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Lessons From The Royal Exit
00:15:02
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| Well, Harry and Megan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are not working royals. | |
| They've made that repeatedly and screamingly clear to anyone who wants to hear it. | |
| Podcasters, authors, influencers, jam sellers, sure. | |
| But they left us in no doubt when they left Britain and the royal family that their royal duties were done. | |
| No more flower shows on a wet Wednesday in Stoke. | |
| So it came as something of a surprise to many of us this week when the formerly royal couple landed in Nigeria in Africa to embark on what looked, sounded and felt very much like a normal official royal tour. | |
| In fact, it ticked every single box on the royal tour clipboard. | |
| It was a lavish welcome ceremony festooned in traditional decorations and attended by glad-handing local dignitaries. | |
| There were photo opportunities at local schools and warm handshakes with beaming children. | |
| There was a visit to the state governor house with speeches and tributes from officials. | |
| This was certainly no holiday, nor was it a private visit. | |
| It was a renegade royal operation in full swing and a booming look at what you could have won message to the ailing family in Windsor. | |
| Megan even revealed that she is Nigerian after taking a DNA test. | |
| But as she explained to audiences in her typically humble and self-effacing style, the clues were there all along. | |
| And what has been echoed so much really in the past day by men and women alike is, oh, we weren't surprised when you found out when you were in Nigeria. | |
| And I say that mostly as a compliment to all of you because what they define as a Nigerian woman is brave, resilient, courageous, powerful. | |
| Humbling is the word you'd associate with her, isn't it? | |
| Well, Harry and Meghan knew exactly what they were doing, of course, and I'm sorry, I'm very cynical about it. | |
| In the build-up to their wedding, commentators heralded the boundary-breaking power of the newly biracial monarchy. | |
| That fact has been lost in the onslaught of race baiting the couple have unleashed ever since. | |
| But I know it's true because I wrote that myself on the day of the wedding. | |
| The actual royal family, meanwhile, has an increasingly fraught relationship with the former colonial nations, not helped by the brazen and discredited accusations of racism flowing from the Sussexes themselves. | |
| Prince William and Princess Catherine were pilloried for perceived missteps on a tour of Jamaica, where they shook hands with locals through a chain-linked fence. | |
| The royals are met with ill-conceived demands for reparations and apologies for ancestral sins on every royal tour these days, culminating in King Charles saying this in a speech in Rwanda. | |
| It seems to me that there are lessons in this for our Commonwealth family. | |
| For while we strive together for peace, prosperity and democracy, I want to acknowledge that the roots of our contemporary association run deep into the most painful period of our history. | |
| I cannot describe the depths of my personal sorrow at the suffering of so many as I continue to deepen my own understanding of slavery's enduring impact. | |
| Important to remember that it was Britain, of course, who began the end of slavery. | |
| Never gets mentioned in any of these debates. | |
| But they knew the context of Sussex. | |
| If one thing we learned about Harry and Meghan's family trashing money-grabbing strategies since they quit the UK and the Royal Duty is that they don't do anything by accident. | |
| Every frame of this trip was storyboarded for maximum impact. | |
| Clearly, the lucrative deals that fund their lavish Californian lifestyle might be running a little dry. | |
| Rebooting this renter royal racket is a profitable way of rekindling interest in their fading brand. | |
| Some commentators are even speculating that Meghan fancies herself as a future American president. | |
| And to be fair, the campaign slogans, well, they write themselves. | |
| Make America hate again, Bill Batter, or maybe just lock her up. | |
| We'll drill me to discuss all this. | |
| Author and historian Tessa Dunlop, Laura Paula Rowan-Adrian, Royal Editor Sarah Hewson from Los Angeles, the Royal Commentator and the host of the Kinsey Scoford Unfiltered. | |
| Kinsey Scofer, welcome to all of you. | |
| All right, Sarah, let's start with you. | |
| I mean, I've watched this stuff there on a peripheral level, perfectly successful trip. | |
| I'm sure they're thrilled. | |
| The real concern is that we now have two royal families. | |
| We have the official royal family who represent the monarchy, and we have these two now pretending that they are another official member arm of the royal family. | |
| There ain't room for two, is there? | |
| Well, what's marked about this, I've spent many a week and month covering royal tours, and this does look and feel like a royal tour. | |
| It had all of the ingredients there. | |
| The difference being they weren't acting on the behest of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. | |
| They were invited by the Nigerian Chief of the Defence staff. | |
| I don't have a massive problem with them going out to Nigeria to work around the Invictus Games. | |
| And actually, what Harry has done around the Invictus Games needs to be lauded and praised, credit where credit is due. | |
| But what they were doing is effectively what they wanted to achieve from that infamous Sandringham summit. | |
| They wanted to be financially independent. | |
| They wanted to go and live their lives away from the royal family, but they wanted to dip in and out where they could. | |
| They said they wanted to continue to support the crown and the Commonwealth. | |
| And you'll remember that statement that was put out at the time of Mexic, where there was that comment, slightly veiled comment, that everyone can serve. | |
| Service is universal. | |
| And I think from their perspective, that's what they're doing, continuing to serve. | |
| But yes, it did look like a royal tour, and particularly notable because we haven't had any big royal tours because of COVID, because of the cost of the... | |
| Also, let's remind ourselves, Tessa Dunlop, before you launch into your impassioned defense, no doubt, of how wonderful this all is, that the king of this country is currently stricken with cancer and can't perform the duties he wants to perform. | |
| And his son and heir, his wife, also has cancer and can't perform duties. | |
| So as the senior members of the royal family here are stricken by very serious illness, the very, very last thing they want is to have these two coming in from California and effectively supplanting them on these unofficial royal tours, soaking up all the attention that should be on the actual people who put the shifts in for duty in this country, not the renegades filling their pockets. | |
| Discuss. | |
| It's a small case of sour grapes on your part. | |
| I think it's it appears. | |
| Well, because... | |
| I've already said it, from their point of view, very successful. | |
| It's not sour grapes. | |
| I just, there's no room for two royal families doing the same thing. | |
| There clearly is. | |
| I mean, we're sitting here discussing it. | |
| Newspapers have been full of it. | |
| You've said yourself that one royal farm is out of action. | |
| So up they step. | |
| Your issue is they're not being dutiful in the name of Great Britain. | |
| No. | |
| And you are a fiendish patriot, as we know, and a very proud... | |
| Hang on, no, it's because they've been given their titles by the British monarchy. | |
| They weren't given them by the Nigerian monarchy or the California monarchy. | |
| They were given these titles which they now exploit for vast financial gain by the monarchy of this country. | |
| And we've been through this for four piers. | |
| Once a prince, always a prince. | |
| You are the one who believes passionately in hereditary monarchy. | |
| But let's just also remember, you choose the word stricken and the king's been up against it. | |
| Not a young man, nasty cancer diagnosis, treatment. | |
| He's been brave, he's been open. | |
| But he has been out and about. | |
| He did have time to award his son very publicly the Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Air Corps, overlapping, you could say, deliberately with the Nigerian Corps, having not been able to find time to have a little cup of tea on his second son. | |
| There was no great prodigal family meeting. | |
| Sorry, but you're suggesting in some way that the king and his heir of this country should plan their schedules around what Megan and Harry are doing on the renegade tours. | |
| I insist that. | |
| They should ring them up after they've been trashed by them for years and say, hey, by the way, are you doing any tour stuff this week? | |
| Because we quite fancy doing our jobs. | |
| It's outrageous. | |
| Chill out. | |
| All I'm suggesting is if there was improved communication, if the king had found it. | |
| They don't talk to each other. | |
| But actually, they could have talked to each other last week. | |
| Why? | |
| It was an act of decision, clearly on the part of the royal family, that there was to be no overlap between Harry and you know the optics weren't great around that. | |
| Actually, you know what? | |
| You might speak to people like old men like you and Graham. | |
| I might have done exactly the same thing, Paula. | |
| You're a family lawyer. | |
| I'm afraid if one of my sons went rogue like this with his wife and spent years trashing my family in public in the way that they've done, causing immeasurable damage at a time when Philip died, the Queen died, Charles has cancer, Kate has cancer, they wouldn't get one second of my time. | |
| They would. | |
| And let me tell you why. | |
| No, they wouldn't. | |
| And let me tell you why they would. | |
| So you can't tell me what I think. | |
| Because time... | |
| Sorry, with respect, you can't tell me what I would do. | |
| What I'm doing. | |
| I'm going to give you the opportunity to change your mind. | |
| Go on. | |
| And that's the important lesson here. | |
| Because of that. | |
| Because we saw this with King Charles when he was Prince Charles and the fallout from his divorce with Diana. | |
| We saw them both sell their stories. | |
| First of all, behind a veil, telling us that it was through the voice of others and had nothing to do with them. | |
| And it was only after, sadly, the loss of Diana that we found out through Andrew Morton that actually he had met with her in person in the same way that we understand that Prince Charles had met with Jonathan Dimbleby and done work with him. | |
| So we've been here before. | |
| Prince Charles knows, King Charles, forgive me, he knows about selling stories. | |
| He knows about the damage that can be done by the people. | |
| Charles has never sold a story. | |
| Family stories. | |
| Charles has never sold a story. | |
| When family stories. | |
| When did Charles sell a story? | |
| When family stories. | |
| She's right. | |
| The Dimbleby Prince of Wales book was done. | |
| Sell a story. | |
| No, but he doesn't need to sell anything. | |
| At the time he was paid by the civil list, but he did facilitate it. | |
| But he helped facilitate it, which built the royal brand, which built his brand. | |
| The royal family take part all the time in brand-related stuff. | |
| That is part of the job of being a royal. | |
| He didn't get paid. | |
| Piers, you know that what I'm saying at the very bottom level, at the foundation level, is we've been here before. | |
| We haven't been here before. | |
| This family have sold stories about each other before. | |
| You're missing the point. | |
| No, what is important now is that we learn to move forward. | |
| And we have seen how Prince Harry and Megan have moved forward and they've done so brilliantly. | |
| You loved it. | |
| Impressively. | |
| And quite frankly, in a very statesmanlike way. | |
| And I think that the issue here is not actually that you're unhappy that they've done this. | |
| What you're unhappy about is that they've done it so well. | |
| No, I started by saying it's been successful for them. | |
| What I'm unhappy about is that they are now constructing a rival royal family, but they're not putting any shift in of actual duty, which is part of the contract with the British people. | |
| They've left that. | |
| They've deserted the country. | |
| They've deserted their family and now they're setting up a rival thing for one reason. | |
| Nothing else they've done commercially has been working recently. | |
| Right? | |
| So now they're playing the... | |
| Now they're playing. | |
| Actually, we're royals again. | |
| They're incredibly royal. | |
| We're royals again. | |
| Remember, Spare was the number one best. | |
| I said recently. | |
| I said recently. | |
| It was the number one best recently. | |
| I thought we needed well. | |
| Hang on. | |
| What we need actually is to let Kinsey have a word. | |
| Kinsey, you're in America. | |
| I mean, I was in the States recently, LA, actually, in New York, and I've got to say, there was a lot of visceral dislike for the Sussexes. | |
| They were being really depicted by people that I spoke to as people who were like, you know, renter celebrity now, prepared to do anything. | |
| And their only currency was trashing their family. | |
| Well, they're now trying to play a different currency, which is to be effectively a rival royal family doing rival royal tours, while several senior members of the family here are incapacitated. | |
| I think it stinks. | |
| But how is this playing in America? | |
| Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. | |
| They are two very polarizing individuals. | |
| And their only commercial success in the States was Spare and the Harry and Megan Netflix documentary, both of those entities tearing apart the British royal family. | |
| When you look at Live to Lead or Heart of Invictus, commercial flops here in the States. | |
| So I do think that their new PR advisors are telling them, why did people fall in love with you in the first place? | |
| You've got to remind them when and how they fell in love with you. | |
| So they've created this faux royal tour. | |
| So they get those visuals and those, you know, that is marketing material that they can use going forward to present themselves as at least associated with the royal family, which is their really only claim to fame. | |
| They need that so that they can try to develop this lifestyle brand in American Riviera Orchard and try to get people interested in this content that's coming up on Netflix, where Netflix has again insisted that they are in front of the camera. | |
| Yeah, I mean, Sarah, the problem it seems to me is, and actually you guys have touched on this already about the clash of schedules. | |
| The schedules of the royal family, as you know, from covering them for so long, they're extremely carefully planned. | |
| Well, they're meant to be. | |
| So it doesn't always work, but historically, they do it so they don't overlap each other. | |
| So Charles will have his week where this is announced. | |
| Kate will do her week, whatever. | |
| If you have two people who you have no idea what they're doing, right, and they're just planning their own things to try and steal attention, again, it comes back to my thing. | |
| If you're a monarchist like me and you believe in the royal family, you believe it's a massive plus for this country. | |
| All I'm seeing this do is chip away at the actual royal family and monarchy here. | |
| Well, there should have been a year when members of the royal family did head out to visit Commonwealth countries. | |
| They should have been doing that. | |
| We haven't had that. | |
| We've got Harry and Megan. | |
| And I think what this tour has done is highlight just the role they could have played had they remained with the family because they have an ability to reach out. | |
| The role that someone wrote very, very glowingly about on their wedding day, that this is fantastic for the family. | |
| And actually, it was their behavior which led to them being driven out. | |
| But actually, and you talked about some of the optics in the imagery, that image that was taken by their friend, Miss Anne Harriman, because of course this was a very tightly controlled tour in terms of media access as well. | |
| But there is a very powerful image of Harry sitting beside a hospital bed with a wounded Nigerian soldier who is now an amputee holding onto his hand. | |
| And it reminded me of Princess Diana. | |
| And actually those tours that she took on after her divorce. | |
|
Hypocrisy And Damaged Reputations
00:07:13
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| And, you know, there is nothing wrong with what they're doing. | |
| But do you think it's just difficult for people to do? | |
| Do you think it is damaging to the roles here, though? | |
| Look, it highlights the fact that they're unable to do these things. | |
| I mean, what Diana did was damaging. | |
| Let's be honest, what she did distracted all the attention away from Charles and the others here. | |
| But then her work on landmines, for example, the Halo Trust is one of the charities. | |
| It was great, but you can't. | |
| You can't say that that's wrong to be damaged. | |
| No, no, I'm not saying it's wrong. | |
| And the Invictus games are a remarkably good thing, right? | |
| I absolutely, I've got lots of servicemen in my family, right? | |
| It's a great thing. | |
| No one disputes that. | |
| And from a pure optics point of view, this was a very successful trip, right? | |
| That's the problem, is if we're now going to have a rival royal family stealing attention, oxygen, media coverage, and so on away from the royals here at a perilous time for the royal family, I don't like it. | |
| But all the polling says that those members, you know, Kate, William, the King, are still far, far more popular. | |
| They are, but if this kept, it'd be interesting to take some polling from places like Africa after tours like this about what they think, given the problems the royals have had on their tours of the Caribbean. | |
| We've done so much navel gazing in this country. | |
| You're right, our king represents way more than just Little Britain. | |
| But we keep on saying, oh, it's copying or it's just like Diana. | |
| I was speaking to the most extraordinary woman today, Helen Lewis. | |
| Her son, Aaron Lewis, dies in Afghanistan. | |
| She helped set up the Aaron Lewis Foundation, doing all the kind of work that overlaps with Harry. | |
| She consistently was just chatting away. | |
| She had no idea I have an interest in royalty. | |
| We were talking about something separate. | |
| And she actually said at these commemorative events, you tend to go around on a bit of a circuit. | |
| And, you know, my grandson's called Harrison. | |
| And we often see Prince Harry and he's ever since he was young working alongside Prince Philip. | |
| He's had the most extraordinary ability to reach children. | |
| He then tapped up my grandson and made sure he was. | |
| What does that have to do with the debate? | |
| Because the point is, Harry has a gift and it might make us all feel uncomfortable, but it was there before he left the royal family. | |
| We often talked about it. | |
| Harry's charisma. | |
| You can't implant it in someone. | |
| You can't force it on someone. | |
| But he has it. | |
| And what upsets you is you're seeing it used in a way that you feel undermined. | |
| Once again, you weirdly, I think, deliberately misconstrue what upsets me. | |
| No. | |
| It's got nothing to do with him being charismatic around children, right? | |
| It does, because actually that's part of the brand and it's very powerful. | |
| My anger towards the pair of them for the last few years has all been because of the damage they're doing the royal family and the monarchy. | |
| But that was obvious that was going to happen. | |
| So why didn't the royal family try once more to half in, half out of the way? | |
| When you talk about the damage they have done to the royal family, let me play devil's advocate. | |
| And if you're right that they have damaged the royal family, hasn't Sarah just explained to us that actually that isn't the case and that they're riding high in the polls and that and that King Charles. | |
| Oh, the other royals. | |
| The other royal. | |
| And so any damage that they're said to have caused actually it hasn't impacted the spot. | |
| It hasn't impacted in the world. | |
| There are other polls about the actual. | |
| And so there is no rivalry. | |
| Let me respond. | |
| You're missing the point. | |
| Support for the monarchy is falling. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Right. | |
| So actually, look, those polls. | |
| That's a different thing. | |
| Sarah's talking about individual popularity for the roles. | |
| And that's what I'm talking about. | |
| But if you look at overall support for the royals, particularly amongst young people, it is falling. | |
| And is that actionable? | |
| Exactly. | |
| And is that Harry and Megan's fault? | |
| I think a lot of them. | |
| I mean, that is fault. | |
| A lot of you are. | |
| It's also partly James. | |
| The point is... | |
| It's also partly the fault of people like you because you drive this great divide between the generations between the two countries. | |
| It's not me trashing his family. | |
| No, but you are very vocal on the right in terms of media. | |
| I didn't call the royal family a bunch of callous racists. | |
| The issue that you raised about the trouble that the royal family have with coming to terms with the part they played in colonialism. | |
| Harry and Megan are a tiny part of that. | |
| And to suggest the only non-white. | |
| Harry and Megan's. | |
| The idea that the only non-white bride in royal history going to a country like Nigeria is not somehow going to be damaging given how estranged she is from the fact that they were invited there from September. | |
| They should have said no. | |
| Why? | |
| Because they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. | |
| These rival tours. | |
| No, they shouldn't be doing what you could suit who is the only one. | |
| Sorry, I thought they didn't do that. | |
| They're doing a marketing. | |
| I thought they didn't want to do a life of royal duty. | |
| But what I don't understand is what are they? | |
| What are they allowed to do? | |
| You don't know. | |
| It turned out they do if they're making children. | |
| I did not see how they're doing. | |
| They're making money. | |
| If it promotes their brand and they make money, we're in. | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| What are they? | |
| You don't want them making jam. | |
| You don't want them going on tours. | |
| You don't want them trashing their family. | |
| What do you want them to do? | |
| Actually, they can make jam. | |
| They can do podcasts. | |
| They can do TV. | |
| They can do speeches. | |
| They can do it all, just not as members of the royal family. | |
| No longer Jukes, Duchess of Sussex. | |
| It's just about supporting their charities. | |
| They were there. | |
| How can you trash an institution but keep the titles and make money? | |
| It's a suspicious charity. | |
| That's why they were there. | |
| How can you find the titles and make money from an institution that you say you hate? | |
| So long before anybody knew about the sad news in terms of the King Charles. | |
| There's a level of hypocrisy here that Pierce picks up at Art Setswoman. | |
| And there is validity to that. | |
| There is a level of hypocrisy. | |
| It is a little bit uncomfortable. | |
| But you can see that. | |
| We don't want to be constrained by royal life. | |
| Here's our royal life. | |
| Harry did his time in the institution. | |
| He's walked free and he's kept his title. | |
| Once a prince always a prince, Piers. | |
| It's a shame you won't bore. | |
| I couldn't. | |
| Literally, I come from Sussex. | |
| I've spent more time there at the weekend than he and his wife have spent, I think, in their lives. | |
| But you're a pleb and he's a prince. | |
| I'm not a plebe, mate. | |
| I'm actually a peers of the realm. | |
| Let me bring back Kinsey. | |
| Kinsey, what is the American view of these two? | |
| And when I was there, all they wanted to talk about was how is King Charles and how is Kate? | |
| But what is the American view, do you think, just generally, of Megan and Harry? | |
| Well, first of all, I'll tell you that the American view is that you are a prince, Pierce. | |
| You're America's family. | |
| Thank you, Kinsey. | |
| You know, I think that they're having a really hard time here in the States, specifically in Hollywood, because they have been turned into a punchline. | |
| They have been turned into a joke. | |
| You know, Saturday Night Live is a very liberal institution. | |
| And even, you know, Harry and Megan aren't safe from weekend update regularly. | |
| They're taking shots at them on a regular basis on Saturday Night Live. | |
| I know you've seen South Park and some of these other shows. | |
| And I think that they really just loathe the fact that they have become a joke in the States and in Hollywood because they want to be taken seriously. | |
| That's why this tour was so important to him, to both of them. | |
| I think that they want to be considered serious individuals. | |
| Yeah, well, actually, what they want to do is re-cement their royal credentials because that's where the money is. | |
| If they don't have them and they can't do what they just did in Nigeria, then there's no point to them. | |
| They've done the trashing. | |
| People are bored with that. | |
| There's nothing left to trash. | |
| So they've trashed both their families. | |
| They're estranged from both sets of families on both sides. | |
| Pretty much the only family member they talk to seems to be her mother. | |
| That's it on either side. | |
|
Seeking Truth And Reconciliation
00:14:18
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|
| It's quite extraordinary. | |
| And yet they are out there preaching about compassion and family and all these things. | |
| I'm laughing. | |
| It's like, is it a joke? | |
| Literally, can't think of two less compassionate people on God's earth. | |
| Anyway, let's turn to something probably less contentious or maybe not, which is the new portrait of King Charles by an old friend of mine, actually, Jonathan Year, a great guy, son of a former Tory MP. | |
| And this was the unveiling where Charles got to see this very vivid, kind of blood-red image. | |
| I thought Charles's head was fantastic in terms of the detail. | |
| And little details like a little butterfly on the shoulder, what that meant. | |
| Now, it sparks a lot of memes. | |
| Let's have a bit of a laugh first. | |
| These are the comedic memes that have been born out of this portrait. | |
| King Charles painting reminds me of the Ghostbusters Vigo villain, said Mark Harris. | |
| Trevor Sumner, King Charles painting reminds me of, well, Dracula, the poster from the movie. | |
| Slain by Elf. | |
| So did somebody say that painting looks like Charles emerging from the flames of hell? | |
| I don't think they did. | |
| No, Slain Barber, you did. | |
| And Norinda Coa said, I love this portrait. | |
| It's magnificent. | |
| Will King Charles be the one to emerge from the bloody past of the monarchy and be the first monarch to apologise? | |
| Okay, so look, there's been some fun reaction. | |
| There's been some serious reaction and some, as you'd expect from social media, some appallingly distasteful and inappropriate reaction, which we'll skirt over. | |
| But first of all, what do we think of the picture, Sarah? | |
| My first reaction was, whoa, gosh, it's huge and it's red. | |
| The more I look at it, the more I love this portrait because the face stands out. | |
| Everything else fades into the background. | |
| Jonathan Yeo has combined the traditional portrait, there he is in the uniform of the Welsh guards, leaning on a sword, but made it contemporary. | |
| And all of that regalia actually fades into the background. | |
| And you just look at the man and that face. | |
| And the detail of the monarch butterfly just touching on his shoulder, apparently proposed by the king himself during one of the... | |
| The significance of the butterfly is what? | |
| Well, he wanted to talk about metamorphosis. | |
| So this is a project that's been going on for four years. | |
| It was commissioned in 2022. | |
| Four different sittings, of course. | |
| Four different sittings between June 2021, November 2023, from the Prince of Wales to becoming the King. | |
| And so this shows that process of transition he's been through. | |
| It's also an endangered species. | |
| It's a nod to the King's love of the environment. | |
| It's a nod to his own reign, do you think? | |
| Because it is a monarch butterfly. | |
| It is a monarch butterfly. | |
| It's a little bit uncomfortable. | |
| Is it uncomfortable? | |
| Well, I find that a little bit uncomfortable. | |
| What do you think of the picture? | |
| Well, as a woman of a certain age, I've got to say that it screamed to me of red mist, rage, the way I feel when I sit in front of you, and even a bit of menstrual tension going on there. | |
| But I'm just a bit red. | |
| It was just a bit scarlet. | |
| That's all. | |
| It was just a little bit scarlet. | |
| But actually, I... | |
| You know why it's red, do you? | |
| No, no, because of the Welsh guards. | |
| He used the costume and then he said. | |
| It's nothing to do with your menstrual cycle. | |
| But we all have our own personal response to art, and that was mine. | |
| I was coming off an airplane and I was like... | |
| You literally looked at that painting and thought of your menstrual cycle. | |
| I forgot my suitcase. | |
| I was so struck by it, actually, as I touched down in Gatwick yesterday. | |
| I was so blinded by this red spot. | |
| Anyway, I then tried to think more academically or historically. | |
| And apparently, it's all about the red prince painted partly when he was a prince, which also is a bit worrying because it was when John of Gaunt was on his deathbed, ruining the idea of the next King Richard III and going, oh goodness, this sceptred aisle. | |
| This, what is it? | |
| I think I wrote bits of it down. | |
| This other Eden demi-paradise, i.e. the imperilled Britain. | |
| So is Charles overseeing an imperilled Britain? | |
| Are you massively overthinking it? | |
| I'm talking overthinking it, Paula. | |
| This idea that it's all about the colonial British history, soaked in blood and gore, yet with a butterfly on his shoulder. | |
| We're now dragging ourselves away from the colonial barbarism which has bedevilled this country and our dreadful monarchy. | |
| I mean, I need to come back to that comment because you're saying it with a tone of cynicism that's worrying me. | |
| Let me just answer your question in relation to what I thought of the picture. | |
| And it goes back to the topic of how the royal family as an institution is being challenged at the moment. | |
| When you look at that picture, Piers, does that picture screen to you TikTok generation? | |
| Actually, what a screen to me. | |
| No, it doesn't. | |
| Why not? | |
| It's a very challenging. | |
| Can I answer the question? | |
| Well, when I finished, it's a very challenging picture. | |
| It's a very challenging picture, one that I think a lot of teenagers are going to struggle to comprehend. | |
| If you've been on teaching. | |
| If you're not having, without having some lessons to be able to do that. | |
| Would that traditional portrait have made any more sense to a teenager? | |
| I think Johnny Eo is a masterpiece because he's managed to blend traditional with something very contemporary. | |
| And actually, yeah, it reminded me of a TikTok. | |
| It's actually made for the TikTok generation. | |
| Did you not think of your period then, Piers? | |
| No, I didn't. | |
| But he also got a sale of approval of the most important person, which was Queen Camilla, who said, you've got him. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Her face is brilliant, without a doubt. | |
| I love it. | |
| You know, we're all talking about it on the front page of all the papers. | |
| It's a smart painting by a very smart guy. | |
| He once did Johnny Year, once did a portrait of George Bush when he's president. | |
| We weren't made up entirely of porn magazine covers, right? | |
| And no one realised till they looked really closely. | |
| And it was brilliant. | |
| He's an artistic genius. | |
| So I think it's great. | |
| Kinsey, what do you think of it? | |
| Yeah, I love the way that they captured his gentle face. | |
| I thought it was a beautiful picture. | |
| I think it's whimsical like he is. | |
| And I think that it's lovely. | |
| And if the TikTok generation doesn't get it, that's like the least of their problems. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, they need their generation. | |
| But there's this colonial stuff. | |
| I mean, I don't want to labor the point, but why does everything have to always come back to empire, colonial past, blood and gore? | |
| Why can't we, for once, just go, you know what? | |
| Let's look forward. | |
| There's a lovely butterfly on his shoulder, a metamorphosis to a great monarch. | |
| Why can't we just be positive? | |
| Why do we have to always drag it back hundreds of years to when people did unspeakable things to each other? | |
| It's intriguing that you talk about history and we've been talking about history in this conversation. | |
| And yet, when you talk about colonialism and the damage that it has. | |
| Who began the end of slavery? | |
| Who began the end of slavery? | |
| To talk about the end of slavery. | |
| Who began it? | |
| To talk about the end of slavery, we have to talk about the big mean of saving slavery. | |
| And I think we've done that. | |
| Well, have we? | |
| Oh, I think so, Paula. | |
| But because you've had enough. | |
| Well, I had enough. | |
| What's the point of this? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| It's not about constantly litigating. | |
| What's the point about colonialism that spans the world? | |
| This conversation about colonialism is not going to stop just because you have to. | |
| What conversations do you want? | |
| You want them all to say sorry. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Is that it? | |
| Could we own that they do both? | |
| That actually by reaching back and spanning forward. | |
| I was in Eastern Europe and this top TV exec said, I love Britain. | |
| And I said, do you? | |
| Because I'm always a little bit ambivalent about my own country, as you know. | |
| I love it. | |
| No, I don't hate it. | |
| I love it, but there's room for improvement. | |
| And he said, I love the way you've got all this history. | |
| You've got this line, this constitutional line you can follow for thousands of years. | |
| So can we own that? | |
| Can we enjoy it? | |
| But can we also interrogate it? | |
| So Paula feels included. | |
| Do you feel included? | |
| And the picture's celebrated. | |
| Fine. | |
| When do I ever hear Paula look back on the history of his country with anything but negative? | |
| Oh, wow. | |
| Really, Piers? | |
| Tell me one great thing. | |
| Then we need to talk more. | |
| When did you laugh? | |
| You never stopped talking more. | |
| We need to talk more if that's. | |
| You never stop trashing the history of his country. | |
| Sounds productive. | |
| Let's just remind the viewers. | |
| I'm an immigrant. | |
| I was adopted by this country and I was very grateful to be adopted by this country. | |
| So why don't you bring it up? | |
| However, why do you want us constantly feeling guilty and apologizing for it? | |
| I'll wait. | |
| I'll wait. | |
| We gave you a home. | |
| You just said. | |
| Thank you, Brad. | |
| I'll wait when you're ready. | |
| However, that doesn't mean that in terms of understanding my history and your history, which is forever entwined, that we shouldn't look at both sides of the story. | |
| And at the moment, we are only just opening that chapter. | |
| What do you want to know in terms of our history? | |
| What do you want to achieve? | |
| Isn't that a good thing, Piers? | |
| The fact that we know that Megan is 43% ancestry Nigerian, that's a fantastic thing. | |
| I would agree. | |
| I thought it was a good idea. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Just clarify that. | |
| Isn't that a fantastic discover? | |
| Didn't she go to Malta and claim she was Maltese a few years ago? | |
| I don't know about that. | |
| She did her genealogy. | |
| It came out in her archetypes podcast. | |
| Maltese, Irish, Nigerian. | |
| There's a lot going on. | |
| On to one side. | |
| I've got a bit of Eastern European. | |
| I'll be heading to Eastern Europe quite soon, claiming my ancestry there. | |
| And so you see, I referenced the book that we are all a part of. | |
| And I'm just saying that this discussion about colonialism, one that King Charles seems to be seems to be ready to discuss about. | |
| I want him to open up and discuss it. | |
| I want him to be able to reference some of the issues that the Commonwealth countries have been affected by colonialism and to this day continuing to. | |
| He is engaging more than that's what I understand. | |
| That's fantastic. | |
| What do you want him to say and do? | |
| That is fantastic. | |
| Hold up. | |
| What's he going to say or do that changes a dancer? | |
| Because what happens is we have a lot of people saying, well, I don't want to hear about this. | |
| I don't want to hear about this. | |
| I want to stop the conversation. | |
| What do you want him to say and do? | |
| To open up the conversation. | |
| And say what? | |
| Which is what he is saying. | |
| And say what? | |
| So he needs to open that conversation not only in this country, but also in the countries that have been impacted by colonialism. | |
| Sorry, I'm asking. | |
| I'm sounding a bit robotic. | |
| Let's just start starting. | |
| What would you like him to say and do? | |
| I would like... | |
| What's this conversation? | |
| I would like him actually, first of all, to listen. | |
| To what? | |
| Listen to what is being said. | |
| What don't you think he knows about the history of his country? | |
| I don't know. | |
| But it's not like what I did. | |
| I don't know. | |
| So you want a conversation, but you've no idea what it's going to be about. | |
| I don't know what he knows. | |
| Isn't that the point? | |
| But the whole point is he can't say what you really want him to say, which is sorry, because he's a head of state and he's a representative. | |
| And unless the government gifts him that power to say sorry, he actually can't say it. | |
| Hence, we're going to be able to do that. | |
| Because we're a constitution, would they? | |
| Yes. | |
| And it's all just measly, pointless words. | |
| No, to who? | |
| You make your money with measly, pointless words. | |
| How is he going to share? | |
| Sorry, explain to me how this is going to change the lives of a single person today. | |
| The king of this country is saying that hundreds of years ago, something we knew existed in evil called slavery was terrible. | |
| And by the way, not just here, all around the world. | |
| And there were black slave owners too, right? | |
| I don't see anyone demanding apologies from their ancestors, right? | |
| And everyone knows it's evil. | |
| Everyone knows it was terrible. | |
| Everyone knows the British Empire was also great in many ways. | |
| During the state of the world, we know that as well. | |
| It doesn't help anybody today. | |
| To have people grovelling and apologising and saying, here's some money. | |
| Who's asking? | |
| What's he going to do for the people today? | |
| I don't think there are any dignitaries asking for grovelling apologies. | |
| I don't think there are any people who are still reprovely. | |
| You don't seem to know what you are still impacted today by the effects of colonialism, asking for grovelling. | |
| What do you want Charles to do? | |
| Grovelling apologies. | |
| I keep asking you. | |
| And you talk about history of 100 years, but you know that reparations are... | |
| Hold up, you want King Charles to do and say something, but you have no idea what it is. | |
| I want him to have a cup of tea. | |
| I'm away with Prince Harry. | |
| I want a conversation with him. | |
| What do you want? | |
| A cup of tea. | |
| What do you want? | |
| A cup of tea with Prince Harry. | |
| You literally can't answer me. | |
| You can have a truth and reconciliation. | |
| You could have a truth and reconciliation. | |
| I'm going to ask you one more time. | |
| I'll give you one more time. | |
| Do you know what a truth and reconciliation is? | |
| I do. | |
| What do you want to say? | |
| Then let's hold a truth and reconciliate it. | |
| What do you want him to say? | |
| Let's hold a truth and reconciliation. | |
| Let's start the process of listening. | |
| And from that listening process, then we will hear what he has to say. | |
| It could maybe apply to his own family. | |
| It could. | |
| It could. | |
| He could get a cup of apologies. | |
| It could do, couldn't it? | |
| With great respect, you've literally just spent 10 minutes saying absolutely nothing. | |
| I mean, I haven't. | |
| And then you suddenly remember truth and reconciliation. | |
| That gets me off the rack. | |
| I was going to say what I actually want on. | |
| In 2015, we finished paying slave owners. | |
| We finished compensating slave owners in 2015, not hundreds of years ago. | |
| I'm uncomfortable about that. | |
| Let's have this truth and reconciliation. | |
| Let's talk about reparations. | |
| Go to Kinsey for the final word because America's ahead of us on this, of course. | |
| Places like San Francisco, they want to give millions and millions of dollars to everybody who ever had an ancestor who was involved in slavery, which seems to me completely ridiculous. | |
| What's your view? | |
| I was just sitting here thinking, why is the advice, let's just look forward, let's move forward when it's Harry and Megan and we're talking about their past discretions, but when it's something like this, you know, like I understand. | |
| Bingo. | |
| I understand what Pierce is saying. | |
| All look forward for Megan and Harry, leave all the nasty stuff behind us. | |
| But with the rest of them, back we go. | |
| As long as it takes to have a stick to beat them. | |
| But it's not comparing like with like, because one are an institution of state and they represent Britain and our history for better or for worse. | |
| And the other are a pair who tripped off into the sunset with a couple of tiaras and some titles. | |
| Why? | |
| Not like I have always saying, I'm really sorry and here's some money make any difference to people today. | |
| They had nothing to do with the slavery years because they're not 300 years old. | |
| I've always advocated for reconciliation for Harry, for King Charles and for William. | |
| Always advocated that in the same way that I advocate the reconciliation. | |
| You want to have a conversation. | |
| You have no idea what it's going to be about. | |
| Other than it's going to make a conversation. | |
| Let's open the floor. | |
|
Slavery Compensation And Arsenal
00:01:07
|
|
| It's apparently going to make an open. | |
| And I want a reconciliation conversation with the Vikings and with the Romans. | |
| Right? | |
| I want Nordic grovelling and apologising. | |
| I want Italian five minutes. | |
| Recompensing me for the land my ancestors lost in the north of England from the rampaging Romans. | |
| Did you finish paying compensation to them in 2015? | |
| Did I? | |
| Yes. | |
| I did. | |
| I was a total. | |
| I know you think otherwise. | |
| I had nothing to do with slavery. | |
| We were all taxpayers and we paid. | |
| I had nothing to do with slavery, Paula. | |
| But yet you paid compensation to the Chinese. | |
| By the way, nor did you. | |
| But I paid compensation to the slave owners. | |
| Okay, I'm going to end this with myself. | |
| I didn't have a choice. | |
| I want to end on a happy note. | |
| I've worked out why Charles is so red. | |
| Can we look at the picture again? | |
| He's an Arsenal fan. | |
| Right? | |
| And obviously, if we win on Sunday and Manchester City lose, we become Premier League champions first time in 20 years. | |
| It is a nod to Arsenal Football Club. | |
| God bless you, Your Majesty. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I've got to leave it there. | |
| And we do wish him well. | |
| Thank you, Sarah. | |
| Thank you, Paula. | |
| Thank you, Tessa. | |