A few weeks ago I was having an argument with Piers Morgan on Twitter. Oh God, is that really how I’m going to start this column? What have I become? I was, though, and it started because he was brown-nosing Donald Trump. We’re talking a real nasal frottage here. I expressed derision, and he expressed fury at my derision, and on it went. At one point he called me ‘tough guy’. It was all very manly. Although it wasn’t a one-off, because he’s been at it — I mean the brown-nosing — ever since, including in this very magazine. A column here, a TV appearance there. Last weekend, he was bickering about Trump with Alastair Campbell on Peston. And I’ve been wondering what’s going on.
Morgan is not Farage. He has his flaws as a journalist and, I suspect, as a human, but I’ve always held him in relatively high esteem. He’s smart and brave when he wants to be, and unconcerned about public approbation. I suppose you have to be when literally everybody thinks you’re a terrible wanker. More to the point, he’s also liberal-leftish, at least when he bothers to be anything, which made his Trump adulation a little confusing. Obviously he couldn’t mean it. So was it just the basic desire to be close to power? One reality TV star bonding with another? In nakedly careerist terms, it just didn’t seem to make sense. Why not call out this horrible, obvious bullshit for what it is? Sure, maybe he’ll give you three minutes’ chat on Good Morning Britain once in a while, but would you really sell your soul, assuming Morgan still has one, just for that?
My theory, for what it’s worth, is that he’s playing a longer game.
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