{"id":386463,"date":"2026-04-07T14:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/386463\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T14:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:34:08","slug":"wireless-festival-cancelled-after-government-stops-kanye-west-entering-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/386463\/","title":{"rendered":"Wireless Festival cancelled after government stops Kanye West entering UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Festival organiser spoke to BBC earlier – here’s what he saidpublished at 14:50 BST<\/p>\n

14:50 BST<\/p>\n

Earlier today – before Wireless was cancelled – the managing director of the festival’s organiser Festival Republic said Kanye West’s visa to enter the UK had been “issued in the last few days”.<\/p>\n

“He has a visa already issued to appear, to come into the country, and the home secretary may well rescind that today, I don’t know,” Melvin Benn told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “If she [Shabana Mahmood] does, she does, and then the issue is over in terms of his appearance.”<\/p>\n

Hours later, as we now know, the government decided to ban West from entering the UK.<\/p>\n

During his interview with Today, Benn also said Jewish communities had decided against meeting West: “We have reached out and they’ve refused to meet him.” <\/p>\n

However, a Board of Deputies spokesperson told the BBC: “Neither the Board of Deputies nor, we understand, the Jewish Leadership Council has refused any request to meet with the Wireless festival organisers. <\/p>\n

“When the Board of Deputies received a letter from Melvin Benn on 6 April, proposing to meet, in response to a letter we sent setting out our concerns, we responded positively. In any event we are clear that the invitation to Kanye West to perform should be rescinded.”<\/p>\n

\"MelvinImage caption, <\/p>\n

Melvin Benn, pictured last year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Festival organiser spoke to BBC earlier – here’s what he saidpublished at 14:50 BST 14:50 BST Earlier today…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-386463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}