On Sunday morning I was on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC politics show alongside Piers Morgan. I’ve met Piers a number of times in recent years and got to know him a little.
Serious and professional on screen, he is good company off it – and you don’t have to spend long with him to understand how he became a broadcasting success. He streams his show, Uncensored, on YouTube, and gets millions of views. Even if you are offended by what he says, you know he passionately believes it.
We both arrived early and chatted about the US election which Piers had covered from New York. He told me about the response to the Democrat campaign advert in which Kamala Harris said, among other things, that transgender prisoners would have taxpayer-funded access to full sex-change surgery while locked up.
The Republicans hit back with a brilliant ad which said: ‘Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.’ That is one election slogan I can promise you will never see the Labour Party copy.
Piers, who knows Donald Trump well from their time together on the American version of The Apprentice, said that the mood in the US was broadly positive: Trump had squarely won a mandate to govern.
We shared our experiences of the meltdown of the Lefties during and after the US election. Emily Maitlis had a near breakdown on the Channel 4 election-night programme and co-presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy had to tell her off for swearing live on air.
If anyone is a deal maker, surely it’s Donald Trump, the phenomenally successful businessman and author of the bestseller, The Art Of The Deal
The not-so-clever duo of former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and ex-Tory MP Rory Stewart had predicted with arrogant assuredness that it would be a clear win for Kamala Harris, treating us all to their smug political analysis and providing the evidence as to why this would be the case.
At the very least, they showed themselves up to be members of an elite liberal-Left metropolitan class completely out of touch with ordinary voters.
The substance of my chat with Piers, though, was about Trump’s assertion that he would end the Russia/Ukraine war in a day – a claim that’s been widely mocked by high-minded know-alls.
None of their ilk has been talking about the fact that a Trump victory could actually bring about world peace and prosperity, but I really think it might.
Let me explain why.
If anyone is a deal maker, surely it’s Trump, the phenomenally successful businessman and author of the bestseller, The Art Of The Deal.
Piers told me he spoke four times to Trump during the election period, and while he sounded hoarse and exhausted, he was by all accounts sanguine.
There is a huge difference between Trump today and Trump in his first presidential term. This time round, he is fully prepared after four years of waiting and has a strong team around him, raring to go.
He also has by his side his ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk – the richest and perhaps most successful man in the world.
But can he really end the Russia/Ukraine war in a day? I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has the peace process under way before he moves into the White House in January.
Look at the facts. Putin, a man with whom he has a personal relationship, is suffering. Sanctions are damaging the Russian economy as he resorts to paying huge sums of money to boost enlistment into the Ukraine ‘meat grinder’.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are awash with grief at the escalating number of their own losses in a war they never asked for. President Zelensky, in turn, cannot win the war without financial support from the US and the West.
All of which means Trump is possibly the only man in the world who can bring both sides to the table and cut a deal. He’s already achieved the seemingly impossible, having pulled off the biggest political comeback of all time.
He knows war is bad business and costs money and lives. He could lift sanctions on Russia in return for an end to Russian hostility. He could perhaps persuade Ukraine to cede land in exchange for peace, allowing Putin to save face, while offering to divert financial support from arms to rebuilding the country.
Trump could well be the man who brings to an end talk of nuclear missiles and cyber attacks and who heralds in an era of peace and security.
If he also brings about a resolution to the war between Israel and Hamas, then he could feasibly win the Nobel Peace Prize. Just imagine how the Left would react to that!
Welcome to the Trumpswolds
Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres at the 2021 People’s Choice Awards in Santa Monica, California
Former US chat show host Ellen DeGeneres (above right, with wife Portia de Rossi) is moving to the Cotswolds, reportedly to escape Trump’s presidency.
I’m really looking forward to bumping into her at my Bamford Club spa’s reformer Pilates class, or maybe in Jeremy Clarkson’s pub, The Farmer’s Dog. One thing I am sure of is that her immediate neighbours are all Trump supporters and she’s going to find as many MAGA fans here as there were in the US.
However, we are all far too polite to mention it, so she will live among us all, blissfully unaware.
Scousers always win out
I’m blown away by Coleen Rooney in I’m A Celebrity. I have always been a huge fan. Coleen and I are from the same gene pool, born in Liverpool and of immediate Irish heritage. We even lived in the same Cheshire village for a while.
I’ve long admired her for being a great mum, an advocate for loyalty and a wholesome family life, whilst at the same time pursuing her path as a businesswoman and coping with a wayward husband. And now she’s a jungle celebrity on our screens.
No one knows better than I do that Scousers are often underestimated. Do that, at your peril (Emily Maitlis, take note!).
It’s advice someone should have given to Rebekah Vardy long before she thought of taking Coleen to court in the Wagatha case and becoming a very public loser.
E-scooters are a nightmare on our streets and pavements, with thousands of accidents being reported. I witnessed an accident myself in London just the other day.
If those who used them didn’t have a taste for speed and were safety aware, there wouldn’t be a problem.
Sadly, the country is full of idiots and this can only end one way, with e-scooters being banned.
A coward for too long
Last week in my column, I wrote about the abuse I had suffered at the hands of a Church of England vicar when I was nine years old.
It wasn’t the smartest thing for me to have done in the week I launched my book, Downfall: The Self-Destruction of The Conservative Party, but I couldn’t not do it after the reports of yet more cases of abuse in the Church and the resignation of Justin Welby.
Kind people tell me how brave I have been, but that’s not the case. I have been a coward for too long. Deterred by my own feelings of shame, I let the perpetrator – Reverend James Cameron – and his depraved acts win for all these years.
I’ve now learnt that the more you speak openly about the demons of your past, the quicker they fade. A lesson I wish I had learnt far sooner.