Galloway on Piers Morgan: Unfriended by Trump, avoided by Johnson, the Corona Crusader’s the REAL leader of the opposition

Many people in Britain are pleasantly surprised that Piers Morgan has become a fierce critic of the UK government’s Covid-19 response. But I am not; I’ve known he’s a mensch since the Iraq War.

British TV host Piers Morgan is an unlikely hero. Brash and arrogant, conceited too, he tells a story, without irony, of sitting in a Paris restaurant opposite two English girls, one of whom shyly approached him with a camera in her hand, saying, “Excuse me. I’m sorry to trouble you…”

Imagining that the girl wanted a selfie with him, he stood up, said, “Of course,” put his arm around her and assumed the appropriate position. 

“Oh no,” said the girl. “I mean would you mind taking a picture of me and my friend?”

But as coronavirus has taken hold, Piers Morgan has become the man of the hour – except for those who imagine Covid-19 is all a hoax invented by the shape-shifting lizards of the Illuminati, and the real crazies who think Boris Johnson has done a wonderful job taking Britain to top spot in the European Death League.

Day after day, on his big-budget ITV show ‘Good Morning Britain,’ he’s berated British ministers to the near-death of their political careers, beating them so mercilessly that the spokespeople put up to be interviewed have become more and more junior and thus increasingly exposed to his forensic examination.

Some days, no one shows up to defend the government at all, leaving Piers to fill his boots with glee at the open goal he’s been afforded.

When he’s not on screen, he’s writing in one of the UK’s biggest newspapers, the Daily Mail. And when he’s not there, he’s pumping out outrage at government incompetence like a newly angry volcano to his 7.4 million followers on Twitter. He has a further one million followers on Instagram.

Given that, until recently, he was best buddies with @realDonaldTrump – probably the most despised man in Europe – he must be finding the popular acclaim a trifle bewildering. But, then again, he probably thinks it’s no more than he deserves. And he would be right.

A little over a week ago, Morgan was one of only 47 people in the entire world followed by the US president on Twitter. Being unfollowed and cold-shouldered by Trump is a big price to pay for his Corona Crusade.

But surely it’s a price worth paying. The two became friends when Morgan played right-hand man to the Donald on the US version of ‘The Apprentice,’ and, since entering the White House, Morgan has conducted several exclusive close-up interviews with the president. But there will be no more. After all, for every truth missile Morgan has fired at Boris Johnson, there are the two he’s fired at Donald Trump. And every one has hit home.

Much of the country is pleasantly surprised at Morgan’s eruptions, but I am not. Despite his multi-millionaire establishment status, I remember the last time he went spectacularly off-piste.

It was the run-up to the Iraq war and Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror – historically, a pro-Labour Party paper. With New Labour firmly ensconced in Downing Street, Morgan was Labour aristocracy, much courted by the Cool Britannia crowd around Tony Blair. There were cocktails with the powerful every week.

But as Blair set his course on war, Morgan mutinied. It was a damaging blow to the war party, over which blandishments and then threats of revenge were expended freely by Blair’s enforcer and spin doctor, Alastair Campbell.

However, the more the Blair machine attacked the editor, the deeper he dug in, critiquing the case for the Bush and Blair invasion of Iraq with all the gusto with which he now attacks the pitiful excuse for a war on Covid-19 being mounted by Boris Johnson.

That’s when I knew Flash Harry Piers Morgan was more than an editor, more even than a man. That’s when I knew he was a mensch.

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