What Piers Morgan really thinks about Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese

Controversial British TV host Piers Morgan has revealed what he really thinks about Scott Morrison and his competitor Anthony Albanese after their high-profile meeting ahead of his new Aussie program.

Nobody would describe Piers Morgan as shy and retiring. The TV personality, who spent years in the newspaper business before honing his gift of the gab on reality shows and morning TV, has earned the distinction of garnering as many detractors as fans – and loving all of them. As he brings his penchant for debate to Australia with the new show Piers Morgan Uncensored, he gives Stellar an unvarnished sneak peek into what we can expect.

It’s strange to consider that Piers Morgan believes he’s only just finding his voice. After all, the 57-year-old has risen to global media renown in the past 25 years precisely because his often seemed like the loudest one in the room as he offered unfiltered, often defiantly brash opinions on everything from world affairs to celebrity.

But the former newspaper editor, reality TV star and UK breakfast show presenter insists there’s never been a better time to leverage his notoriety in service of a new calling.

“I genuinely want to achieve one thing,” Morgan says during a lively and no-holds-barred interview with Stellar.

“I want to cancel ‘cancel culture’ – to render it redundant, to stop this ridiculous phenomenon of a small group thinking they can hold everyone to ransom and literally ruin people’s lives for having an opinion they don’t agree with.”

But just who are this “small group”? If you wade among his 7.9 million followers on Twitter and plenty more who seize on his every word with horror, they include fans of Meghan Markle, supporters of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and those who voted for US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump in equal measure, not to mention anyone who was appalled by Will Smith slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards last month.

Piers Morgan got his start in print media. Picture: Damian Bennett

Given that Morgan was quick to defend Smith in an op-ed written hours after the incident, Stellar ponders if you could argue that he was, in fact, endorsing the ideals of cancel culture given that Smith was objecting to a joke made at his wife’s expense, and seeking to silence the person making it.

“Smith wasn’t trying to cancel Rock,” Morgan replies.

“He was expressing his anger at the joke, which he incorrectly assumed was a deliberate mocking of [wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s] alopecia. I don’t defend what Smith did, but I can understand why he felt so angry if he believed the dig was deliberate because that would have been very cruel.”

Morgan cut his teeth in print media but is the first to admit that social media has widened his reach, and it’s where he engages in debates around the clock.

“I love social media; I’m a big partaker,” he explains.

“But I think people on social media went slightly mad in a pandemic, and became more intransigent, more determined they should have the final word, and to shame anyone who didn’t agree with them.

“You saw these awful stories of people all refusing to talk to each other. It’s utterly crazy. And I think it’s indicative of one of the problems in society, that everyone has a kind of self righteousness about their own view. I want to better express my strongly held opinions, but also want people to say, ‘You’re wrong. And here’s why.’”

Having said that, Morgan seems bewildered as to why people object to him in the first place. “I never think my views are controversial,” he insists, citing again that “small group of people” who seem to cause him the most consternation.

“I genuinely don’t think I come at anything from a position where people could say, ‘Well, that’s outrageous.’ And if they do think it is, well, tell me what it is I’ve said that’s outrageous – because I bet you’ve struggled.

“I’m not a right winger. I’m not a conservative. I’m not a far-left [person],” he adds.

“I’m probably slightly left-of-centre. My sensibilities are sort of old-fashioned liberal in the sense [that I believe] in freedom of speech and democracy. I’m not homophobic. I’m not sexist, I believe in fairness and equality for all. I’ve campaigned against racial injustice on television and in print for many years.

Piers Morgan: “There’s a gap in the market for a genuine, global show.” Picture: Damian Bennett

“I should be the darling of the left. But I’m not. I’m their enemy because the left have become so extreme they’ve become the very fascists who they profess to hate most.”

The forum in which he will launch this anti-cancel crusade? Piers Morgan Uncensored, a live show that premieres this month on Sky News Australia.

Airing here every Tuesday to Friday night, each 60-minute episode will also be broadcast in the UK on TalkTV and stream on Fox Nation in the US – the first show of its kind to attempt such reach, it aims to bring the spontaneity of his social-media feed to the small screen.

“I think there’s a gap in the market for a genuine, global show,” Morgan says, flouting the old “all news is local” rule.

“Whether you’re in Sydney, London or New York, people are debating the same stuff, day after day – same issues, same stories, just [with] name changes, geography changes. If you go on Twitter, you see the same stuff popping up everywhere.”

As for that more local news, Morgan’s meetings earlier this year with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese sent social media into a meltdown.

Asked what he thought of both men, he says: “I found them both surprisingly open and candid, after spending a lot of time around button-lipped British politicians. It’s not for me to say who will win the election as I don’t have a vote to cast, but I was amused to see both men going out of their way to publicly deny being woke. They’re obviously trying to get into my good books before the show launches.”

PM Scott Morrison.

Anthony Albanese.

He says he was “amused” by the response to those meetings.

“Especially when I saw Labor politicians going nuts on Twitter about me seeing Morrison, knowing that I’d also spent the same amount of time with their boss. I dropped that little fact after a few hours, for maximum embarrassment impact.

“As for the outrage over the prime minister sparing so much time to see me when there were more important things for him to be doing, I had 56 one-on-one meetings with Tony Blair when he was UK leader [from 1997 to 2007]. Mr Morrison only got 45 minutes of access to my political expertise … so probably feels short-changed.”

Long before he became a global lightning rod, Morgan was merely a newspaper columnist with a gift for self-promotion and access to big celebrities. Before he turned 30, he became editor of News Of The World, then jumped to the Daily Mirror. He thrived in the gritty world of tabloid journalism, sparring with story subjects and rivals alike.

In May 2004, Morgan was sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror after nearly 10 years, for the fallout from publishing hoax photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Two years later, he received a curious offer from his old mate Simon Cowell: a gig as a judge on America’s Got Talent.

Even today, he marvels at the quick turn of fortune.

“I was staying at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel – the Pretty Woman hotel,” he recalls.

“I had my own trailer on the Paramount movie lot. I had an Aston Martin I’d rented for the summer and I went down to a beautiful hotel, right on the beach in Santa Monica, with my wife. And when we turned up, [the show] had been on air two or three weeks and was No.1.

“But I hadn’t been out to experience what that would be like. The management had all lined up in the foyer to greet me, and they put me in the presidential suite where the previous occupants had been Bill and Hillary Clinton. They said, ‘Whatever you want, Mr Morgan.’ I remember turning to my wife and going, ‘I could get very used to this.’”

Piers Morgan used to be close with former US president Donald Trump. Picture: Scott Olson/Getty

That show was the making of Morgan as a transatlantic TV brand. He went on to appear on Britain’s Got Talent, replaced legendary US talk-show host Larry King on CNN, and in 2008 won the US version of The Celebrity Apprentice, hosted by Trump.

The two remained close for years after Trump’s presidential victory, but the relationship soured during the pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, which set off a racial reckoning.

“None of it particularly shocked me,” Morgan says of Trump’s refusal to accept defeat.

“I was aware of his fault lines. It brought out the worst in him. But it was a side that I knew existed.”

And while he believes Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss was “despicable … and has certainly sullied him”, he also believes he can be re-elected.

“I read a survey that independent [voters] have warmed to Trump because they’re not exposed to his Twitter feed all day long – the less they hear from him, the more they don’t mind him. Trump without Twitter might be a far more tolerable beast.”

Morgan himself was very much on the platform during his six-year tenure as co-host of Good Morning Britain, when it topped TV ratings.

“It was nice to crisscross the two countries,” he says of that time.

“I missed the anonymity that comes from not being a celebrity – like, it’s quite nice sometimes to go out and just be someone who blends into the background. On the other hand, I’ve got a very healthy ego. I’ve always enjoyed the attention, the noise, the celebrity status, more than I would miss the anonymity.”

Piers Morgan: “Once she met Harry, I never heard from [Meghan, Duchess of Sussex] again.” Picture: Damian Bennett

Upheaval and controversy, though, were never far behind, and last year, they finally caught up with him.

After Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, levelled accusations of racism at the royal family in her interview with Oprah Winfrey last March, he proclaimed that he didn’t believe her – and his UK TV career came to a shuddering halt.

“I watched the interview on the Monday morning before we went on air,” he recalls.

“I was steaming with anger at the way they were smearing the royal family with unsubstantiated allegations without providing names or proof. I also realised very quickly that some of the things were immediately, demonstrably untrue.”

Markle and Morgan had been friendly at one point, but he tells Stellar, “Once she met Harry, I never heard from her again.”

In retrospect, he says that’s “very indicative of her general behaviour, which is to cut everybody from her life once she finds them no longer of any use to her. If you have a personal experience, it’s going to inform you about their character, and nothing I’ve seen since with [her] has changed my opinion. She’s a pretty ruthless, manipulative woman.”

Morgan has been critical of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

The day after his explosive verdict on the couple’s chat with Winfrey, he and the show’s weather presenter Alex Beresford had a heated exchange that ended with Morgan storming out of the studio on air.

Morgan says he’d invited Beresford to join the morning recap after he’d sent “quite a thoughtful series of messages about having a child with a mixed-race relationship, and thought he’d have something to offer the debate. But instead, he prepared this whole speech designed to take me down and make himself a star.

I could see what he was doing. And very quickly, I thought, I’m not having this, so I walked off just to calm down before I said something stupid. I actually came back 10 minutes later, finished the debate with him and finished the show.”

The walkout made global headlines and generated a record number of complaints to the UK TV regulator – which were later dismissed – but he still thought it would blow over.

“Unbeknown to me, Meghan Markle had written to the female chief executive of ITV, Dame Carolyn McCall, demanding she get rid of me. And using phrases like, ‘I speak to you as a woman’ and ‘As a mother …’ as if somehow this made all the difference.

And I was then presented with a sort of fait accompli where they said, ‘If you apologise, you can keep your job. If you don’t, you can’t.’ And I said, ‘What part of me do you think is going to apologise for something I genuinely believe?’”

So he walked, considering himself a victim of the very movement he’s now on a mission to destroy.

“On a point of principle, defending myself to have the right to an opinion [that] I just don’t believe somebody, is a hill worth dying on,” he says. “That went to the heart of what I believe is wrong with this cancel-culture philosophy, which is: ‘If you don’t agree with me, you must be cancelled.’”

Piers Morgan stars in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Damian Bennett

That’s why Morgan supports author JK Rowling in the ongoing row over her views on transgender women, and calls the way some of the cast of the Harry Potter films distanced themselves from her “one of the most snivelling, cowardly things I’ve seen”.

The irony is he and Rowling don’t get on: “She’s hammered me on Twitter. It doesn’t matter. I defend her right to have her opinion.”

For many Australians, Morgan’s attacks on the Sussexes are probably the best known thing about him, but he wants to clarify that, whatever he may think of the couple, their transgressions pale in comparison to those of Harry’s uncle Andrew.

“To be clear, the Queen’s son paying £10 million to pay off a woman claiming that he sexually assaulted her, I think, is the worst scandal of modern times for the royal family, and dwarfs any of the antics of Meghan and Harry.”

He could go on about Markle, Rowling, Smith or anyone else, but Morgan would rather you tune in to hear him talk about all and sundry with guests on his show, where no topic is off limits, however controversial it may be.

As he asks with a laugh: “You won’t be surprised if I defend Marmite against Vegemite? I’m a big fan of all things Aussie.”

Piers Morgan Uncensored premieres at 9pm on April 26 on Sky News. Watch on Foxtel or Sky News Regional; stream on Flash.

Originally published as What Piers Morgan really thinks about Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese