Out of his depth: Andy Burnham bottles Chagos deal after Trump meeting

The Telegraph. for the memoir to be pulped. But in what instance would he be willing to negotiate with Princess Diana's brother? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Tim Stanley. Tim, we're nearly at 40,000 subscribers on our new shiny YouTube channel. And that's great because we're going into the conference season. You and I are in Liverpool this weekend. I'm having a dust-up with Bridget Philipson on Sunday, the Sunday showdown. Get your tickets, roll up, etc. Then we're over in Birmingham for the Conservative Party conference. So we need people to click. We need to click the subscribe button. And then we can have a four at the beginning of our subscription numbers. Every time someone subscribes, an angel gets their wings. That's exactly it. And what a podcast we have today because we've got both your nemesis and, to a certain extent, Donald Trump's nemesis, Piers Morgan, talking about his nemesis, Charles Spencer. And we're going to speak to our colleague, Tony Diver, the political editor, who asked the key question at the press conference yesterday. You know what these things are like, Tim? You're there, you're jostling, you're shouting out, Donald, Donald. Everyone else is elbowing you in the face. Wall Street Journal's smashing you over the head with a notebook. Somebody else has stuck a pencil in your leg, probably from NBC, right, or CNN. And suddenly we hear Diver's voice ask the critical question about Chagos. Tony Diver, our political editor, is now back in the UK and joins us. Tony, you did it in about 24 hours. Have you slept? I had about two hours on the plane on the way back. We landed this morning, so not really. And this was the prime minister's plane. You actually fly with him, don't you? That's right, yeah. And he comes down the back of the plane to talk to the reporters on the way out and on the way back. We saw him looking a lot more relaxed after his meetings yesterday. Does he have a separate prime ministerial cabin? Yes. There's a strict etiquette on this one. The journalists sit at the back of the plane, in economy seats. And then most of the jet is taken up by a business class area and there's a little curtain that comes across so we can't see what they're up to. But it's not like Air Force One. He doesn't have a bed and a desk or everything. He's just in a sort of a souped-up business class. Yeah, it just looks like a very small plane when most of the plane is business class. OK. And final question on this, because this really concerns me. What was the turbulence like on this small plane? Tim Stanley is a nervous flyer, Tony Diver. I'd just like to say that now. Because you're going across the Atlantic in a small plane. Yeah, it was pretty bad on the way in, actually, this morning. I want to know something. What meals are you served and can you drink on board? The meals are very good, actually. In fact, on the way out we had a cheese board, which I've never seen before on one of these planes. Interesting. They came around with a pretty extensive cheese board. And the cutlery, is it plastic or is the cutlery metal? No, it's metal and you get different cutlery for every course. OK. I'm almost disappointed that I have to ask you about the very important question that you asked at the United Nations about the Chagos deal. Let us remind the audience what your question was and what the President said. The Chagos deal, Mr. President, are you going to support it? The what? The deal to give away the Chagos Islands from the UK to Mauritius. I don't support it. I think it's terrible. It was a terrible deal. They all of a sudden say they have ownership. Somebody has ownership that never showed up before after decades and centuries. I think it's ridiculous. Now, we were talking about that and it's strategically very important, very important. You know, we had to send our B-2 bombers when we bombed the Iran nuclear. We had to send the B-2 bombers back home to Missouri as opposed to flying for a short period of time than a fly for a long period of time. It's amazing how strategic it is. And I think the Prime Minister is going to be looking at a very, very strategic location. Amazing. And it's unique. I said, well, we could get something else. Actually, it's a very unique, it's a very important piece of real estate, militarily and strategically. Yes. So that question was important because we haven't heard what Donald Trump thinks about the Chagos Islands for a few months now. Under the Keir Starmer government, he famously reversed his position, said it was a terrible deal. It was an act of great stupidity. That was because he was annoyed with Starmer because he wouldn't let him use British air bases to bomb Iran. But since Bernie took over, we haven't heard either what Burnham thinks or what Trump thinks about this deal. So this summit was the first opportunity to hear that. And as you can hear from that clip, he hasn't changed his mind. He still thinks it's a terrible deal. And he's pressuring Andy Burnham to do something about it, to review the entire thing, which will have pretty severe consequences if that does happen, not least upsetting the Mauritians and potentially getting Britain into trouble in the international courts. Andy Burnham is there kind of nodding along, seeming to agree with the US President, Tony, and saying, yep. He says, yep. Yes, that he's looking at it. And Keir Starmer's line was always that the deal was the best possible way of securing the long-term future of the military base on the islands, which is used by both Britain and America. Andy Burnham doesn't say that. What he says is that he's pushing for a resolution to the problem that he says he inherited from Starmer, which is acceptable both to the Americans and some Mauritians. And so the key point that we had yesterday when Burnham was asked after his meeting with Trump what his new position was, was that he's reviewing the entire deal. He's looking potentially at ripping it up and coming up with. A new solution that the White House would be happy with. Is number 10 happy with Burnham's performance in New York? Yes, they are. Other than this issue with the Chagos Islands, which was a sort of fly in the ointment for Burnham, it did go very well. And Trump said to Burnham that he thought UK-US relations were much better under his government than under Keir Starmer. There was lots of warm words and the two of them announced various kind of defense and AI initiatives together. So I think number 10 will be very pleased with that. It's. Defeating Trump is one of those things where it can go either way. He's very unpredictable and he often goes on a long rant about something which is very unhelpful for transatlantic relations. That didn't happen. And so they will be pleased. But this Chagos thing is obviously something that's going to have to be resolved. We sensed watching it that Burnham looked nervous. Now, I know that sometimes things can feel different in a room than watching on telly. I've often found that as a sketch writer. In this case, was that the vibe you got from the prime minister? Because there was a lot of shifting and leaning forward. And attempting and failing because there's a lot of shifting and leaning forward and attempting and failing to mirror Donald Trump's body language. Yeah, he did look nervous, actually, and I'm not sure how much of it you could see on TV, but it was a slightly odd set up where there were a dozen people for both delegations. So the Brits on the left, the Americans on the right, and they were sitting in rows of six. So you almost had a kind of wedding style set up of these two rows of people and then the two principals, Burnham and Trump, at the front. And Trump. Trump sort of naturally settles in this kind of power squat on the chair. He leans forward and he takes up as much space as possible. Burnham wasn't doing that. Burnham was sort of shifting from one side of the chair to the other and looking at it uncertain, which, you know, I think for him, this is probably the most intimidating moment in foreign relations of his premiership so far. And he would have been briefed by the foreign office that it had a high chance of going wrong. So you can see why you can see why he looked nervous. I have to say on the plane on the way back last night, he seemed a lot more relaxed. He came back in his jeans and his T-shirt. And he was laughing about the whole thing, saying that it was pleased that it was over and that it had gone well. Pleased that it was over, isn't it? Exactly. A ringing endorsement, Tony. I mean, you've observed President Trump with Keir Starmer and now President Trump with Andy Burnham. Who do you think prime ministerially fared better? Well, both of them had a good first outing. I mean, remember back to the time when Keir Starmer met Trump for the first time after his election. The two of them got on very well. And then there was that famous visit at the White House when he produced an invitation to a state visit from his breast pocket. And a letter from the king that was seen for a while as a kind of crowning glory of Keir Starmer's foreign policy performances. But then it all went wrong over this Iran bases issue earlier in the year. I think that the two of them have a more natural rapport. And Trump likes to joke. He's quite sort of bloke-ish. Andy Burnham has that same vibe about him, I think. And although he was nervous, it was clear that there was a bit of chemistry between the two of them. It always seems a bit unusual that Keir Starmer and Donald Trump got on well. You know, the man who spent his career running from prosecutors and the career prosecutor who made it to number 10. It was always an unlikely match. But I think Burnham felt a little bit more natural with him. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Burnham is more blokey because weirdly Keir Starmer was slightly camp. Wasn't he? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I know you were only there for 24 hours, Tony. But do you get any sense that Britain's position on the settlements in the West Bank has in any way damaged our position in Washington? Well, Trump was asked about this, actually, and he didn't seem to have an issue with it. He talked about the fact that he'd been notified. We know that Burnham had phoned him beforehand to tell him that he was going to do that. I think that really is more about Trump's relationship with Netanyahu, is what we're seeing playing out there, rather than something between Britain and the US. I think Trump has deliberately kept quiet on the sanctions that he knows the Israelis are very unhappy about, perhaps in an attempt to try and chase Netanyahu. increasingly frustrated bit for other reasons. So, no, I didn't really pick that up on this trip. But it must be said that Burnham spent most of the trip talking about domestic issues. I mean, even in his UN address last night, which is his main opportunity to make a big splash on the world stage, he spent the majority of it talking about the cost of living in Britain, Number 10 North, devolution and all the other things that he's doing here. He didn't spend a lot of time talking about Israel or Russia or world affairs, which is obviously what the conference is meant to be about. Wow. One wonders what the other world leaders were making of his banter on Number 10 North, honestly. North-South Korea, North-South England. Tony Diver, get some rest. We've got conference season coming. We're going to be together at the Labour Party conference, then the Conservative Party conference. So, for goodness sake, put your feet up. Honestly. That's Tony's version of events. What did you think of it? I actually listened rather than watched. Oh, how did it sound? It sounded as if Donald Trump was completely in command of the world. The entire press conference, running the show, and that basically Andy Burnham was, you know, a support act. But then it always seems like that, whoever Donald Trump is with, because that's just the nature of Donald Trump. But you had the idea, to coin the phrase, it was like the master and the apprentice. What did you think? Well, to be fair, he is, what, a six-year president? Yeah. And he does always do this silverback gorilla thing of sitting, leaning forward. And he's a big and imposing man. And he always dominates the conversation because he's got the most bombs. I mean, that's why we go there. It reminded me, there's a very funny film from the 60s called The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer with Peter Cook. And there's a scene in it in which the British prime minister has a press conference and says, I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. to speak with the president. The next thing you see is him sitting in a long line of world leaders to the Oval Office. You know, you've got Russians in funny hats. You've got African dictators with goats and all that. And finally, he gets through the door. And literally one second later, he walks straight out of it again. Quite. And then he gives another press conference, which he says, we spoke at great depth about many weighty subjects. So my point is, it was ever thus because we are perceived as a junior partner. The question is how you pull that off, how you make that work for you. What can you, what talents, skills and ideas like Thatcher or Blair. We have to have huge charisma, huge intellect and a huge amount of presence yourself. You have to bring your own vision of what you want this alliance to achieve and what it's all about and sell it to the public. And that was Tony's point about his speech to the U.N. was surprisingly provincial. It was about local issues, buses. And apparently there weren't very many people there. The room was empty and Ed Miliband was half asleep having consumed presumably 15 vegan flapjacks. Well, it's the U.N. They didn't have a resolution about how evil the Jews are to discuss that day. So who wants to attend that? Right. So my point is, we all know. That we are playing with a bad hand here. The question is how you play that hand. And watching it, I was deeply embarrassed for my country. Yes. You are growing in your disrespect and hatred. Don't say hatred. I don't hate anyone except for Piers Morgan. I don't hate anyone. Well, speaking of whom, he's coming up next and we're going to talk about your rekindled bromance. But anyway. But the prime minister looked nervous. He looked fidgety. He had one gag to tell, which was, I'm from Manchester. This is one damn thing that he has to say. There was no command of the room. There was no vision of the British special relationship. And it just brought home the unlikeliness of this premiership and how unprepared he is to do it. He's totally unprepared and he possibly is underqualified. He was a mayor. He was previously a minister for health. He has not even served in the top four. And the notion that anyone, anyone could be plucked from that level of obscurity and dropped into New York and expect them to perform in a Churchillian way is preposterous. It cannot be done. Matt Damon said in 2008 when Sarah Palin was nominated as the Republican vice presidential candidate, it was like a Hallmark movie. Yes. Where a hockey mom accidentally becomes president. Yes. And, you know, with a title like My White House Crazy Journey. Yeah. It's like that. Yeah. It's like your dad. Yes. Has won a contest on the back of a cereal box to serve as prime minister for a week. And what are the things you'd like to do, dad? Why don't we go to New York and meet that chap, Donald Trump? I was thinking about it from the love actually perspective of can a UK prime minister ever take on a US president? And actually it would. It would have been more convincing to see Hugh Grant there yesterday. No, genuinely, just with like, you know, the slightly snarly tone. Yeah. The cut glass English accent, a degree of dry humour and actually probably a superior intellect. A bit of bleeding class. A bit of bleeding class, love. Yeah. He made it. He then went on a tour of Central Park because, of course, we've all seen Friends. Oh, no. And he filmed a video from Central Park. I'm here. I'm here in New York. And the video reminded me of there's a sitcom in America. From the 70s called Mary Tyler Moore Show. And it's opening credit sequence is this lovely, jolly song. And Mary has come from from a rural area into big Minneapolis. And she's skipping along past the shops and she's got her bags and her floppy hat. And she's looking up at the tall buildings and she sort of pulls off her hat and throws it. And the theme tune climaxes in, you're going to make it in the end. And so that's that's Burnham. He's Mary Tyler Moore. He is. Well, he's he's won a prize. He's gone to New York City. All right. Hang on a minute. I'm going to put a couple of things to you because this has come up in some of our correspondence to the Daily T. Are you not just being an extraordinary snob? Yeah. You're being very southern about a northerner. And you've got this bee in your bonnet as a Cambridge academic formally. Because he did English literature rather than history or a serious subject like PPE. No, no, no, no. We'll address those complaints. Jim Callaghan, who served his country admirably, had not been to university. But Ramsey MacDonald, first Labour prime minister, Scottish, great war leader, David Lloyd George, Welsh. This has got absolutely nothing to do with accent or class. It's quite the opposite. And actually, Jacob Rees-Mogg makes this point really, really carefully and cleverly, frankly. You know, we always remember the biggies and the others who just do not rise to the occasion, just kind of fall into insignificance. He doesn't have the character of a great. He doesn't have the position of state. He isn't a man of towering intellect and huge charisma and huge character. Yeah. And therefore. But none of them are. None of them are. But I mean. None of them are. Not the working class, not the middle class. I want to be clear about that. I'm not saying. Because we were asked, we were addressing this question of a particular life and historical experience. Why has it changed? Why were we capable of producing great forceful trade union figures in the past? And now we don't. And the answer is. Because across the board, a decline. The point is, is they had to reach outside the Labour Party, outside the Parliamentary Party to find someone to run them, because there is no one qualified within the Parliamentary Party to be prime minister. That's what they were admitting. And that is a statement not just about the decline of the Labour Party. I'm saying that's a statement about British cultural decline. We cannot produce the people. And be honest, the list of prime ministers that we've had since Blair, it's been a story of decline since then. Yes, now I know. All of them, almost all of them. Look like fools. Boris at least looked like he was in on the joke. But Andy Burnham is just the long line of, is the last of the long line of a tale of decline. Mediocrity. Which makes me really upset for my country. Well, Telegraph readers are also upset. Do you think Burnham will pass the Trump test? Yes, Andy's got what it takes, 7%. No, he's out of his depth, 93%. Rick Shaw, I think, sums up your sentiments. Burnham looked pretty ineffective on the world stage. He lacks gravitas and is a bit of a stumbler. When he speaks, is this the best Cambridge Uni can do? Tim Stanley. Angela Moulton, what a shower of amateurs. Absolute lightweights and incompetence. Our country is a laughingstock and an irrelevance on the world stage. It's not a great writer. This is the other thing, by the way. Tony saying, oh, yeah, Andy Burnham's team's happy with it. What? Because he didn't stumble over or like have his fly undone or accidentally like punch the first lady in the face. You know, it hasn't turned into a scene. It's a naked gun. Yes. Therefore, it's gone supremely well. Well, and of course, there is an important policy point about all of this to bring it back to Chagos, right? That West Streeting was asked about it this morning. So is the Chagos deal good or not? Well, Labour has spent the last two years devising this deal and defending it and saying it's necessary for the future security of the West. And it is a good deal. And Burnham was quoted beforehand going out saying, I'm going to do everything I can to get this deal. Before he sat down with the president. So now Labour is trying to pretend the last two years didn't happen. But Labour is now in the awkward position of trying to distance itself from a deal that they said was essential. And so Streeting's formula is, it is a good deal. But we've always said it's only a good deal if the Americans support it. When the Americans don't support it, QED, it's not a good deal. Also, why can't we have a bit of supremacy over our own laws? It's not down to whether America supports it or not. A prime minister of great. character or a minister of great character and indeed moral courage would look at this deal for what it is. Any member of the public, this is like bad management of the England team where the entire nation goes, well, no, you should be playing that player on the left and that player on the right. And why hasn't he been chosen? The public sees it so clearly. It is a terrible deal. Nobody can work out why the hell Keir Starmer and the then Attorney General, Lord Herma, cooked up this nonsense that was basically confected by an international court that had been in itself infected by Chinese influence. There is no reason to give away the Chagos Islands. It's costing us money to give away our sovereign territory. It's compromising our security on the world stage and that of our closest ally. Anyone, this is where we come down to insignificance and people who are completely out of their depth. If he was worth anything, he'd go, clearly this is a terrible deal and we're scrapping it tomorrow. Yes, because the macro story is whatever the arguments are for the necessity of the deal because other countries are threatening to sue us. The macro argument is you're telling me we're going to pay another country to take control of a key strategic asset. It's just so stupid. So that's the macro story. And this is the thing is that we Britain, decline mediocre Britain, is lost in the weeds of micro narratives. So another example from their exchange was they were asked about illegal immigration and Trump just sits there and says we've stopped people crossing the border. Burnham sits there and says, well, people coming across the channel is down by half. Now, whether that's accurate or not, it's from an all time high. So it's still thousands of people crossing. But the point is, is Trump is able to talk about immigration and immigration control like a man who believes it. He has the macro narrative. We turn up there and it looked almost like he was saying something he didn't like because he felt he had to bring something to the conversation. Yes. But does he really believe in immigration control? Later on, Trump addressed the UN and he said, all you people talk about how important it is to preserve cultures, etc. And yet you have supported the mass movement of people which has destroyed people's cultures. Can you ever imagine a British leader saying something like that? That's the macro narrative. That's what you have when Thatcher in the Cold War is meeting Reagan and saying we believe in freedom and we believe that we can control and even defeat socialism. We don't have those macro narratives. We don't have those macro narratives now because our British elite doesn't think. They both don't have the intellectual capacity. They don't see Britain as being a world leader which should lead in ideas and they cannot connect the micro to the macro because they're almost embarrassed by the process of doing it. Yes. By the idea that they should bring to the table a grand vision. Why would Britain do that? We're just little Britain. We're just wee Britain. We're just trying to do our own little thing. But that is emblematic, this Che. It's almost like it's literally signalling just how embarrassing we've become to the rest of the world by doing this ridiculous, completely self-defeating deal which actually sells out not just our own country but the Chagossians. I mean, it's just insane. I tell you what, there is something to cheer you up before we go. Did you hear West Streeting being absolutely skewered by Nick Ferrari? I did. And no one is better than West Streeting at being embarrassing. He does handle it rather well. Let's just listen to that. This is the right level of resource that we can be pleased about where we are and where this country sits in relation to the space race and the science and the technology that we have here in the UK, the capability that we have in partnership with our allies. But this is the latest iteration of it. And the cost? Well, I don't have the figures to hand unusually for me this morning, Nick, on your programme. You don't know the cost. We are investing. We are investing more in space. I don't have that figure to hand. Well, Mr Streeting, why on earth not? It's my money. It's my listeners' money. Why can't we know what it is? Yes, it is, Nick. But I haven't got instant recall on that number off the top of my head. Fun times, Tim. Piers Morgan, welcome back to The Daily Tea. Lovely to see you. So what's happening now? It's Morgan versus Spencer round two. He's defamed you. You've called it out. He's apologised. Are you still going to take him to the cleaners? Well, are we going to just avoid the elephant in the room, which is actually we first have to address the war with me and your co-host, Mr Stanley, who called me the worst human being in the world. I'd like to correct that. It was the greatest monster in history. To which I offer you Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Chairman Mao, Stalin. Can I? Can I give some, can I give this some context to this? Because basically, Piers is my friend. You are my friend. We recently asked Piers on to The Daily Tea and I said, I'm not going on with that Tim Stanley. He's been horrible about me. I then got you both together at a party a couple of weeks ago and said, what is this all about? We need to get the bromance back together. I said to Piers, what is it that Tim Stanley said about you? And Piers said, he's written that I'm worse than Hitler. And then I turned to Piers, to you and said, what has Piers written about you? And you said. And you said that Piers had posted on X, who is Tim Stanley, which you took great offence to. Yeah, which Stalin, for all his faults, never asked, who is Tim Stanley? But basically, you're back on good terms and it's good to see it. Piers, I apologise. It was a sketch writer's joke. It became a running gag in my columns that whenever someone did something terrible, I'd always say, but then there's Piers Morgan. So I'm sorry you were the butt of the joke. But in the league table of world evil, though, Earl Spencer now is, beating you. Thank you. He's knocked you into the second spot with this book. And everyone is impressed with the laser-like way in which you spotted the error and called it out. And I have to say, tribute to you, the very generous way in which you've said, donate to charity and I will let this go. Well, not just any charity, the King's Trust, which is King Charles' charity, which I think would be appropriate. You know, on one level, it's sort of handbags at dawn, squabbling between people in the media, of which Earl Spencer has always considered himself to be a journalist and so on. But on the other, there's a couple of fundamental points here I've made. One is that this wasn't just, as you'd said on Lorraine Kelly's show this morning, a little mistake, which he's going to correct in the next edition. This was him accusing me of planning and executing the most egregious invasion of royal privacy in history. And the reason I say that is it led to the Mirror Group paying Princess Diana over a million pounds in damages, which is the biggest payout by any media organisation, to any member of the royal family ever for invasion of privacy. So this is not a small thing that he was accusing me of. And he goes into some detail, explains what happened. She was in a gymnasium in her leotard, being caught out by a secret photographer. And the Mirror then published the pictures. He says that my spokesman boasted about sales rising off the back of them. Then the sales fell as the public turned. Then we had to cave. Then we had to pay. Then we had to pay the money and so on. And he goes into considerable detail. This is over several pages of the book. And I read all this. I went, hang on. This has got nothing to do with me. I wasn't at the Mirror Group then. So I checked. I just checked my memory was serving me correctly. And this story was published with the pictures in 1993. It was litigated through 1994. And it was settled in very early 1995. I didn't join the Mirror Group as editor of the Mirror until October 1995. Some eight, nine months after all this had been resolved and settled. So to me, it's not a little mistake to accuse an editor of the worst abuse of royal privacy we've ever seen. And I think I'm perfectly entitled to be angry about it and to demand more importantly, that this defamatory lie about me is removed from the book. Now, this is where it gets interesting because Earl Spencer, clearly panicking, issued an apology. Yesterday in record speed, something you'd normally have to get out of him under pain of torture to publicly apologize to me. Why has he done that? Well, clearly, his lawyers have advised him. It's a prima facie case here. He admitted he got it completely wrong. He made the extraordinary observation in his apology that he assumed he assumed I was also was masquerading as some historian. What did historians assume? Anything? And and he thinks he can now just, you know, do it. A little change for the second edition, and that's fine. But I'm afraid it's not fine. And we send a legal letter to Earl Spencer and to Penguin Publishers last night pointing out this book is now on sale. This defamatory lie, which they conceded is completely untrue, is in this first edition. It's being bought by a lot of people, presumably making him a lot of money, which is ironic given you always said he'd never do this profit off Diana. But he is. And I don't think we are beyond the realms of reasonableness to say this book should not be being sold with this admitted lie in it. Can you get a book back? Can you get a book back off the shelves of WHQ and others? You can have it pulped, Alan Partridge had it pulped, it can be done. But would you be willing to let it go if he made a substantial donation to the King's Trust? Well, everything's negotiable. But as things stand, he's made no offer to do anything other than to amend things for a second edition. That's just not good enough. And by the way, he would not accept that. way around. So this is a guy who's been very fast and loose. with his litigation over the years and threats against media and so on and maybe he doesn't like it up him but remember this is a guy who said he wrote this book for historical reasons he's the historian he keeps saying this to laura kunzberg many times i'm a historian i want to witness to history a witness to history well if history is going to recall that i was innocent of the mirror when they published this grotesque invasion of privacy as he puts it in the book then the history needs to be corrected and all the copies that have gone out with this lie in it need to be withdrawn what about his account of a phone call with you after diana's death in which he said he rang you to personally tell you you were not welcome at her funeral and he described you as surly and annoyed and snarling uh in another comment he made about this when he was asked about it and he doubled down on this in his apology yesterday but he started the apology by saying he absolutely insists that i was effectively rude and annoyed and surly and snarly with him well the call happened i can confirm that uh but i utterly refute his characterization of this and this is why it's interesting because it was in the same week as his call to prince charles now king charles exactly the same week literally within a you know probably a few hours um because this was between diana's death and the funeral and the sequence of events was the lord chamberlain's office had invited every newspaper editor to the funeral formally as was royal protocol for all royal events i was at the queen mother's funeral for example um it's you know this is just an acknowledgement that editors of public figures represent their their readers and they get invited to all these royal events whether they good uh happy occasions or sad ones and i specifically said when the lord chamberlain's office called me has this been approved by the spencer family because i could see how angry uh earl spencer was getting about the media and their uh in his eyes complicity and what happened in the paris underpass that killed his sister and i said has it been approved yes it has i said okay well on that basis i accept the invitation he rang the next day as he did various other newspaper editors uh including ironically the editor of the daily mail who he's just sold his serialization rights to for the book so there's an irony there um but he rang me to uninvite me from the funeral so i very respectfully and calmly and politely explained to him my conversation with the lord chamberlain and he said i'm not going to invite you to the as being the reason why i'd accepted and he said well that is not the case i we would prefer you the family not to attend i said i completely respect your wishes i will not attend and then i said and i would further like to if you if you could do this for me please extend my deepest condolences to your mother francis shang kid who i'd built up a very long and good relationship with she used to call me many times she used to write to me many times we had a good relationship and i said i would love you to extend my condolences to her for this terrible tragedy he said i will do that thank you very much that was the tone now the reason i can be so confident that that was how that conversation went is i made a contemporaneous note at the time and i also put it in my diaries the insider which were as you know a big best-selling book back in 2005 sold over 400 000 copies number one for many many weeks serialized in the daily mail like his book so no one could have missed it he's never tried to correct what i said about that phone in the next 21 years and he can't because it was an accurate contemporaneously noted account of what that call was like and it was very respectful in turn not least because i thought he might be taping me i knew he was gunning for tabloid editors i didn't really trust him not to i mean in the end what he did by uninviting us he then went and told the papers he'd uninvited us and then we became earl spencer bands editors from funeral and we became hate figures and we're getting blood red hands in the post and so on which i thought was incredibly unfair given that i had had in the last two years of a life in particular an exceptionally good relationship with princess diana so putting all that aside the significance of my recollection of that call noted at the time put in the book is that clearly his spin on this is designed to damage me and i believe it's completely inaccurate and i think he's done exactly the same thing with that call in the same week with then prince charles i do not believe for a moment prince charles was sounding as a lottery winner over the death of diana he was grief-stricken time and deeply shocked as everybody was and taking care of their sons and nor do i think you know we will forget her soon i just can't imagine him saying that and the way that uh spencer has twisted michael with him makes me think he's done the same thing with the call with charles how was princess diana in those last two years pierce because as you say you were up close and personal with various members of her family and you had a working relationship with the then prince of wales and i think the context particularly of their post-divorce relationship is important in all this because the implication seems to be from charles spencer that he's there rubbing his hands together with glee because he can go off and marry camilla i mean actually was he able to do that would the queen have allowed it would the queen mother have allowed it but but tell us about your kind of final conversations with princess diana and the impression it left on you well i had many conversations with her i mean one of the most revealing moments i ever have with princess diana and i listen i had lunch private lunch with her at kensington palace with prince william when he was 13 for well over two hours paul burrell was the butler he served the the food and she unloaded on me in a very candy way about absolutely everything all her relationships all the scandals everything i could ask her anything i wanted she answered it was all completely off the record um certainly while she was alive i recounted a lot of the lunch in my book many years later the insider like what i referenced earlier um but i remember when i was editor of the news of the world and really i think really looking back on it significant moment and it was when jonathan dimbleby's book about charles came out the authorized biography and we got an early copy of the sunday times uh which was uh serializing the book and there was a line buried away in the splash which wasn't a headline and that turned out to be an agreement which said that the book makes clear that charles never really loved diana and he always loved camilla barker bowls uh now i've no doubt he always loved camilla barker bowls and it is actually a great love story notwithstanding all the complexity and difficulties they went to they're together now they're incredibly happy and i think it speaks for itself however diana was we splashed on charles i never loved diana which was from this book which had been authorized and diana through an intermediary contacted my office at the news of the world and said it's not true he did love me and if you get the pictures from our second honeymoon which was secret and you had pictures at the time by paparazzi which we asked you not to publish and you didn't i wasn't the others at the time they'll be in your safe you now have my permission to publish them it was extraordinary so i went to the safe and there were these pictures extraordinary pictures from a second secret honeymoon that charles and diana had after they married and they were in the ocean and clearly very loving charles was throwing around on his shoulder and they were kissing and hugging and everything clearly very loving pictures and she wanted us to publish them which we did as the proof that he did love her which just goes to her hurt and emotional turmoil about that part of it i think that she was certainly in love with him i think that he was to a degree in love with her albeit at the same time he was in love with somebody else and had been before he ever met diana so it's a kind of shakespearean love story we know we know what happened here we know how tragic it all was in how difficult it was um you know cut forward to when i'm having lunch she's telling me all about everything um but she also said to me a very specific plea which again plays into spencer's belief that the british tabloids were to blame for what happened to her in paris where she said to me this is 96 when we had this lunch and she said um the thing that really really upset her was that there were rogue paparazzi following her everywhere deliberately goading intimidating harassing and abusing her so that she would react in a certain way and she said to me that she was going to do something in a certain way which would then generate pictures of her crying or shouting or whatever and they would get something they could sell and she said i just want that to stop i said i get it and she showed me videos where these guys were acting like a pack of animals if i couldn't believe what i was watching they weren't attached to any newspaper there weren't regular people that we ever used they were just rogue paparazzi running around making her life hell and then setting the pictures of her crying pretending it's because she was upset about her divorce so we announced in the mirror you can go back and look at the pictures of her crying and she said i can check this that we were no longer going to buy any paparazzi pictures where it looked like the princess had been goaded intimidated harassed abused or anything by paparazzi and she was incredibly grateful she rang me to thank me and said i can't tell you how much of a difference this will make to my life if everyone follows this lead now this is a year before she died so people need to understand it is much more complicated than people think the relationship between her the tabloids in particular she spoke to richard k at the daily mail all the time she spoke to me a lot i used to share stories with her about her that came in to make sure we got them right she would sometimes i would send her the story she would make changes and she would sign each copy of the change page and fax it back to me i've still got those right so this was somebody who towards the end had decided it's better to cooperate with certain journalists on papers richard k me and others and in return get a fairer crack of the whip from the irony about the circumstances around her death. I think she was actually getting until that moment a much better ride from the British tabloids in particular than she'd ever had. Piers, final question. Are there parallels between the Spencer story and the Meghan Markle story in as much as it's about celebrities saying this is my truth and sticking to it and demanding a one-way street in terms of coverage? I'll give you what I want to give you. You'll report it in a certain way. And this is not the first time, thinking of Meghan, that you've had a row with a high-profile aristocrat around this issue of whether or not they get to control the way the public perceives them. Yeah, and there's a stinking hypocrisy that runs through Harry, Earl Spencer, Meghan, all of them. They want their royal cake and eat it. They want to lecture the media about leaving them alone and demanding privacy left, right and centre, whilst then invading not just their privacy, but the privacy of members of the royal family, all of them, on Oprah Winfrey, on Netflix documentaries, on podcasts and so on, and in books. And we saw this with Harry's book Spare. We've seen it with Earl Spencer's book Mouths One Song. And the truth is, I wouldn't trust most of what they put in these books as far as I could throw it in terms of historical record. You know, let's be clear. I watched Earl Spencer today trying to say, I'm doing all this for Diana. This is what Diana would have wanted. Really, she would have wanted 30 years later. This all raked over the coals again, just to cause massive hurt and upset. And his primary target is King Charles, who's 77, who's got cancer, been battling that very bravely. He's done, I think, a remarkable job as our monarch in the years he's been there since his mother died. I think he exceeded all expectation. And he's had to deal with his brother, Andrew, and all the mayhem around that. Harry and Meghan and all that, the death of both his parents. He's been through a lot, Charles. And the fact that he now has Earl Spencer out there using phrases. is like he was excited like a lottery winner when Diana died. Knowing that the king can never really disprove it. He went as far as he could to say it was a lie in his statement. But he could never evidentially disprove it. And the damage will be done around the world, no question. And I think it's reprehensible. And now he's got to contend potentially with the notion of his own son, Harry, making a documentary about his ex-wife. What do you make of that, Piers? I think it's just absolutely outrageous hypocrisy once again. But what else can Harry do? The money flow is running out. The American venture seems to have just fizzled out. I was in LA recently. Nobody cares about them. The Hollywood set have long since moved on. The Hollywood set want to be associated with the actual royals, the king, queen, and the future king and queen. And they don't want to jeopardize getting close to them by siding with the royal renegades. When did you last see them really with any top A-listers in any social environment? They don't. So I think that they've run out of gas in California. They've come barging into the Cotswolds. They're making all their usual demands and complaints and so on. It's a permanent circus, a dramatic circus. And we'll cover it because it's good, juicy fodder for the media. But imagine how Charles and Camilla and William and Catherine feel about all this. They were left behind when these two fled the country to rebuild the monarchy, to repair the monarchy, to rebuild the monarchy. And now they've got these two pretending to be a rival royal family conducting events and tours and everything, but now based in the middle of the Cotswolds, in the middle of our country. And it's going to cause the actual royal family doing all the hard yards of duty, which is what they do in return for the palaces and the titles and everything else. It's going to be very, very difficult for them. Meanwhile, these two want to keep all their titles, but do zero duty in return for them. And they're going to have to do a lot of work. And just want to milk their royal connections for money because they need the money. Piers Morgan, we've built bridges here between you and Tim Stanley, but I'm getting the distinct, I'm getting the distinct impression that you cannot build a bridge with Charles Spencer unless he coughs up some serious cash. Yeah, I think he's going to have to take this a little bit more seriously than it was a little mistake. We'll correct for the next edition. Thank you very much, as ever, for joining us on The Daily Tee. Great to speak to you. Thank you.