I was invited back on to Piers Morgan’s show next week to debate Cenk Uygur, in studio, while he was due in the UK to speak at SXSW festival in London. I politely declined. Uygur is, to put it mildly, not a man whose public manner suggests calm forensic exchange. Morgan himself proudly features a compilation video on his YouTube channel entitled: “Cenk Uygur’s Biggest Piers Morgan Uncensored MELTDOWNS!”, complete with a thumbnail showing no fewer than three images of Uygur snarling and yelling in fury.
The hypocrisy might also embarrass the Labour government, if they are still capable of that emotion
It is therefore with some amusement that I now learn that he has been barred from entering the United Kingdom by the Home Secretary.
Uygur was an odd fit for SXSW London, whose own website describes the festival as “the global festival for the convergence of business, technology and creativity,” which, it says, is “grounded in practical optimism.” Whatever else may be said for Uygur, practical optimism is not the first phrase that springs to mind.
I wrote in these pages about my appearance on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show a month ago, bemoaning the conspiracy theories aired on the programme and Morgan’s apparent nonchalance about them, alongside his more energetic attempt to portray me as insufficiently critical of Israel. He also asked me to continue critiquing his show in my writing (happy to oblige), but when I did – in what I can only assume was a case of age-related skin thinning – he reacted with a tantrum on X. He proudly boasted that he had counted all my Spectator articles – 186 apparently – and found only one not to be about Israel. Perhaps he should learn to count better, and also to read past the headlines, since he admitted he had not actually read the columns. (Piers, have you got this far?)
