Calls to ban Kanye West from entering UK for festival
The UK government should ban Kanye West from entering the UK to perform at the Wireless Festival, an anti-Semitic group has said.
The US rapper, who has been condemned for anti-Semitism, will top the bill for all three nights of the festival in London’s Finsbury Park in July.
Pepsi and Diageo withdrew their sponsorships of the festival after West headlined.
The musician, who has not performed in the UK since taking over Glastonbury in 2015, has been subject to widespread criticism in recent years after he began expressing his admiration for Adolf Hitler and made a series of anti-Semitic statements.
A few months after advertising the sale of swastika T-shirts on his website, he released a song called Heil Hitler in 2025.
West, also known as Ye, has been banned from X multiple times for anti-Semitism.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined criticism of the music festival at the weekend, saying it was “deeply concerning” that West was holding a concert “despite his previous anti-Semitic statements and celebration of Nazism”.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said in a post on
“But the Prime Minister is not a spectator.
“The government can ban anyone who is not a citizen from entering the UK and whose presence is not ‘conducive to the public interest’.
“Of course this is a clear case.”
Labor MP Rachael Maskell said West should be banned from entering the UK because of his previous anti-Semitic comments.
The MP told BBC Radio: “We can’t allow these artists to have a platform and so it’s absolutely right for the prime minister to say that that festival, the Wireless festival, should cancel that artist.”
“But he also should not be allowed to come to our country to demonstrate in light of the anti-Semitic comments he has made and recorded.”
Jewish community organizations criticized the festival, and Phil Rosenberg, chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, called on the government to consider blocking him from entering the country.
In January, West took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to apologize for his anti-Semitic comments, saying his bipolar disorder caused “a four-month-long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life.”
Wireless Festival has been contacted for comment.
