{"id":147159,"date":"2025-09-19T10:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/147159\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T10:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T10:04:07","slug":"kneecap-criticise-trump-starmer-and-the-royal-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/147159\/","title":{"rendered":"Kneecap criticise Trump, Starmer and the royal family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kneecap condemned Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK during their gig at Wembley Arena, where they also had a pop at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the British royal family.<\/p>\n

Before the Belfast rappers took to the stage at their London show, a message was displayed on the wall that read: “Starmer welcomed Isaac Herzog to this city like a king last week. Today Trump is here, the man who permits the slaughter.”<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s concert coincided with the final day of the US president\u2019s visit, a week after Mr Starmer met with Israel\u2019s president at Number 10.<\/p>\n

Mid-performance, during a break between songs, one of the band members could be heard saying: “Is Donald Trump in f****** England? For f**** sake.<\/p>\n

\"US
\nDonald Trump and Keir Starmer<\/p>\n

Naoise \u00d3 Caireallain, who performs under the stage name Moglai Bap, added “release the f****** files”, appearing to make reference to calls for the Trump administration to put all documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigations before the public.<\/p>\n

Liam \u00d3g \u00d3 hAnnaidh, also known as Mo Chara, then led the crowd in chants of “f*** the Royal Family”, having also led them in chants of “f*** Keir Starmer”.<\/p>\n

Supported by Irish post-punk band Gurriers and London artist Jelani Blackman, the evening also saw a special audio-visual presentation from trip hop collective Massive Attack followed by a speech from director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Ben Jamal.<\/p>\n

\"Kneecap
\nKneecap on stage at Wembley Arena in London<\/p>\n

The group, which also includes JJ \u00d3\u2019Dochartaigh (DJ Provai) performed tracks including Better Way To Live, featuring Fontaines DC singer Grian Chatten, Sick In The Head and Hood.<\/p>\n

In another address to the audience, O hAnnaidh added: “People like us, people like Massive Attack, other acts that decide to use their time on stage to talk about Palestine.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day, all we\u2019re doing is filling a void that the politicians aren\u2019t filling.<\/p>\n

“The reasons that musicians and artists are always the people that are the spearhead of these kind of campaigns and movements is because the politicians won\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

“And what happens is artists have platforms like this where we can talk to people without interference from the Government, on the most part.”<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nFontaines DC singer Grian Chatten performed with Kneecap<\/p>\n

O hAnnaidh also addressed his upcoming court date and said he “wasn\u2019t the first and won\u2019t be the last Irish man” faced with a terror charge in a London court.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old is charged with the alleged display of a Hezbollah flag at a gig in November last year.<\/p>\n

O hAnnaidh will return to Westminster Magistrates\u2019 Court on September 26, after his legal team argued the case should be thrown out due to a technical error in the way the charge was brought against him.<\/p>\n

At the adjourned hearing in September, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring will rule on whether he has the jurisdiction to try the case.<\/p>\n

Their arena gig comes after months of sold-out shows and festival performances across the country, including a set at the Glastonbury Festival in June which was investigated by Avon and Somerset Police, who later said they would be taking “no further action”.<\/p>\n

Kneecap initially hit headlines in April when footage emerged that appeared to show a band member saying “Kill your local MP” at one gig and saying “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at another.<\/p>\n

The group, who are known for their provocative lyrics and merchandise as well as their championing of the Irish language and pro-Palestine stance, have apologised to the families of murdered MPs and said they have “never supported” Hamas or Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kneecap condemned Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK during their gig at Wembley Arena, where they also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-147159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}