{"id":45641,"date":"2026-05-18T01:55:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T01:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/45641\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T01:55:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T01:55:46","slug":"uk-eurovision-star-calls-out-contest-for-double-standard-after-signing-open-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/45641\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Eurovision star calls out contest for “double standard” after signing open letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mae Muller, who represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> in 2023, has explained why she signed an open letter to the event’s organisers over Israel’s involvement. Ahead of the 2026 event, more than 70 former contestants<\/a> including Muller called on the EBU to ban the country’s national broadcaster KAN from competing, amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Muller took part in the show the year it was held in Liverpool on behalf of Ukraine, after Russia were excluded. On a new episode of Bimini’s podcast The Pieces<\/a>, she said that “pretending that music and art is not political is silly”, and that it felt like there had since been “a double standard”.<\/p>\n

The host had previously asked her: “You’ve signed an open letter, kind of condemning what’s going on and the Israel of it all, in Eurovision. How was that for you to do that?”<\/p>\n

\"mae<\/p>\n

Anthony Devlin – Getty Images<\/p>\n

Related: Best streaming services<\/a><\/p>\n

“It was the easiest thing ever,” she said. “I was like, ‘why is this a conversation? Hello?'”<\/p>\n

She continued: “Pretending that music and art is not political is silly; it’s inherently political. When I was doing Eurovision, we were hosting on behalf of Ukraine and it was beautiful. There were Ukraine flags everywhere and it felt like such a moment of unity.<\/p>\n

“And then it was like, the next year, I was like… ‘wait’. It just felt like such a double standard, and I just didn’t think it was right.”<\/p>\n

At the end of 2025, a rule change was implemented that aimed to discourage governments and third parties from disproportionately promoting entries; an accusation that had been leveled at KAN. A vote on Israel’s participation was then called off, leading to several other nations pulling out in protest.<\/p>\n

Related: BBC announces stacked Eurovision 2026 presenting lineup<\/a><\/p>\n

This year, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia will neither compete in nor broadcast<\/a> the competition; while the Netherlands and Iceland have not entered it. Nemo, who won in 2024 for Switzerland with ‘The Code’, has handed back their trophy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Muller was the last United Kingdom entrant to take their song into the Top 10 of this country’s singles chart, when ‘I Wrote A Song’ peaked at number 9. She released a new EP, My Island, in 2025; and recently dropped another new song, ‘Tell You That’.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the BBC today confirmed their presenting line-up for Eurovision 2026, which follows later this month. The United Kingdom are represented by Look Mum No Computer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> 2026 airs on Saturday 16 May, with the Semi-Finals airing on Tuesday 12 and Thursday 14 May. They will air live on BBC One and iPlayer, as well as via BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds.<\/p>\n

The new edition of Living Legends, a 100-page all-colour celebration of Sir David Attenborough, is here! Buy Sir David Attenborough in newsagents or online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mae Muller, who represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, has explained why she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20858],"tags":[28426,20859,20863,20860,1896,145,28425,173],"class_list":["post-45641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eurovision","tag-double-standard","tag-eurovision","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-eurovision-song-contest-2026","tag-getty-images","tag-israel","tag-mae-muller","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}