Gold wallpaper? All gone. That was the first big revelation of Piers Morgan’s interview with Rishi Sunak to mark the PM’s 100th day in No. 10. Every trace of Boris’s trailer-trash décor has been replaced with squeaky-clean white visuals.
Piers and Rishi went head-to-head in a characterless kitchen-diner that looked like the show-home of a new-build flat in Milton Keynes. Piers got straight down to business and raised the issue that obsesses the entire nation: himself. He boasted that he’d reached No. 10 long before Rishi when he interviewed Tony Blair many years ago; he recalled that the Blairs had a singing fish nailed to the wall that crooned, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy,’ at the touch of a button.
‘What’s your mantra?’ he asked.
Rishi said that was a question for his wife and he added, ‘she doesn’t sing “Don’t Worry, Be happy”, although we do love Bob Marley.’ Piers let that pass – or perhaps he didn’t spot it. The song was written by Bobby McFerrin.
Rishi dealt easily with Piers’s strange queries
Rishi is slick but not slippery. He’s comfortable answering intrusive questions about his personal tastes. He can discuss Southampton and Arsenal like a real football fan. He admitted to playing with Star Wars light sabres and belting out karaoke versions of ‘Ice, Ice Baby’. None of it sounded bogus. He’s an immensely difficult man to dislike and he dealt easily with Piers’s strange queries about how he proposed to his wife.
‘On bended knee?’ asked the great political commentator.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re stinking rich aren’t you?’
‘I’m financially fortunate.’
‘Are you a billionaire?’
‘I’m not going to get into that.’
Piers quizzed him on immigration, women’s rights and nurses’ pay. And whenever Rishi found himself in a tight corner he resorted to sophistries. He brought up an abstract virtue like ‘compassion’ or ‘humanity’ and re-framed the question on that basis. It’s a ploy favoured by woke activists too. A debater who endorses ‘compassion’ can cast their opponents as ruthless and inhumane. Piers invited the PM to condemn Suella Braverman for describing the channel migrants as ‘an invasion’. Rishi flourished his moral free-pass.
‘We should remember we’re a compassionate country,’ he said. ‘We open our hearts and our homes to people fleeing persecution’. He mentioned Hong Kong, Syria and Ukraine. Then he got a bit matey, like Blair, using a Cockney street-trader’s manner, with his consonants dropping:
‘Buh we are no’ a soft touch, righ’? We are no’ a soft touch.’
He promised ‘new laws’ guaranteeing that illegal migrants will be detained and removed to a safe country, ‘within days or weeks.’ He said genuine asylum-seekers had nothing to fear:
‘We will couple (the policy) with humanity…so we can capture those genuine cases.’
Asked to define a woman, he gave a reply that Julie Bindel would have been proud of:
‘Adult human female…I married one, I have two daughters.’
Then he raised the moral force-field again to ward off accusations of hate:
‘We must have enormous compassion and understanding for those who are questioning their gender identity.’
Piers complained that nurses have to pay fees to park outside the hospitals where they save lives. This is unjust. Rishi ducked and dived. He blamed the hospital trusts, he mentioned student bursaries for nurses:
‘And here are some of the other things we’re doing.’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ snapped Piers. Some nurses, he said, fork out £1,000 a year in charges.
‘I’d love it if people paid less to get to work,’ said Rishi.
‘Will you at least look at it?’
‘Of course I will.’
That sounded like a tactical blunder. A U-turn seems likely.
For his big finale, Piers couldn’t resist bringing up his pet-hate, Harry and Meghan. He suggested to Rishi that the globe-trotting eco-warriors should be excluded from the coronation and, effectively, from the royal family too. An easy one for Rishi to avoid as the guest-list is a matter for the monarch. Of course, if there were any justice in our constitution, their future would be decided by Piers.
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