Starmer blasts ‘deeply concerning’ Kanye West festival headline plans

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has criticised a music festival for booking Kanye West as a headliner, following the rapper’s Nazi-related remarks.

Starmer said it was “deeply concerning” that the musician, also known as Ye, has been booked to headline Wireless Festival at Finsbury Park, north London, for three nights in July.

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 as fears of antisemitism grow 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.

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.

He 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”.