Keir Starmer blasts ‘deeply concerning’ Kanye West festival headline plans

By David Lynch, Press Association Political Correspondent

Keir Starmer has criticised a music festival for allowing Kanye West to headline, after the American rapper’s Nazi messaging.

The British Prime Minister said it was “deeply concerning” that the musician, also known as Ye, has been booked to headline Wireless Festival at Finsbury Park, north London.

The rapper has drawn widespread criticism in recent years after he began voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler and has made a series of antisemitic remarks.

Last year, he released a song called “Heil Hitler”, only a few months after advertising a Swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.

As first reported by The Sun on Sunday, Starmer said: “It is deeply concerning that Kanye West has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism.

“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 appearance at Wireless Festival comes amid fears of growing antisemitism within the UK.

In March, four ambulances from a Jewish community-run service were set on fire in north-west London.

Two men and a 17-year-old boy were remanded in custody on Saturday after appearing in court accused of torching the vehicles.

In October last year, two men were killed in an attack on a Manchester synagogue.

The Sun on Sunday also published criticism from a series of Jewish community organisations which called for Wireless Festival to think again about allowing West to headline.

Holocaust Educational Trust boss, Karen Pollock, told the newspaper the booking was “causing distress to Britain’s Jewish community due to his previous antisemitism and support for Hitler”.

She added: “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, said it was “absolutely the wrong decision” to allow West to play.

The musician apologised in January for his antisemitic remarks in a letter published as a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

In his letter, he apologised to Jewish and black people, and said his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life”.

Wireless Festival was contacted for comment.