Glastonbury festival organisers have been urged to cancel a performance by Hamas-supporting Northern Irish rap group Kneecap over a rant in which they urge fans to kill their local MP. The Mail has more.
The Belfast trio are facing mounting criticism over a performance in which one of them said “the only good Tory is a dead Tory”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Taoiseach Micheal Martin led political condemnation of the band, which is also under fire for voicing support for Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah at Coachella.
Labour MP David Taylor wrote to Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis, urging him to take the rappers off the bill for the festival in June.
They are due to perform on the Saturday alongside acts including Charli XCX, Neil Young and Raye, and also did a set last year.
In his letter, Hemel Hempstead MP Mr Taylor wrote that if reports of the remarks were true “the group’s actions and statements go beyond the realm of legitimate political expression and into the dangerous territory of inciting violence and promoting extremism”.
The chilling remarks were made in November 2023, little more than two years after Tory MP Sir David Amess was stabbed to death in his Essex constituency.
Sir David’s daughter Katie today demanded an apology for her self and her upset family.
Today, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman called the group’s lyrics “completely unacceptable”.
Asked about Kneecap’s remarks, he said: “It is obviously completely unacceptable and he completely rejects those views and condemns them in the strongest possible terms.”
He added: “We do not think that individuals expressing those views should be receiving future government funding.”
Asked if he agreed with Ms Amess’s call for the band to apologise, he replied: “Of course, those remarks were completely unacceptable. And calls for violence towards anyone, including MPs, is clearly completely unacceptable.”
Katie Amess, whose Conservative MP father was fatally stabbed at a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in 2021, told BBC News NI’s Good Morning Ulster programme that she was “absolutely gobsmacked at the stupidity of somebody or a group of people being in the public eye and saying such dangerous, violent rhetoric”.
The mystery of course is why the police – ever eager to prosecute ‘hate speech’ that stops well short of incitement to violence – aren’t already all over this.
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