British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was concerned about planned concerts in London by US rapper Kanye West, who has a history of antisemitic outbursts and released a song called “Heil Hitler”.<\/p>\n
The disgraced 48-year-old hip-hop star — now known as Ye — is due to play three nights at the Wireless festival in London in July as part of a European comeback tour.<\/p>\n
Starmer told The Sun newspaper on Saturday it was “deeply concerning Kanye West\u00a0has been booked to perform at Wireless despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism”.<\/p>\n
He added that “antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted firmly”.<\/p>\n
Event sponsor Pepsi told The Independent news website on Sunday that it had withdrawn its sponsorship. Parent company PepsiCo did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.<\/p>\n
The planned appearances, announced by festival organisers on social media last month, had prompted criticism from Jewish organisations and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.<\/p>\n
And West’s European tour has already proved controversial, with the mayor of Marseille in France saying he was “not welcome” for a concert there in June.<\/p>\n
West has expressed regret over his antisemitic rants, which he blamed on his bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n
In May 2025 he released a song called “Heil Hitler” to mark the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n
The song was banned by major streaming platforms.<\/p>\n
am\/jxb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was concerned about planned concerts in London by US rapper Kanye…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,247911,1805,807,257,16,15,101662],"class_list":["post-873702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-heil-hitler","tag-kanye-west","tag-keir-starmer","tag-london","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wireless-festival"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116352166631896445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}