BREAKING: Wireless Festival CANCELLED after Kanye West BANNED from UK over antisemitism row | Latest
Wireless festival has been cancelled with full refunds set to be issued after the home office barred headliner Kanye West from entering the UK.
Organizer Festival Republic confirmed the decision in a statement saying the Home Office has withdrawn Yay’s ETA, denying him entry into the United Kingdom.
As a result, Wireless Festival is cancelled and refunds will be issued to all ticket holders.
It added that multiple stakeholders had been consulted before booking West with no concerns raised at the time and acknowledged that anti-semitism in all forms is aorant.
The dramatic cancellation follows the government’s refusal of West’s application to travel to Britain, ruling that his presence would not be conducive to the public good.
The move comes after days of mounting pressure over a series of anti-semitic remarks and actions by the US rapper.
campaign groups, politicians, and sponsors had all called for intervention, including the campaign against anti-semitism and senior conservatives.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Phelp also wrote directly to the Home Secretary, urging the government to block West’s entry.
Downing Street says decisions like this are made on a case-byase basis in line with the law and available evidence while strongly condemning West’s past comments.
Prime Minister Sir Kir Stalmer has also weighed in and said Kanye West should never have been invited to headline Wireless and said the government stands firmly with the Jewish community and vowing to confront and defeat the poison of anti-semitism.
The artist has faced widespread backlash over repeated controversies, including releasing a song titled Hail Hitler, selling merchandise featuring swastikas, and posting statements online expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler.
West has previously apologized for his remarks, attributing some of his behavior to his bipolar disorder.
As the backlash grew, major brands began to pull away.
Pepsi and Rockstar Energy withdrew sponsorship from Wireless Festival, while PayPal is also understood to have stepped back from future promotional activity.
The campaign against anti-semitism welcomed the government’s move, saying it had backed up its words with action.
But West himself has responded, striking a more consilary tone.
In a statement, he said his goal had been to come to London to present a show of change, promoting unity, peace, and love through music, and expressed a willingness to meet members of the Jewish community in person.
Senior Labour figures have also weighed in on the row.
I I don’t think he should be performing at the um at the music festival, but I can’t comment on specific individual cases that will be considered in line uh with immigration rules, but there is no place for that kind of hatred, bigotry or anti-semitism from him or from anyone else.
>> Uh the decision about whether he can enter Britain is one for the Home Office and that case is being considered.
it would be inappropriate for me to comment as to whether he should be headlining the Wireless Festival.
I think that’s it’s very straightforward.
No, I do not think he should be headlining the Wireless Festival.
I think his comments were absolutely grotesque.
And whatever justification he uses, he has got to accept that with his enormous fame and reach comes influence and a responsibility.
and his comments take place against the backdrop of rising anti-semitism, rising hatred against Jewish people, not just around the world, but in this country.
We saw the horrific attack um on the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, which resulted in deaths.
We saw the attack only weeks ago on a Jewish charity that runs an ambulance service in North London that could have resulted in fatalities.
Mercifully, no one was hurt.
I I think in that context, people like Kanye West need to take responsibility.
The cancellation now leaves thousands of fans disappointed with tickets already on sale before the announcement.
For now, the government’s position is clear.
Kanye West will not be coming to the UK and the wider debate over free speech, accountability, and where the line should be drawn is far from over.
Daniel Smith, GB News.
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>> Tell us from the hearts what you think about this decision today.
>> Well, look, thank you for having me on.
I think the ban is neither here nor there.
Same with wireless cancelling the music festival.
Ultimately, I think this is a conversation, as you rightly said, about the levels of anti-semitism, of Islamist extremism, of radicalization that exist in this country that has allowed anti-semitism to become completely normalized and Jewish people to be completely pushed to the fringes of society, whether that’s in sectors like the arts, in the NHS, in schools and universities up and down this country.
And ultimately that has led to points like this where wireless out the entire roster of musicians that they could have picked from choose to host Kanye West.
Why did they choose to do that when they could have picked anyone else if this was a person who had terrible comments who was a self-proclaimed Nazi against another group or hater against another group.
You wouldn’t invite him.
That simply wouldn’t happen.
So I don’t think we even need to have the discussion about whether the ban is correct or not.
Ultimately, we know it’s not correct that Wireless would have hosted these people.
And we know that despite all the sponsors pulling out, up until now, they weren’t worried that hundreds of the 100,000 plus young people who had tickets to go were going to pull out because ultimately anti-semitism has become so normalized in this country that all these people think it’s fair game to go to listen to a show of someone who sold t-shirts with swastikasers on, who called for death con on the Jewish people, who had a song called Gas Chambers, and then a song called Hull Hitler.
And so banning or not, we know we have an anti-semitism problem here in England.
And ultimately, in a reasonable world, firstly, festival organizers would never have booked him.
Secondly, the sponsors originally would never have supported the event.
And thirdly, the festival goers would have never bought tickets to go and hear this man.
So the fact that it needed this ban, and we can debate whether that’s right or wrong just shows how bad the situation here is in the United Kingdom.
>> And yet, Dol Foreman, music promoters want to sell tickets.
They like notoriety.
was ever thus, always has been, and probably always will be.
May I put to you um Kanye West’s comments where he said he would like to learn from this.
He’d be grateful for the opportunity to meet with UK, with members of the Jewish community, perhaps even Holocaust survivors or the relatives of them such as yourself, person to person, to try and turn this into a learning curve.
Do you think that’s just him trying to desperately save his hide or or do you think actually something positive may have been possible to come out of that?
Because the thing I worry about Dove is if you cancel something like this and a lot of people out there are genuinely anti-semitic.
They might feel persecuted now and it might embolden them and make them feel even more acidic.
Could there have been an opportunity to teach Kanye West a lesson that we all could have benefited from?
>> Well, look, I believe in second chances.
People should be able to reconcile.
People should be able to repent.
But this isn’t the first time he’s done that.
He’s apologized before.
He’s met with Jewish communities before in America.
And time and time again, he said these things.
Now, I sympathize with anyone who has mental health struggles, who has bipolar.
And of course, we have to respect that.
But if we are to believe that that’s the reason he keeps saying these things, though I wonder why he always only targets the Jewish community.
If we are to believe that, then why would we trust this man to go on a large stage, one of the largest music festivals in this country, and to promote this to over 100,000 people if we can’t be sure that he won’t do it again?
Again, he has apologized before.
He’s met with Jewish community members in America before.
So why should we trust that this would happen in this case?
Now my great-grandmother and I had met with anti-semmites in the past when my great-grandmother was still alive.
We do believe in second chances.
We educated them.
One such case was Azimra who was testifying against Yorkshire cricket club in parliament against the Islamophobia that he suffered there and then it surfaced that he was actually an anti-semite a few years earlier and had tweeted terrible things about the Jewish people.
Met with him, we educated him about the Holocaust.
We took him to our local synagogue.
So, of course, I believe in se second chances, but not eighth, n 10th chances.
That’s not right.
We shouldn’t just have to kind of forgive or talk to these disgusting racists.
And I don’t think any other minority, any other community would be expected to do this.
>> Do if I may, one final question to you.
If this had been allowed to go ahead, there’s the very real possibility that the worst anti-semmites in the country would have flocked to have seen him.
And and you know, the ch we’ve seen chanting before from crowds.
It could have been a grotesque spectacle if it were allowed to have gone ahead.
>> Quite I mean we’ve seen in other cases as you say with kneecap and and other people Bob villain etc who at Glastonbury and other festivals have chanted uh terrible phrases which I do think have been a direct cause and correlation between the rise of anti-semitism in this country.
Influencers musicians do have a position in society where they’re able to influence and change the hearts and minds of young people who are the particular audience who go to these music festivals.
And I do think it’s dangerous that we’re allowing these chants, we’re allowing this to go completely unchallenged in society and we mustn’t be kind of under any illusion that the attacks that we see like the arson attack in gold and the terrorist attack in Manchester.
This is all linked to the level of extremism, radicalization that’s going on in this country and part of that is to do with the fact that these chants are allowed to go unchallenged not just in music festival but week on week in protests across central London.
Now I believe in free speech.
I believe in the free society that we live in.
don’t like bans the whole time, but I do think that there has to be free speech within the confines of the law.
And there keeps being this gray area where the CPS, where the police are ignoring this and many Jewish people do feel let down, not just by the CPS and the police, but also by the government.
>> Very quickly, if I could, are you happy with Saki Storma’s actions here?
Do you think the prime minister has done the correct thing?
>> Well, too often Ktorma seems like a bystander in his own country.
He says things like, “I don’t think this man should come.
” Well, here he’s actually followed through with the action.
Again, we can debate whether the ban was right or wrong, but at least finally he’s done something rather than just talking.
And I think many British people across the country, many British Jews would be wanting him to do that on more issues, not just on the case of anti-semitism.
We keep hearing words from this government, from the prime minister.
There’s so much that’s wrong in this country at the moment, including with the social fabric.
