For Piers Morgan the most important thing in a Piers Morgan interview is the fact that Piers Morgan is doing it. He is the TV equivalent of the Bette Midler character in the movie Beaches. She finally stops talking about herself and says: “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”
That’s comedy. Piers Morgan is real life, or what passes for real life in sections of the British media. But what is bizarre is that the prime minister of the United Kingdom – the prime minister! – willingly plays along as the foil to Piers Morgan on an obscure television channel for which Morgan is likely to be paid more in pounds than there are viewers.
Prime ministers are better than this. (After the Johnson and Truss malarkey, readers may dispute that assertion.) Either way, clips of the latest Sunak car crash are unmissable on social media. The hour-long miserable spectacle is worth a look in full, however, because it tells us a great deal about the descent of our prime ministers, as well as the astonishing uselessness of Sunak’s comms team.
Why do the spin doctors of today – these successors to Alastair Campbell and Bernard Ingham – allow their boss to subject himself to 60 minutes of such toe-curling conversation? I have no idea. But the result is the successor to the office of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher acting like a giggling schoolboy in a headteacher’s study, having his homework marked by a former tabloid editor on key political promises on the economy, the NHS and ultimately his Rwanda policy.
It began, of course, with excruciating matey banter. Morgan reminded Sunak that Morgan had interviewed him before. Morgan had also met the Sunak family while on the same flight to the US. Morgan needed to know which cricket team – England or India? – Sunak supported. (England.) Morgan offered an anecdote from a Morgan handyman, a police officer Morgan had met, along with insights from Morgan’s mother and “an Indian doctor in Kensington”. Morgan agreed Gareth Southgate has a difficult job as England manager and that Sunak has a difficult job as prime minister. It had the feeling of a pub bore leading a mindless conversation with a teenager too young to drink beer.
After the foreplay came the ambush. Morgan had softened Sunak up by allowing him a ridiculous and unchallenged jibe at Keir Starmer suggesting that Starmer condoned Islamic extremism. Then the bore-athon came to its well-rehearsed climax on immigration and Rwanda policy. It resulted in a handshake over a bet of £1,000 (for charity Morgan said, virtuous to the last), with Morgan insisting Sunak would never successfully send any asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“I’ll bet you £1,000 to a refugee charity you don’t get anybody on those planes before the election,” he smiled. “Will you take that bet?”
A spur of the moment challenge? Or a heavily rehearsed entrapment from a former tabloid editor desperate for a headline? Hmmm. You decide. Sunak shook the outstretched hand, repeating how he wanted to “get the people on the planes” to a country that outside the Sunak bubble is generally considered unsafe. He therefore appeared to seal a bet over human lives: two multimillionaires happy to part with a grand as if it was a bit of a loose change down the back of the sofa.
Imagine Margaret Thatcher doing this – accepting, say, a £1,000 bet on whether she would defeat the coalminers during the miners’ strike or win the Falklands war. Imagine Tony Blair accepting a bet on whether the IRA would start bombing again after the Good Friday agreement. Imagine Gordon Brown accepting a bet with anyone on anything. No, I can’t either.
I interviewed Thatcher, Blair, Brown and Cameron and cannot imagine any of those prime ministers, or indeed any other world leaders I have talked with – including Angela Merkel, Jacques Chirac, Shimon Peres, Iran’s Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Bill Clinton – ever being trapped by Piers Morgan in such a brazen way.
The prime minister has since rowed back on the bet, but if Sunak wants to avoid further pointless humiliation he should sack his communications team or at least ignore them. In the meantime, perhaps he could find someone skilled enough to advise him how to navigate the media snake pit before he leaves for California or wherever. I would respectfully suggest Sunak does not choose as an adviser, as an interviewer or indeed as his new bestie, the multimillionaire man of the people known as Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan. Freedom of speech, Pughe-Morgan once said, is the hill he is happy to die on. Of course it probably helps if he is the one doing most of the speaking.
Gavin Esler is the author most recently of Britain Is Better Than This
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