Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has criticised Wireless Festival for booking Kanye West to headline at Finsbury Park, after the rapper’s antisemitic remarks and Nazi messaging
Sir Keir Starmer has spoken out against a music festival for booking Kanye West as a headliner, following the American rapper’s Nazi messaging.
The Prime Minister described it as “deeply concerning” that the musician, also known as Ye, has been lined up to headline Wireless Festival at Finsbury Park, north London. The rapper has faced widespread condemnation in recent years after he began expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler, and has made a string of antisemitic comments.
Last year, he released a track called “Heil Hitler”, just months after promoting a Swastika T-shirt for sale on his website. As first reported by The Sun on Sunday, Sir Keir said: “It is deeply concerning that Kanye West has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism.
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“Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted clearly and firmly wherever it appears. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe and secure.”
The 48 year old rapper’s scheduled appearance at Wireless Festival comes amid growing concerns over rising antisemitism across the UK.
In March, four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community-run service were set ablaze in north-west London. Two men and a 17 year old boy were remanded in custody on Saturday after appearing in court charged with torching the vehicles.
Last October, two men lost their lives in an attack on a Manchester synagogue. The Sun on Sunday also published criticism from a number of Jewish community organisations calling on Wireless Festival to reconsider their decision to allow West to headline.
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told the newspaper the booking was “causing distress to Britain’s Jewish community due to his previous antisemitism and support for Hitler”. She went on to say: “Wireless should think again about whether they want to provide a platform for this hateful antisemitism.”
Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, described it as “absolutely the wrong decision” to permit West to perform.
The musician issued an apology in January for his antisemitic remarks in a letter printed as a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal newspaper. In the letter, he expressed remorse to Jewish and black people, stating that his bipolar disorder had caused him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life”.
Wireless Festival was approached for comment.
