Kneecap owe Keir Starmer, the BBC and Helen from Wales a thank you

Irish Times

2 days ago

Helen from Wales won
Glastonbury
. She didn't sing or dance or chant a death threat. She held up her phone and live-streamed the whole
Kneecap
show on TikTok, 'even burning her finger on the overheating device', reported the Sun admiringly, 'to bring the music to the masses'. Kneecap hailed her as a 'legend'.
From which you might infer that earning legend status can be nice work. But Helen Wilson is a very modern kind of legend. She surprised herself by thrashing the crusty old
BBC
at its own game – though it's arguable if 1.7 million people actually watched or just liked her livestream as opposed to the 7,200 who definitely watched. It also left
Keir Starmer
looking like the infamous 1990s judge who inquired if
Gazza
(the world-famous footballer and also the plaintiff) might be an operetta called La Gazza Ladra.
The BBC probably workshopped 10 impossible ways to livestream the Kneecap gig, ie to bleep out any recurrences of calls to kill your local Tory MP – for which the band subsequently apologised to the families of two murdered MPs – while weighing accusations of censorship alongside the terror-related charges against a band member (for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hizbullah and saying 'up Hamas, up Hizbullah'). It eventually settled on releasing an edited form on iPlayer, saying it was due to fears it would breach 'editorial guidelines' on impartiality.
The wonder is that the thousands of attendees fulminating about censorship didn't respond as Helen did with her TikTok stream, which is now being lionised as another near-lethal shot across the BBC/MSM's bows. Glastonbury forbids the unauthorised recording and disseminating of live performances but Helen isn't worried. Some things are too important not to be heard, she says.
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If Kneecap's pro-Palestine stance is noisy and relentless (reflecting in principle the impotent fury of many people, young and old), it's right up there with the band's marketing nous. Among the many stunts designed to 'p**s off' just about everyone, they brought a PSNI Land Rover with them to the Sundance film festival last year (where their semi-autobiographical film with a Gerry Adams cameo won the audience award) and found a place called Provo to have their picture taken with it. 'It ended up that we were on the front of all the magazines, because of that jeep,' Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (Mo Chara) told The Guardian. The alleged Hizbullah flag-waving incident was preceded by a social media image posted by the band of a member reading the Hizbullah leader's writings.
Their official website leads with quotes from the Los Angeles Times – 'reminiscent of early Eminem' – saying the band has 'built up a notoriety for themselves which hasn't been seen in Irish music for many years'.
So it's fair to say that they've leant into the notoriety – but not without a heap of marketing gifts from British officialdom along the way. The band won a legal action against the UK government when the latter overruled the awarding of a £14,250 grant to them under a scheme that supports UK-based music acts abroad.
But there's nothing to beat the clamour around a prime minister's condemnation – until you compound it with the agonising decisions faced by a state-funded broadcaster.
When asked if he thought Kneecap should perform in Glastonbury, Starmer could have refused to comment, on the grounds that there was an ongoing case.
Instead he pronounced that the band's performance would not be 'appropriate …'. The rest was wildly predictable.
No edgy band wants to be declared 'appropriate' by anyone, never mind a grey prime minister, in a world where the US president uses f**k for emphasis. So naturally the show became the most anticipated set of the weekend. The field around the stage was closed early to prevent a crush. Far from softening its cough, the band heightened the drama by showing a video montage of its enemies, including Sharon Osborne calling them a hate group, then
kicked off a chant of 'F**k Keir Starmer' in a charged, triumphant gig
. Hardly original as chants go – two songs with that title already exist – but it did the job.
The sum total of Starmer's and the BBC's achievement was to ratchet up the protesting and ensure that any artist worth their inappropriate tag would shout 'Free Palestine' (at least) during a set, have a Palestinian flag on stage or be wearing a keffiyeh. And no one sussed that the act just before Kneecap, a self-described 'violent punk' London duo Bob Vylan, hitherto unknown to the masses – until the hapless BBC streamed them live and failed to pull the plug – would make the Irish band's act look almost puppyish.
'Sometimes we have to get our message across with violence', said frontman Bobby Vylan, who led a chant of
'death, death to the IDF'.
British police are investigating both performances, though legal experts believe it's futile since the accused's intent at the time – what he intended to happen or believed might happen as a result of his words – decides the matter. So legal vindication once again most likely – although it's worth noting that Bob Vylan are paying the professional and financial price in terms of being dropped by their management, cancelled shows and revoked US tour visas.
Long-time music critics writing about Kneecap blend admiration with caution. The Glastonbury lead-up was 'a perfect example of how quickly stories can become overheated in 2025″, writes The Guardian's
Alexis Petridis
. 'Vastly more people now have an opinion about Kneecap than have ever heard their music, which is, traditionally, a tricky and destructive position for a band to find themselves in.'
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Kneecap would not face prosecution under new Irish anti-terrorism laws, Minister insists
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But who loaded fuel on to the stories? Keir Starmer surprised us – again – by failing to consider his own contribution while delivering a petty told-you-so to the self-flagellating BBC: 'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence ...'
For Kneecap, the upshot of the weekend is a coveted
invitation to take the main stage at Electric Picnic
. 'This is going to be a special one,' said the festival about its sudden announcement. That's show business.