There's something rotten in Westminster
There is something really fucking wrong with this country.
There was a time when the British state tried to at least pretend it wasn’t run by war criminals in suits. That time is clearly over.
Today, the UK government, bloated with Israeli money, staffed by lobbyists-for-hire, and deaf to public outrage has decided that the real crime isn’t genocide in Gaza. The real crime isn’t murdering children on an industrial scale. The real crime isn’t starving a population, shooting them in food queues or stealing their land.
The real crime, apparently, is saying so out loud.
In a country where the Prime Minister and Home Secretary bend over backwards to defend Israel as it flattens refugee camps and slaughters children, it’s not Israeli war crimes that get police attention: it’s rappers, teenagers with placards, and activists with red paint. Palestine Action are called terrorists for spraying slogans on Elbit’s windows, but not a word is said about the white-collar merchants of death exporting drone components from Leicester to Rafah.
This government isn’t just complicit in genocide it’s up to its fucking neck in it. Elbit Systems operates here with state blessing. British-made weapons are used in war crimes. Intelligence is shared. Diplomatic cover is granted. Legal shields are deployed. And when the public dares to resist, the state treats them not just as a nuisance, but as enemies of the realm.
So it appears the gloves are off: not for the war criminals, but for the people trying to stop them. Let’s be clear: Palestine Action, Bob Vylan, Kneecap, and the millions of people who marched for Gaza are not the criminals here. They are the conscience of a country whose elites seem to have lost theirs entirely. They are a moral compass when our Government is amoral vacuum. Yvette Cooper, yes, Labour’s Yvette Cooper has now signed off on the full criminalisation of Palestine Action. Not under the Tories. Under Labour. The new Starmer government, on day one, chose to side with arms dealers over activists and the Israel lobby protecting them over due diligence of a toxic regime. The same government that silences its own MPs if they mention Palestine. The same Labour front-bench that cheered as Starmer declared Israel has ‘the right’ to cut off food and water to civilians” a war crime under international law.
And yet again we have to say that the cunt leading this shitshow is supposed to be a human rights lawyer.
These people aren’t neutral observers. They’re bought. This is a government rammed with friends of the arms trade, former lobbyists, donors with Israeli business interests, and think tank ghouls who treat international law like an inconvenience. Most of them are members of Labour Friends of fucking Israel, like the sick fucks they are. And they’re terrified. Terrified of the public, terrified of protest, terrified of the truth. Because deep down, they know: we see them and we know what they have done.
We see the bribes dressed up as donations. The favours, the junkets, the parliamentary lunches where slaughter is a line item on a spreadsheet. We see the moral rot that’s taken hold, not just in the Conservative corpse, but in Labour’s shiny new corpse-suit too. We see the lies, the censorship, the BBC blackouts, the Met Police trawling lyrics and livestreams for ‘extremism’ while Elbit gets another government contract and F35 'tentbusters' are kept in the sky courtesy of BAE with Government sign off. This isn’t security. It’s grand larceny dressed up as Government.
And they’re not just complicit in war crimes, they’re actively covering for them. This is a country where it’s fine to sell weapons to an apartheid regime, but a criminal act to call it apartheid. Where a Glastonbury performance gets police review, but British munitions falling on Palestinian civilians gets buried in footnotes. Where the arms industry writes policy and activists get police raids. Where the public say ‘not in our name’ and the government doubles down.
At Glastonbury this year, something unusual happened. The music actually mattered.
On a weekend where much of the BBC coverage resembled a vanilla catalogue set to Spotify’s ‘chill vibes’ playlist, two acts cut through the PR fog. Bob Vylan and Kneecap didn’t play to please: they played to confront. And they lit a fire the state is now scrambling to stamp out. On the once sacred fields of Worthy Farm, while the BBC tried its best to sterilise the spectacle into a middle-class picnic with tunes, Bob Vylan and Kneecap didn’t just perform – they detonated. Two furious, fearless acts took the stage and did what this country’s political class fears most: they told the truth. About Gaza. About Britain. Our our fucking politicians and about the state we’re in.
Bob Vylan, ever the uncompromising chronicler of working-class rage, called out the Israeli genocide in Gaza in no uncertain terms. Not for him the mealy-mouthed fence-sitting of Keir Starmer’s Labour or the outright warmongering of the Tory remnants. No, Bob Vylan stood in front of tens of thousands and said what millions think but are being told they’re not allowed to say. That what Israel is doing in Gaza is a massacre. That our government is complicit. That silence is violence.
Then came Kneecap, the Belfast trio long used to getting up the nose of the British state. Onstage at Glastonbury, they didn’t disappoint: Irish, Republican, pro-Palestinian and unrepentant. They took shots at the Tories, the monarchy, and Labour’s moral collapse over Gaza. The crowd lapped it up. The BBC cut the feed:
“Fuck Keir Starmer!”
Frontman Mo Chara led the crowd in an unfiltered chant: “The prime minister of your country… said he didn’t want us to play, so fuck Keir Starmer.” thesun.ie+15reuters.com+15lbc.co.uk+15
War crimes and Gaza solidarity
They condemned Israel as committing war crimes, urging “Free Palestine” and aligning their legal battles with Gaza’s suffering, Mo Chara emphasised that their court troubles pale in comparison to life in occupied Palestine. apnews.com
Court case spotlight
Another member, Móglaí Bap, referenced Mo Chara’s upcoming court date over terrorism charges, described as “trumped up.” They pointed out that these weren’t isolated gags, but part of an orchestrated attack on pro-Palestinian voices. en.wikipedia.org+2reuters.com+2joe.ie+2
Flags and resistance
Mo Chara wore a keffiyeh and the stage flanked with over 200 Palestinian flags. The rallying cry was unambiguous: solidarity with Gaza, opposition to “Israel’s genocide,” and defiance in the face of political pressure. theguardian.com+15apnews.com+15theguardian.com+15
BBC blackout—but not on their minds
Despite BBC choosing not to livestream, or broadcast live, their set, Kneecap doubled down, flipping the narrative by making the censorship itself part of the message. telegraph.co.uk+15thetimes.co.uk+15thesun.ie+15
The state on the other hand didn’t just cut away: it took notes.
Within hours of the performance, reports emerged that Avon and Somerset Police had ‘received complaints’. Had they really? Police have confirmed they are investigating the Glastonbury sets. Yes, investigating musicians speaking out against international war crimes. Avon and Somerset Police say they’re reviewing footage’ for possible offences related to public order or terrorism. That’s where we’re at: saying ‘Free Palestine’ might soon be a criminal matter and we have a Police Force that’s trawling through footage of musicians criticising genocide to see if any laws were broken.
Meanwhile, of course Kneecap are already in the courts, not over Glastonbury, but for a previous performance in Belfast that allegedly breached the 1987 Justice and Security Act. Their ‘crime’? Satirical references to the PSNI and the British state’s long-standing colonial policing of Ireland, oh and waving a flag. Not incitement to violence, not support for armed groups - satire. The same kind of satire that helped bring down empires, now being dragged through court in 2025 because the establishment is so fucking fragile it can’t handle a few lads with mics and accents that don’t bend to Britain.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about ‘protecting public order’. It’s about control. It’s about punishing those who speak up for Gaza, for Irish sovereignty, for Black lives, for anyone and anything the British state still treats as an enemy within.
From Palestine Action to the people singing in the crowd, the net is tightening. And it is fucking sickening. And the hypocrisy is blinding. Someone who stirs up racial hatred like Nigel Farage can appear platformed on Glastonbury coverage with a pint and a grin, a man who’s spent a decade fuelling racism, division and fascism-lite rhetoric and he’s not investigated for incitement. But call Israel an apartheid state, and suddenly it’s a matter for the police. The same police who arrest holocaust survivors but barely lift a finger when the far-right march with Union Jacks and hate chants in central London are now investigating rap lyrics and festival speeches.
And we shouldn't pretend this is just a Tory hangover. Keir Starmer’s Labour has picked up the baton with glee. Palestine Action was proscribed not under Suella Braverman, but under Yvette Cooper. A movement that smashes windows in death peddling arms factories is now labelled ‘terrorist’ while those building the weapons that kill children in Rafah are protected by law and profit. This is the new Labour project: discipline the left, criminalise resistance, and leave the machinery of war untouched.
But it’s not working. The crowd at Glastonbury knew. The chants for Gaza weren’t fringe. They were mainstream. They weren’t a sideshow they were the moment. Millions of young people in this country, including many who once believed in Labour, are watching the state lash out and seeing it for what it is: scared, illegitimate, and out of step.
They can criminalise Palestine Action. They can try to censor Kneecap. They can investigate Bob Vylan’s every lyrics. But the people are done whispering. Let them investigate. Let them prosecute. Let them try to jail the music. It won't save them because you can arrest the artist, but you can’t kill the message and you can’t unhear the truth.
A word to our genocide supporting, murder-enabling arms dealer of a Government. There is the loudening clucking of chickens coming home to roost. So no, we won’t stay quiet. We won’t politely whisper ‘concern’ while Gaza burns. We won’t be told to stay in our lane while Starmer criminalises resistance and sups with the same arms lobby Blair did. We know the truth:
- The real extremists are in Cabinet.
- The real criminals sit on select committees.
- The real terrorists are the ones who profit from annihilation and call it ‘foreign policy’
And history will remember that when genocide was unfolding, it wasn’t the protestors who stood on the wrong side of history - it was the cowards and careerists in Westminster, drenched in blood and begging for another photo-op and back-hander in Tel Aviv.
Government rules by the consent of the governed: not by divine right, force, or inherited privilege, but by the collective agreement of the people to be led. That consent is not a blank cheque; it is conditional, revocable, and must be constantly earned through justice, transparency, and accountability. When a government fails to serve its people, breaks its promises, or acts against their interests, the legitimacy it depends upon begins to crumble. Consent can be withdrawn, and when it is, the people have not only the right but the duty to demand change through protest, through the ballot box, or, if necessary, by tearing down what no longer serves them.
Consider this as being served notice.
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