Here, the Big Beast of British media answers the Standard’s Christmas questionnaire. We asked him about everyone from Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to Benjamin Netanyahu and Kamala Harris, and from Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer to Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall. He expounds on everything from Israel and Gaza to Ulez and Rupert Murdoch. We suggest drinking a double espresso before diving in…
The various pro-Palestinian marches that have taken place over the last month or so, especially in London, have galvanised and infuriated the media and the public in equal measure. What are your feelings?
Well, it exposes the massive hypocrisy of the left in my estimation, and I speak as someone who is historically slightly left of centre myself – I edited The Mirror for ten years. I think is has exposed their rank hypocrisy, frankly, because I saw a banner yesterday saying 'Queers for Palestine'. If they’d ever been to Hamas-run Gaza and tried to put that banner up above their heads, they’d be thrown off a roof.
These are the same people who’ve spent the last ten years demonising any conservative speakers, de-platforming them from universities, even Bill Maher – and he’s a liberal. He got banned from speaking at Berkeley, which is the home of free speech, because they were worried there could be too much violence. The whole thing was absurd. And I kept saying how ridiculous it is with de-platforming, at a university, conservative views. The whole point of university is to have your own views challenged by hearing a disparate range of opinions. That’s why I think education at the moment is still behind. So now you have the very same people who spent the last ten years, from their self-righteous woke positions, screaming about how we cannot indulge any of these people… they are now supporting Hamas, who just committed one of the worst terror attacks in history. So you can’t have Bill Maher, but you can have Hamas. You can have pro-Hamas rhetoric beaming onto campus walls in America, you can have Jewish students barricading themselves into libraries to prevent themselves from the howling mob chanting “from the river to the sea” which, as everybody knows, means the extermination of Israel. So there’s a real intellectual hypocrisy here. It’s like the old Winston Churchill thing. Some people believe in free speech right to the point they hear an opinion that isn’t theirs, and they will defend to the death, their own side, even when their own side is promoting things infinitely worse than some of the speakers that they’ve been de-platforming.
Where are you right now on the trans debate?
I think it’s coming very fast round to common sense. Because the real victims of this are genuine trans people who’ve gone through sometimes many, many years of psychological, emotional and physical trauma, who are now seeing any Tom, Dick and Harry – to pardon the phrase – identifying as a woman. And seeing that causing mockery, ridicule for the trans community, a lot of tension, a lot of aggravation. I know some trans people who just want to have a quiet life. They don’t want this, they don’t want to have ludicrous battles on the fake altar of fairness and equality when it’s so transparently unfair and unequal. So I think that debate in particular has come around. And with women in particular, the number of women who are too terrified to say what a woman is. What have we got to when people can’t say what a woman is? When women are too scared to say a woman is an adult, biological female? This is not difficult. It’s not difficult to take that position. And so you also want fairness and equality for trans people, which I do, and always have advocated for. But you instantly will be branded transphobic if you don’t agree that women can have penises. They can’t.
Are you still in touch with Trump?
No. There’s an icy glacier at the moment. There’s been a few in the past, but he normally comes back.
So what are his odds of him becoming President again?
I’d say right now they’re good. I think he’s almost certain to be the Republican nominee. However some of the Democrat attempts to finish him off are massively overblown. I remember meeting Chris Rock the day after the 2016 election, and he said, “You know the mistake the Democrats made? If someone has murdered ten people, don’t go around saying they murdered 11.” I would put it as “don’t overegg the souffle”. And with Trump, they can’t stop themselves. So by over-demonising Trump, by saying stuff he hasn’t done or hasn’t said, or twisting things that we know don’t mean what he said and so on, by over-demonising they play into his hands; they allow him to play the martyr, the victim. He’s very good at that. And he’s also managed to turn all these criminal indictments into a boost for his own numbers, which in political history, is completely unprecedented. But the polls show people are still prepared to vote for him because they think the Democrats have gone way too far. They just think it’s just an overreach for a former president to be facing criminal charges on this kind of stuff. Some of it I think are very serious charges. And he should be held to account. But they’ve overdone it – and by overdoing it, they’ve played into his hands. So if you see him as a nominee, if he’s up against Joe Biden, who could barely string a sentence together and keeps falling over, I think he’s got a very good chance of winning. Democrats need to wake up and smell the cappuccino about their own candidate.
What do you think of Biden’s chances?
If he falls over again on live television it could be the end of him. He looks old for his age. And 70% of Democrats think he’s too old.
Kamala Harris’s numbers are getting better. But Is she getting any better as a VP?
No. I think she’s been utterly hopeless. But the interesting play for the Democrats is if you go for Gavin Newsom, who is the governor of California, who I think is by far the best candidate they have, mainly because he goes into the lion’s den. He goes on Fox News, he’s prepared to debate DeSantis, he went to see Xi in China, all this kind of thing. You know, why did Xi meet the governor of California? Probably because he’s going to run for president, right? So I’m doing all the maths here. But the other maths that is fascinating, is you get two for one if you go for Newsom. If you get rid of Biden and Newsom becomes your nominee, Kamala Harris can’t be his VP because they’re from the same state. Good, eh?
Is Keir Starmer going to be Prime Minister?
Well, the polls say he is. I think what he’s brought to the Labour Party and the front bench is an aura of competence. And competence is one of the most powerful tools you have as a political party. I think he actually is quite an impressive performer. I like him personally, I think he’s got integrity. I think he’s got an ability to understand the office of the Prime Minister, which is important. How you conduct yourself in public is important. No one is embarrassed when he appears in public. He doesn’t say stupid things. He does everything by the book. The argument against Sunak – and I’ve said this to his face – is it’s time to go a bit more bazball. He’s a big cricket fan. You’ve played yourself in. You’ve only got a year to go. But a year is a long time in politics, and I think he should just be more aggressive now and I think you’ll start to see that.
How well do you know Sunak?
I got on a plane to LA at the start of August, and two bodyguards get on, and one of the stewardess came up and went, “You’re in for a fun ride, Mr Morgan,” and my initial reaction was that it might be Meghan and Harry. Anyway, then Rishi gets on. And so he came over and he’s laughing. He said, “This is my first holiday in four years and this happens.” I said, “Imagine how I feel, Prime Minister!” But then we had a good laugh. And funnily enough, he at the end asked me for a selfie. He said, “But it’s not for publication. It’s for my staff. They’ll find this hilarious.” We had a really good chat in mid-air for about an hour. And I’ve known him a long time, and actually I backed him to be Prime Minister. I think he was by far a better option than Boris or Liz Truss. His problem is he’s inherited a massive hospital pass. But he needs to go more bazball. He also needs a better cabinet.
He recently brought back David Cameron. Who else should he bring in?
Well, just people who can tick a box of basic competence and experience, but who also can play some shots. You cannot get away from the fact that right now, on balance, if you had two football teams, you would say that Starmer has a better squad. And he has a squad of people who look like they’re ready for government. The Tories look like a squad of dysfunctional people who’ve been at each other’s throats, most of them leaping around from position to position. And how many home secretaries have we now had in two years? They look like Man United. Whereas Starmer, a big Gooner, looks more like Arsenal. And he’ll like that comparison.
If the Tories lose they’ll no doubt drift to the right…
That would be utterly fatal for them. I said to Rishi, “Losing may not be the worst thing that happens to you.” Because actually, Labour will have a very difficult job in opposition. It’s not like, suddenly everything’s going to be hunky-dory and rosy. You know, when Tony Blair took over in ’97, they inherited a very good economy. It’s a very different situation now. The economy is in a very parlous state, and Starmer could very quickly find himself in big heat himself – and actually being the opposition leader to a fledgling Labour government, the first for many years, could be good, right? And remember, Rishi is very young. If I were the Tories, I would think very carefully before kicking him out. Whatever happens. I would keep him. I think he’s a smart guy. I think he wants to do the best for the country. He’s not motivated by personal money because he’s got buckets of that. He hasn’t got all those Boris falls, he’s not going to embarrass us. He’s a smart, competent bloke. I watched him interview Elon Musk and he got criticised for it for being out of touch. But Elon Musk, he owns Twitter, he owns Tesla, he owns SpaceX – he’s one of the most interesting guys in the world. And I was actually quite proud of my Prime Minister being able to talk to him for 40 minutes on a level that Musk found was interesting. I don’t think we should attack him for that. I thought it was a very cool thing to do. I told him that.
But I would keep him if I were them. The nightmare for the Tories would be if the right say, “well, there you go. If only we’ve been far more right-wing, we would have won.” Absolute nonsense. And I think you’ve seen with Braverman the danger of pandering to that. The problem they’ve got is with the structure of the party. They have got a bunch of slightly older, female-skewed mini Margaret Thatchers sitting there without any of Margaret Thatcher’s political intelligence, who keep taking stupid decisions for the party. And that’s the problem. The Labour Party had it after Miliband brought in the £5 to become a member scheme. You get overrun with people who don’t know what they’re doing, or want to push the party in an extreme way. And if your party gets hijacked like that, on both sides, you have a real problem. The Tories have been hostages to their members in a way that has skewed them to the extremities. And no party really in this country ever succeeded if they’re on the extremities. They just don’t. We are basically a centrist country. Most people in this country want common sense, calm stability, and they want people who just sound like they’ve got common sense ideas, right? They don’t want extremities on either side. They’d have looked at the marches and thought, “What a bunch of right-wing head-banging lunatics.” And on the other side, a bunch of peaceful people interspersed with a bunch of people promoting a terror group. And they don’t like either.
Is Susan Hall good enough to beat Sadiq?
No. Sadiq is a much better politician that people give him credit for. I like him. And he does some things I don’t really agree with – like the ULEZ thing, for example. I was with him in principle. I wasn’t with him in execution. I told him that. I was having a nightmare for about three or four years. Once or twice a week, I’d feel completely whacked – I’d have to sit on the sofa all day feeling sorry for myself. A bit breathless. My doctor thought it was hay fever. And I was having hay fever treatment, and the tablets would work, but they made me feel a bit groggy, and so on, so it was just going on. I couldn’t understand, I was walking all the time. Lots of fresh air since the pandemic, we all got walking again. Blah, blah, blah. And eventually I went to the chemist just up here, pestle and mortar, and there’s a lovely Indian guy there, older guy, been around the block, on the chemists’ block a long time, and he just says to me, “Is it worse when you come back from abroad? I said, “I can tell you.” So I got my WhatsApps out. I said, “Like clockwork.” He went, “Yeah, you’re being Kensington pollution bombed.” I went, “What do you mean?” He went, “Well, Kensington and Chelsea, famously, is one of the three worst places in the country for pollution. And you live right right between Cromwell Road, Warwick Road and Kensington High Street, three of the busiest thoroughfares in Britain. And you’re right in the middle of it, and you’re just coming back to a pollution problem. Once or twice a week, the air quality will be bad, and you’re going on long walks, even if you’re in the park you will be near enough to these main roads to get it. And it’s having a debilitating effect on you.” So I do two things. I’ve got the air quality app, which I look at every morning at eight o’clock. And if it’s high, I don’t go out.And Celia had also read something in a magazine about air purifiers. So we got four air purifiers, one in every room that I use in thehouse. Gone. So I said to Sadiq, “I’m a believer in this pollution being a massive problem. And I think anyone who isn’t, is living in cloud cuckoo land. The way it was implemented was a bit like the poll tax. It was unfair. It meant the poorest people in society were getting hammered.”
What would you have done?
Well, I said to him, “How can it be right that I have an Aston Martin but I’m not going to be paying anything, and some guy is trying to feed his kids. He’s already had a terrible pandemic cost of living crisis and you’re going to hammer him for £12 a day. It’s just not fair.” So I said, “But the principle of what you’re trying to do is right.” Now, I don’t have the answers, before you ask me. Fortunately, I’m not Mayor of London, though some people think I should be.
But Susan Hall. Have you met her?
I’ve seen her work. Honestly, I think she’s utterly hopeless. And if the Tories actually want to get back into power in London, they’re going to have to find a candidate who is even vaguely competent. And they’ve just have a string of them who are just completely useless. So Sadiq Khan must think Christmas has come early. Sadiq is going to win it. You wouldn’t even vote for her to be chairwoman of the WI, let alone run London.
Who’s going to end up with the Telegraph?
I don’t know! Obviously, I have a vested interest. My own boss Rupert Murdoch is clearly circling from what I’ve read, so I’ve not discussed it with him, so I can’t give an honest answer as to whoever will win, but obviously, it’s a big prize. And also, somebody may buy bits, right? The Spectator might be hived off. But these trophies don’t come around very often. So I’m sure there’ll be a lot of bidders.
How do you think you’re portrayed in the media?
As Oscar Wilde rightly put it, if there’s one thing worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about. And I genuinely do think that. I love being the centre of attention, being the centre of noise. I particularly love being in the centre of debate. It takes me back to the Mirror newsroom on Iraq when I was having John Pilger on one spread and Christopher Hitchens on the other, both vehemently disagreeing. I think the only way to do these things is to have disparate views. And there are a lot of media entities that do that.
On the Gaza crisis, what do you think is going to happen? Neither party seems to have an exit strategy.
I don’t think you can forge any peace there now as long as Hamas is in charge of Gaza, or Netanyahu is in charge of Israel. So I think they’re going to have to find new leadership on both sides. Israel is going to pretty much eradicate the current Hamas, that’s pretty clear. What follows is utterly crucial. What interesting is going to be the position of countries like Saudi Arabia.
Is it in anyone’s interest to have this raging conflict continue between Israel and Palestine when you’ve already got Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE, and imminently Saudi Arabia, normalising relationships with Israel? The bottom line with the Palestinians is, they should have the same rights to human rights as the Israelis. And until that happens, this conflict is never going away. But after what Hamas did on October 7th, Hamas can play no part in any of that. They have to go. And I don’t think Netanyahu is the right guy for Israel. Most Israelis blame him for what happened, and that the social unrest caused by his ridiculous attempt to usurp authority, the Supreme Court, distracted the defence and security forces. And this was a consequence of that. And I think there’s a lot of merit to that argument.
