what they should be thinking and doing, I think you end up with kids who are quite damaged.
If you allow them the freedom and the space to reach their own decisions and conclusions and thought processes, everybody wins.
Parenting Beyond Fear 00:02:04
And talking of everyone winning or not winning, I see that you agree with me that Barbie shouldn't have been nominated for a best picture Oscar.
That just once again shows you have absolutely impeccable taste, Warren.
Well, I admire what they were able to do.
It was extremely creative being able to do something like that with a movie about a doll, Barbie.
But the question is, what lens are we examining?
What does an Oscar mean?
What's the lens that we're looking at this through?
And I do think that it comes down to the technical, artistic prowess, that intangible, elusive thing that cannot be replicated.
Given enough money, given a large enough budget, you can go build a big Barbie house on a back lot, but something like Braveheart, Titanic, there's certain, it's much difficult, much more difficult to replicate.
Yeah, completely.
Finally, you specialize in Hogwarts, Harry Potter.
My oldest son is absolutely addicted to them.
He can recite all the movies from the audio books, blah, I've never watched any of it.
Not my thing at all.
But we've got 40 seconds.
What is the best life advice you can give me from all your Harry Potter studies, which will enhance my life?
Voluntarily accept the unknown and enter the unknown beneath the surface.
Perhaps it's the Chamber of Secrets beneath the surface of Hogwarts to face the serpent and save Ginny, the thing that will turn you to stone when you see it out of fear, perhaps.
You've got to face it, and you can't be forced to do it.
You have to do it voluntarily.
That's what's going to make all the difference.
Wow.
Warren, you've almost converted me.
Almost.
Warren Smith, great to talk to you.
Keep up the great work.
We need more teachers like you.
And it's a privilege to have you on the show.
You can watch Warren's full video on Xbox.
Go look it out.
It's great.
That's it from me.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored and keep it normal.
Like Warren Smith and his students.
Export Selection