Government Blocks Kanye West From Entering The U.K. To Perform At Wireless

Well, after all of that, it seems the government has decided to block Kanye West from entering the U.K. for Wireless Festival, where he was scheduled to headline from July 10 – 12.

The Home Office has confirmed that Kanye had made an application yesterday via an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to travel to the UK for the festival this summer.

It said permission had been denied because his ‘presence would not be conducive to the public good’.

I guess this was always inevitable, given how much of a fuss has been kicked up over it. Kanye West even issued a statement earlier apologising for his history of antisemitism, and offering to meet with the Jewish community in London…

The Board of Deputies of British Jews actually responded to Ye’s statement, saying they were willing to meet with him, but only if he agreed not to perform at the festival this year.

Their statement read: “We are willing to meet Kanye West as part of his journey of healing, but only after he agrees not to play the Wireless Festival this year.”

It now looks like he won’t be performing at Wireless anyway, and they won’t have to meet him either. Win-win as far as they’re concerned!

There is some discussion to be had now over whether we should be banning people from entering the U.K. based on things they’ve said. Seems like a dodgy precedent to set. Yeah OK, this man made a song called ‘Heil Hitler’ and sold Swastika T-shirts, but he did ultimately apologise and explain that he was in the midst of a psychotic episode at the time. Doesn’t that count for anything?

Wonder what Wireless will do now? Especially after they had just doubled down and said they wouldn’t be removing Kanye from the line-up. That’s really blown up in their faces now. Who will replace Kanye as the headline act? Will they even be able to get the sponsors back on board? We’ll have to wait and see.

Update: Wireless has been completely cancelled. Wow…

For the time Kanye told a Jewish executive at Adidas to ‘hang a picture of Hitler in your kitchen and kiss it every day’, click HERE. Like he says – he’s sorry!