 between April and November last year, the Tory government boycotted ITV's Good Morning Britain. That's because they got tired of their ministers getting attacked so heavily, so repeatedly by Piers Morgan. Since then, though, since they've come back on, it was since Dominic Cummings left Downing Street. It has once again become a ritual for government ministers to have their faeiers read out to them by the host, by Piers Morgan. The latest to take the hot seat was working pension secretary Therese Coffey. If, as you say, we've done all the right things, can you explain why we currently have the worst death rate in the world? And can you explain why we have one of the highest death tolls in the world? If we did everything right, how have we ended up here? Well, as I say, we've been learning throughout this process, working with scientific advisors on trying to take the appropriate policies. There'll be a variety of reasons why people, unfortunately, have died due to this. Some of that will be recognising the age of our population. Some of that will be recognising the obesity of our population. But we've been learning throughout how we can improve the different ways of trying to help people during this. At the same time, I'm very conscious of the economic impact it's had, particularly on young people. That's why we are trying to do what we can with education. It's why we've created Kickstart. It's why we're trying to make it. We've heard all this before. That was very similar to the interview that Pretty Patel gave where they asked, why is our death rate the highest in the world? That's not the total deaths, population is the highest in the world, but the total number who are dying at the moment every day is the highest in the world. Pretty Patel blamed ethnic minorities. And now, Therese Coffey is blaming old people and obese people. It's just demographics, nothing to do with government policies, because Britain is particularly old and particularly obese. Now, I don't think you're going to find that particularly convincing, but I do still want to go through the facts to show you how wrong it is. Let's take her at her word with this age example. Now, in terms of median age, the UK is the 50th oldest country in the world, not towards the top. The median age in the UK is 40 compared to 47 in Japan and Germany who are number two and number three. Respectively, they've obviously got much lower death tolls than Britain has. Monaco is first, but super small state, so I'm not really including it. The fairer comparison though, because I like to be fair, is not so much the median age, but the number of very old people in your society, because we know that COVID-19 in particular is very deadly for people who are over 80 and over 70 as well, there's lots of harm, can do lots of harm to people of all age groups, but in terms of the number of people who are going to die, your over 80s is very important. Here, Britain is 10th. So this is from the World Bank showing you the proportion of the population in each of these countries, these are the highest countries, who are over 80. So in Japan, you can see 6% of the population are over 80. In Greece and Italy, 6% as well. In Germany, 5% of the population are over 80. And then you have to go down to number 10 for the United Kingdom, where 4% of the population are over 80. So you can see that the United Kingdom, not quite the 50th, but still the 10th, it's not at the top of countries with the highest proportion of over 80s. And how does this compare to the number of people who died over the course of this pandemic? So I plotted a graph on our world in data showing all of those countries that you can see in the top 10, they're apart from Hong Kong actually because they don't have data, and the number of people who have died per million people in that country. Belgium comes out on top, so the United Kingdom hasn't done the worst of anyone in the world. But the United Kingdom is second there. We've had the second highest death toll of those 10 countries, even though all of the countries plotted on this graph have a larger proportion of their population over 80 than we do. So you cannot explain Britain's terrible death toll with reference to age. Just to take one example, if you look at the United Kingdom there, we've had 1,400 people die per million, whereas Germany has had 600 people die per million. So twice as many people have died in Britain as a proportion of the population, even though Germany has a much larger 80 plus population, and as they have 5% of the population who are 80 plus, we have 4% of the population. Obviously Japan is doing much better than anyone else there. What about obesity? That was the other thing she brought up. Obesity, we're only the 36th most obese country in the world. That's with 20% of the population classed as obese. So again, these excuses do not stack up. What does make the difference is the speed at which you go into lockdown. So a study from Imperial College found that by delaying for a week the lockdown in March, Boris Johnson caused 21,000 extra deaths. He made the same mistake again this time around, and you don't need a degree in epidemiology to understand why we consistently see death rates level off about two weeks after a lockdown is implemented. It's happening right now in Britain, because we're two weeks after that lockdown came in, or about three now. Quite easy to understand this on these terms. So the reason I'll defrate at the moment is leveling off about 1,200 is because when we went into lockdown, our average daily cases was 60,000. If we'd gone into a lockdown two weeks earlier when Sage had asked for it, when average daily cases were 30,000, then deaths would have leveled off at about 600 a day, right? So that is why we are having 1,200 deaths a day. It's not because of the new strain. It's because we went into lockdown incredibly late, much later than other comparable countries. Let's go back to that interview, actually, because Piers Morgan did not let Therese Coffey get away with that answer. Here's what happened next. I applaud you for giving us some reasons, because none of you... That's the first time we've heard a couple of ministers say on a couple of explanations. None of your colleagues last week could give us any. So you've given us two now, aging population and obesity. So are you saying that the reason for us having the worst death rate in the world is because of the public? They're too old and they're too fat? I think that's a very insulting thing that you've just said. You just said it. Is unconscious that there's a variety of factors which will have led to people, sadly, being ill during this time. Sadly, that translating into deaths. I'm conscious that this is a very serious impact. Our own Prime Minister was in hospital in intensive care himself last April. I'm conscious that we are wanting to make sure we have a wraparound support for people. Sorry, what did you find insulting, Ms Coffey? Out of interest. What did you find insulting? Piers, I also need to point out... You said two reasons for the fact we had the worst death. I also need to point out that you started this interview late. Unfortunately, I have to go to other broadcasters as well. And I wish that we'd had more time when we were... You can come back any time, but I appreciate that. I haven't interviewed you since May, so you can come back any time. It was you, the boycott of the program. Please don't play the... I'm pleased that we... You haven't given me enough time card because we gave you eight months and it didn't turn up. Well, Piers, thank you very much for this. We were due to start 8.50. I understand it. I'm really excited about the opportunity to kickstart for young people. I understand. But I'm sorry, Piers. I'm going to have to go to another broadcaster as well. I just wanted you just to verify, given you said I was insulting... Piers, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to go. You're going to go. You're not going to explain why you think I was the one insulting. Well, we've already had 20 minutes of my time. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you. Bye-bye. Wow. Okay. Thank you, Miss Coffey. So, that was a very weak answer from Theresa Offish. She's saying, Piers Morgan is quite rightly saying... So, you're saying this is just because there's old people and fat people in this country. She's like, that's a very insulting thing to say. He was exactly right. He was just repeating back to what she said, but dressed up in less flowery language. The walking out bit, that's got a lot of attention. You probably shouldn't do that as a politician because it makes you look very bad. She does actually have a leg to stand on there though. The Politico email in the morning tells you at what time every politician is supposed to be on what station. She was due to be on Radio 4 at 8.30. That sort of beef happened at 8.30. One, I'm going to go to Ash in one moment. First of all, we unfortunately do not get to grill government ministers, but maybe if we get big enough, we can. Imagine the scenes. Imagine the scenes. I would love it. Please do go to support.rmd.com so that we can grow and hit the subscribe button because, as you know, this show goes live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m. Ash, what did you make of that exchange between Piers Morgan and Therese Coffey? Oh my God, she's not exactly a strong performer, a big hitter. I don't think that an interviewer like Piers Morgan or even Andrew Mara, Andrew Neil would feel particularly worried about Therese Coffey being able to parry away their questions with Pernache and Skill. It's really quite wooden and not particularly dynamic. The problem with all of the lines that the government has tried to come out with for explaining away the death rate apart from the speed at which we've gone into lockdown is that they don't stand up to scrutiny. As you said, there are countries with much higher rates of obesity. There are countries with much older populations and they also have lower death rates. In terms of Pretty Patel's theory, that's because we have so many ethnic minorities. There are more diverse populations in the global north and there are also loads of countries in the global south which are entirely made up of the ethnic minorities that are being blamed for the death rate here. Again, that one doesn't really stack up either. I don't envy the job of cabinet ministers having to defend Boris Johnson's decision-making on broadcast media because what are you supposed to do? Tell the truth and say, actually, our chronically indecisive and incompetent Prime Minister is having to balance the wishes of his backbench headbangers who think that coronavirus is a hoax cooked up by the Communist Party of China to ruin the West's economy and scientific advisors who are saying, hey, do you realise that you're killing everybody in your country? The way he's decided to resolve that is to do as little as possible for as long as possible until it's too late and then avert course. You can't go on telling and say that, but that would be the truth. Of course, you're trying to pull out any old excuse out of your arse. Then when you're questioned on it, I'd suddenly have an in-tooth radio four as well. I'm wondering now if after that their government have got a new excuse to not go back on Good Morning Britain because you'll also know if you're watching closely that interview, what Piers Morgan is saying there and why it's so actually difficult for any cabinet minister who goes on to Good Morning Britain at the moment is because they boycotted the government for eight months. Every time any cabinet minister goes on to talk about whatever is there, whatever they're leading on that day. So, Therese Coffey wanted to talk about a kickstart campaign getting young people into employment. He's like, wait a minute, I haven't spoken to you since March. So, I'm going to bring up everything this government has done wrong since March and make you answer for it. And it means she can't say, look, we've had this conversation before, Piers. So, all of the critiques that he's built up over the past 12 months and there are many get thrown at them all at once. So, yes, I don't envy their position, but it's hard to feel sorry for them when they have overseen this human catastrophe.