Acts who made political statements at Glastonbury 2025
The BBC has since expressed regret at not pulling its live-stream of the duo's performance at the West Holts stage on Saturday, saying the 'antisemitic sentiments' expressed by the group were 'utterly unacceptable'.
Since Glastonbury was founded more than 50 years ago, many artists have used their platform at the ever-growing event to make political statements.
Here are some of the acts who shared their views with audiences at this year's festival at Worthy Farm:
– Kneecap
The Irish rap group led Glastonbury crowds in chants of 'f*** Keir Starmer' during their set at the festival on Saturday.
The group, who hail from Belfast, have been in the headlines after member Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence.
Member Naoise O Caireallain, who performs under the name Moglai Bap, said during their set: 'The Prime Minister of your country, not mine, said he didn't want us to play, so f*** Keir Starmer.'
He also said a 'big thank you to the Eavis family', adding the festival organisers 'stood strong' amid calls for Kneecap to be dropped from the line-up.
The band also led crowds in chants of 'Free Palestine', with O hAnnaidh commenting on the sheer number of flags at the festival.
The 27-year-old wore a keffiyeh during the set, while member JJ O Dochartaigh, who performs under the name DJ Provai, wore his signature tri-coloured balaclava and a T-shirt reading: 'We are all Palestine Action' in reference to the soon-to-be banned campaign group.
– Sir Rod Stewart
Sir Rod Stewart filled the tea-time legends slot on Sunday, where he performed alongside his former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall and Scottish singer Lulu.
The 80-year-old singer, who called on Britain to 'give Nigel Farage a chance' in an interview with the Times on Saturday, dedicated a song to Ukraine while its war with Russia rages on.
Ukrainian flags were shown on a screen behind Sir Rod, who said: 'There's been a lot about the Middle East recently, quite rightly so, but I want to draw your attention to Ukraine in the next song, it's called the Love Train.'
The lyrics allude to a call for peace, as Sir Rod sang: 'People all over the world, join hands. Start the love train. The first stop that we make will be in England. Tell all the folks in Russia and China too. Don't you know that it's time to get on board?'
– Jade
Former Little Mix star Jade Thirwall took to the Woodsies stage on Saturday and got fans to join in during her perfomance of her record FUFN (F*** You For Now).
'I'm sure there are so many people who would love to say f*** you, so I want you all to put your middle fingers up in the air,' she told crowds.
She encouraged her audience to join her in a call and response, where she said things she dislikes and they responded 'f*** you', including a jibe at Mr Farage's Reform UK party.
'Like low battery, smelly toilets, Reform, welfare cuts, transphobia, silencing protests, selling arms, justifying genocide,' Jade called out.
– Black Country, New Road
The indie-folk band played the Woodsies stage on Sunday, with vocalist and bassist Tyler Hyde taking centre stage wearing a Palestine flag T-shirt.
The six-piece from Cambridge also had a flag draped over their keyboard, and during their set Hyde said 'Free Palestine' and led the audience in chants of 'Free, free Palestine'.
– Wolf Alice
Later on Sunday, singer Ellie Rowsell told the crowd watching the Mercury-winning indie band at the Other Stage: 'Whilst we have the stage for just a little bit longer, we want to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.
'No one should ever be afraid to do that.
'We love you all, and we will see you out on the field.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
33 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Strictly Come Dancing hunk 'signs up for Celebrity SAS' just weeks after shock split from fiancée
A Strictly Come Dancing hunk has reportedly signed up for Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, just weeks after his shock split from his fiancée. Ben Cohen, 46, is reportedly gearing up to take on the gruelling Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins challenge. The former rugby player, who is well known for his appearance on Strictly more than a decade ago, is looking forward to 'throw himself into a new challenge' following his split from fiancée of 12 years Kristina Rihanoff. A TV insider told The Sun: 'Ben has had a difficult few months with his split from Kristina, having to sell their home and also having spiralling business debts. 'Celeb SAS is not only a good pay day for him, but it's a new challenge to throw himself into. 'Ben is obviously a sportsman and a very physical, competitive player so if anyone can handle the SAS recruitment process, it's him.' MailOnline have contacted Ben and Celebrity SAS representatives for comment. Ben and Kristina's relationship was the product of the BBC show's infamous curse when he left his then-wife Abby in 2013, before going onto date Kristina, before money troubles reportedly tore them apart. MailOnline was told that it was the severe financial difficulties they had recently experienced are believed to have been behind their split. The extent of the couple's struggles were laid bare in unusual circumstances - during a court appearance last September when Kristina was caught driving without insurance. Giving evidence during the case, England World Cup winning rugby star Ben admitted he had bungled the handling of their car insurance policy and told how he was 'fighting to save his relationship and home'. A friend of the couple said: 'The past six months have been hell for them and it has torn the love they had apart. For the sake of their family, they have chosen to go forward as separate individuals. 'Those close to them who know them as a couple had hoped they would be able to work things out but for now it's over and it looks like there's no going back.' The couple were left with crippling debts after they ploughed every penny they had into a yoga studio which plunged into crisis during the Covid pandemic. According to The Sun, the couple are now left with a crippling £1million debt. In a tortuously frank admission Cohen told the court: 'I get up every day and I fight not to lose everything - to lose my cars and my house and my relationship. I'm so overdrawn.' When questioned about the strains on his and Rihanoff's relationship, he said: 'We're still living together. We're in it financially. 'We're in business together so the problem is that we opened the business before Covid and we got the worst severities of it and in all honestly this is just another problem for me to deal with. 'I've got credit cards that are overdrawn. I'm overdrawn in both accounts. We have got a business debt because of Covid. It's just another problem.' MailOnline was given an insight into the struggles during an interview with the couple in May 2021. They started Soo Yoga Group together in June 2017 - four years after falling for each other when they partnered on the 11th series of the hit BBC show. Companies House records showed that the Soo Yoga Group Ltd was £488,470 in the red in its last submitted set of accounts for the year ending on July 31, 2022. The company was facing being struck off and Cohen has since resigned as a director leaving Rihanoff as its sole director - while other companies linked to the couple were also in difficulties. It was not long before the couple had put their £1.75million five-bedroom home in Sywell, Northamptonshire, where they had lived since 2016 on the market. Cohen resorted to selling topless photos of himself in a bid to raise some much needed cash. Ahead of the new year, he created a calendar with 1,000 personally signed editions selling at £32.95 a time in the hope of raking in £33,000. The couple revealed the irony of how they set off full of hope on a project to improve health and wellbeing only to be plunged into a crisis which left them facing losing everything and damaging their mental health. Russian-born Rihanoff - who left Strictly in 2015 before giving birth to their daughter Mila the following year - had worked hard to retrain as a yoga instructor. But the couple were forced to close their seven-studio yoga centre when the pandemic struck just nine months after opening. The studio offered dance, meditation and pilates classes while Cohen taught high intensity training. Rihanoff told MailOnline: 'The company is a new company we'd just set it up. We invested everything we've ever had. 'It was awful. I put everything into it and you don't even have a chance to develop the business. 'We opened in August after the first lockdown and had a huge spike. It's a family orientated centre. Then November lockdown, December it was awful because we didn't know the end of it. It was forever and ever and ever. Fingers crossed we can go back to normality soon.' She spoke of struggles with depression which has 'skyrocketed through the lockdowns' and admitted they struggled. At that point the couple were able to temporarily run outdoor classes on tennis courts in Northampton but told of their plans to expand the business into a nationwide venture - hoping to emule the success of David Lloyd's sports club empire. Cohen said: 'Yes it's great being outside and doing stuff but it shouldn't be at that point - we haven't earned a penny.' Cohen told how it was 'tough to run a business' but said of his hopes: 'Essentially we want to do what David Lloyd did. Everyone thought he was crazy. David has been helping us with this too. We want to grow this across the country.' The couple appeared to be back on track after getting engaged on a sun-kissed beach in the Maldives in 2022 and told of their hopes of tying the knot in Tuscany or Oxfordshire. Ben told Hello! Magazine in 2023: 'Over the last nine years we've been through the wringer. 'To support each other through difficult times in business is the ultimate test in a relationship. 'I've watched her flourish, from her becoming a mum to growing as a businesswoman, and it has strengthened our bond.' But their ongoing struggles were revealed when Rihanoff, who worked on Strictly between 2008 and 2013, appeared at Northampton Crown Court to unsuccessfully appeal a sentence for driving without insurance. Sobbing throughout the hearing, she told the court it would be financially devastating if she was disqualified. She said she needed to drive to judge ballroom competitions across the country, which earn her around £2,000 a month, and to take Mila to school. MailOnline later revealed the couple's yoga company had plunged almost £500,000 in debt.
Daily Mail
41 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
QUENTIN LETTS: Lisa flew into a prolonged riff tearing into Glastonbury and the BBC... Nandy was jammin'!
Well that should have Glastonbury 's founder Michael Eavis chewing his silly beard. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy came to the Commons to debate the BBC 's hate-rapper incident. Rather than excuse it, the minister flew into what I understand (guitar-speak) is called a prolonged riff. Nandy was jammin'! Both Glastonbury and the BBC were torn off a strip. For years the centre-Left has grovelled to Glastonbury, hailing it as a pinnacle of our culture. Labour MPs have attended its foetid mosh pits and chanted 'oooh Jeremy Corbyn ' alongside spliffy rich kids boogying in the mud and mire. MPs such as Tom Watson (now a Lord) sucked up to these designer-grungies and their ghastly eco-glamping. But all that was forgotten when Ms Nandy stood at the despatch box. She seized on this foul-up and on wider conduct at the festival, where terrorist flags and Nazi symbols were seen. Things were so bad that Jewish festival-goers had felt it necessary to create their own 'safe space'. All this from a venue that claims to be liberal. 'I have levers at my disposal,' Ms Nandy told the Commons, 'and I will not hesitate to use them.' She was 'exasperated' by the BBC and its poohbahs. 'I'm not satisfied with the explanation so far,' she cried. Not since the row over Blairites 'sexing-up' the case for war in Iraq has a Labour politician torn into the corporation in such a way. For Ms Nandy to sound cross is quite something. Normally she is as menacing as Sooty's little friend Soo. For all the harrumphing, do we believe the Starmerites would ever pull the ultimate 'lever' over the BBC and put it out of existence? Invited to do that by Reform's Richard Tice (Boston), she froze. But she certainly did well with this Commons display and even managed not to be booed – a miracle –when she made a reference to Sir Keir Starmer. It may or may not be worth noting that the Culture Secretary has been much tipped for demotion in a coming ministerial shuffle. After this performance she has made it harder for No 10 to sack her. The Conservatives' Stuart Andrew claimed that music festivals 'must appeal to the highest standards of social cohesion'. There speaks a man who plainly packs a chip butty for his picnic at Glyndebourne. No MP asked the obvious question: can the director general, Tim Davie, survive? But Peter Prinsley (Lab, Bury St Edmunds), fanning himself with a scrap of paper, did ask 'who on earth will be held accountable?' and John Glen (Con, Salisbury) said the public would expect 'people to be held individually to account'. Dame Caroline Dinenage (Con, Gosport) noted that the editing failures could hardly be for lack of staff. The Beeb had 400 people at Glastonbury, averred Dame Caroline, who chairs the culture select committee. 'What were they all doing?' They were surely in the beer tent. Or, being the BBC, it may have been the Pimm's tent. Or something more powdery. Sarah Sackman, justice minister, wandered in to listen to the debate. So, upstairs in the peers' gallery, did Luciana Berger, who has rejoined Labour after the anti-Semitism of the Corbyn years. Jim Allister (DUP, North Antrim) spoke of 'an appalling pro-terrorist broadcast on our national broadcaster'. Andrew Murrison (Con, SW Wilts) had written to the super-rich Eavises at Glastonbury – 'no reply, none expected'. The only dissent to the Beeb-knocking came from Ayoub Khan (Ind, Perry Barr), who wondered why the Government did not criticise 'death to all Arabs' chants by Israeli football crowds. Ms Nandy firmly told Mr Khan that was because it had not been broadcast by the BBC. Sammy Wilson (DUP, E Antrim) described Glastonbury-goers as 'young, middle-class, educated morons'. Rap may not be Sammy's thing. He is possibly more of a Dolly Parton fan. I must say, I can seldom understand a word rappers say or sing. No subtitles. Maybe that was why the BBC failed to cut the feed.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
BBC boss Tim Davie was 'consulted' during vile 'death to IDF' chant at festival
The BBC Director-General was personally consulted after Bob Vylan's controversial Glastonbury set, which featured a chant of "death, death to the IDF" The Telegraph has reported that the BBC's top boss is now caught up in the row over the anti-Israel rap performance at this weekend's Glastonbury festival. BBC Director-General Tim Davie, who was on-site visiting staff on Saturday, was swiftly informed when Bob Vylan blasted the stage with chants of "death, death to the IDF." Acting quickly, he ruled out the band's set being available on-demand; nevertheless, it lingered on iPlayer's rewind feature for an extra five hours. Despite not ordering the immediate pulling of the live feed, a BBC spokesperson conceded that the broadcaster now laments not doing so. One BBC insider said: "Tim was there for a few hours to see the team. He was made aware during the time he was there of what had been said on stage. He intervened to make sure the performance was not made available on demand and he was very clear about that.", reports the Express. Regarding the live transmission concerns, the source added, "Pulling the livestream brings certain technological challenges. With hindsight, we would have taken it down. He would have asked what the options were, but it isn't as straightforward as hitting a button and taking it down." Following the outcry, the BBC was approached for comment. Meanwhile, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy voiced serious concerns regarding Mr. Davie's stewardship in the light of the controversy. Addressing Commons, she remarked: "When you have one editorial failure, it's something that must be gripped. When you have several, it becomes a problem of leadership." MP Peter Prinsley sharply questioned: "The murder of hundreds of Jews at the Nova music festival in October 2023 sparked this war. The irony of broadcast anti-Semitism at Glastonbury here in the UK is not lost on any of us. "So how are Jews, such as myself, in this country to be reassured about the editorial processes of the BBC? And who on Earth will be held accountable for this error?". Ms Nandy insisted that accountability is "an extremely important point" and acknowledged that she has "something that I've impressed upon the BBC leadership." The gravity of the situation This controversy is the latest in a series of anti-Semitic criticisms levelled at the BBC. Previously, the corporation had to say sorry for producing a Gaza documentary with a concealed bias; the narrator was outed as the son of a Hamas leader, and the channel's coverage on Israel and Gaza has also drawn flak. In the unfolding saga, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel demanded Tim Davie's resignation if no staff are fired over the blunder, as she aired her concerns on The Telegraph's Daily T podcast. She stressed the need for an urgent probe into the BBC's delayed response to the offensive material. At the stormy Glastonbury performance, Bob Vylan stirred the crowd into chanting "Free! Free!" which was then met with shouts of "Palestine!" from the attendees, only for the rapper to further provoke by adding: "death, death to the IDF." Additionally, lead vocalist Pascal Robinson-Foster, widely known as Bobby Vylan, engaged in a heated rant about his dealings with a Jewish music industry executive. After a controversial set during Glastonbury was accessible through BBC iPlayer's live stream hours post-performance, the BBC has issued an apology, branding the remarks "utterly unacceptable" and not fit for their airwaves. "We welcome Glastonbury's condemnation of the performance," stated the broadcaster. Apologising for the incident, the BBC slammed the comments as having "have no place on our airwaves", while expressing support for Glastonbury's denunciation of the act. In discussion with the Daily T, Ms Haskel expressed her dismay: "Who's responsible for that? This is literally someone calling for violence, for ethnic cleansing, for the destruction and the annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world." Highlighting the need for accountability, she demanded, "So if there's no one that will take responsibility, if no one will be fired over such an outrageous thing, then I think that Tim Davie should take responsibility because there has to be accountability for that." When probed about BBC Director-General Tim Davie's future, she said, "If there's no one responsible for that, and if no one's going to be fired over such an outrageous thing, Tim Davie should take responsibility and resign." Further, Ms Haskel called for an extensive review of the BBC's approach to reporting on the Middle East, insisting: "There should be an inquiry regarding the BBC coverage." She continued to criticise the BBC's coverage and its handling of anti-Semitism in Britain, saying, "It was fully biased. Many mistakes were made. Not just in the coverage since Oct 7, but their coverage in the Middle East in general and also about how they address anti-Semitism in the UK. How is it possible that something like that has been normalised in the UK? I just don't get it."
