Two months after Coachella, and as they prepare for a Glastonbury festival appearance that has been criticised by among others, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, the band say they are unfazed by the uproar. “Maybe visas get revoked, you’re not allowed in America again, it’s not ideal – but Jesus Christ, there’s people being bombed from the fucking skies, and people being starved to death,” says Chara, AKA Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. “We’re in the process [of applying for new visas], hopefully it works. But if it doesn’t, I can go about my day without having to worry about my next meal or my family being bombed. Visa revoked, I can get over.”
Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh) leaving Westminster magistrates court on 18 June. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images
Do the band regret what’s depicted in either of the widely circulated videos? “It’s a joke. I’m a character. Shit is thrown on stage all the time. If I’m supposed to know every fucking thing that’s thrown on stage” – in this case a Hezbollah flag – “I’d be in Mensa, Jesus Christ,” says Ó hAnnaidh. “I don’t know every proscribed organisation – I’ve got enough shit to worry about up there. I’m thinking about my next lyric, my next joke, the next drop of a beat.”
And the “dead Tory” comments? “Why should I regret it? It was a joke – we’re playing characters, it’s satirical, it’s a fucking joke. And that’s not the point,” he says. “The point is, that wasn’t an issue until we said ‘Free Palestine’ at Coachella. That stuff happened 18 months ago, and nobody batted an eyelid. Everybody agreed it was a fucking joke, even people that may have been in the room that didn’t agree – it’s a laugh, we’re all having a bit of craic. The point is, and the context is, it all [resurfaced] because of Coachella. That’s what we should be questioning, not whether I regret things.”
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
A newborn baby in an incubator struggles to survive following Israel’s blockade of food and medical aid in Gaza City, Gaza on March 11, 2025. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death due to “depleted” reserves of baby formula.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, due to a shortage of medical-grade formula entering the strip.
Despite a recent policy change by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow “minimal aid” into the strip following a total blockade of food, water, shelter, and medication, it has proven far too little to keep hospitals running and keep people fed. It has proven especially deadly for children.
The AP report quotes Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functional medical facilities left in Gaza.
Last week, al-Farah warned that the hospital’s stock of milk was “completely depleted,” and that unless aid was delivered immediately, the babies would face “an avoidable disaster.” The widely publicized call was answered with the shipment of 20 boxes of formula from the U.S. aid group Rahma Worldwide.
Al-Farah said this was enough to meet the needs of 10 babies for two weeks, but warned that in the long run it would be far too little, especially with no guarantee of aid in the future.
“This is not enough at all,” he told the AP. “It solved the problem temporarily, but what we need is a permeant solution: Lift the siege.”
Many other hospitals reported shortages of formula that had not been answered, such as Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City, which was completely out of stock.
Fortified milk has become increasingly necessary in Gaza due to the increasing number of premature births. In May, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that as a result of widespread hunger, 1 in 5 children is now born pre-term or underweight. That malnutrition has also left many new mothers unable to breastfeed.
Dr. Asaad Nawajha, a pediatric specialist at Nasser Hospital, told Middle East Eye that the blockade has proven catastrophic for the health of both children and their mothers.
“This all goes back to the [harsh] conditions mothers endure amid this vicious war on the Gaza Strip,” Nawajha said. “Due to the lack of nutritious items entering the Gaza Strip, both mothers and children have been exposed to illnesses resulting from malnutrition.”
The Israeli government’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has insisted that the amount of aid allowed into Gaza is sufficient to provide for the population.
On June 22, COGAT announced that 430 aid trucks had been allowed to enter the strip during the preceding week. However, this is but a fraction of the more than 600 trucks per day that the United Nations is necessary to meet their needs.
Many people who have come to aid sites administered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to obtain the meager supplies available, have been met with deadly violence from the Israeli military.
Since May 27, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 injured by Israeli forces at these sites, according to the U.N. Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Gaza Media Office reports at least 19 fatal incidents at these GHF sites over the span of just one month.
Many of the victims have been children. According to a study released Thursday by the humanitarian group Save the Children, children have been killed at 10 of those 19 incidents.
“No child should be killed searching for food,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. “This is not a humanitarian operation—it’s a death trap.”
Vote Labour for Genocide.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Vote Labour for Genocide.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
The UK government has quietly dropped its legal battle to uphold a law that allowed police to arrest peaceful protesters | Seiya Tanase/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Labour has quietly dropped legal fight over unlawful crackdown on protest. But what about those already arrested?
Two years ago, Suella Braverman made a law she had no power to make.
Her new law fundamentally changed the threshold at which police could impose conditions on a protest in England and Wales. It went from anything that caused ‘serious disruption’ – itself a vague phrase that Braverman was asked to define but didn’t – to anything that caused ‘more than minor’ disruption.
Now, finally, those laws have been quashed. We at Liberty launched legal action against the government in June 2023, and five judges over two hearings have since agreed with us that the measures were unlawful and should never have been introduced in the first place.
This week, the Labour government quietly dropped its appeal over those court rulings. The law now reverts back to what it originally was. Police can no longer intervene in protests on trivial grounds, such as a person blocking the entrance to a hotel where a fossil fuel conference is taking place for a matter of minutes – an act for which Greta Thunberg was arrested and later acquitted.
At Liberty, we took action against these laws not just because they were undemocratic and unlawful, but because of the real human impact they had on protesters and non-protesters across the country.
Take Susan* for example, who was wrongly arrested in January. Susan had gone to a vigil for Palestine in the morning, but left to go for lunch. As she was on her way to the shops with friends, she asked the police which way to go, and they directed her back into the protest area. A few minutes later, Susan was caught up in a kettle as the area had conditions imposed on it under these laws.
Susan was arrested, held in custody first on a coach for three hours, and then in a cell for the rest of the 24-hour period that a person can be detained for without charge. She was unable to even call home to tell her son she wouldn’t be allowed home that evening until 10pm.
Eventually, Susan was told that no further action would be taken against her, as was the case for dozens of others who got caught up in this injustice. Despite this, there have been long-lasting effects. In her own words, this has had a huge impact on her mental health. She feels scared for her family’s safety. She has lost all optimism, when she did nothing wrong in the first place.
What makes Susan’s case even worse is that the legislation had already been ruled unlawful at the point she was arrested. Just a few months earlier, the Labour government had chosen to appeal the court’s original decision that the Conservatives acted unlawfully. This is despite Labour’s home secretary, Yvette Cooper, having vocally opposed these same laws when she was in opposition.
Now, the government has finally accepted defeat and has decided to drop its appeal. This is a huge victory for democracy and our right to protest.
Conservative ministers loudly championed free speech – right up until they outlawed it. Now, we’re all at risk
Through successive government acts and rhetoric, the ways in which we can protest have been narrowed. Restrictions have been placed on how we protest, and even how noisy a protest can be. And as we’ve seen recently, the sentences given out to protesters have only got longer and harsher.
This cannot go on. We need a reset on the way protest is treated, because it is leading to situations like Susan’s, where vague laws are causing very real damage.
If we’ve learnt anything from our legal action, it is that justice is possible. But, as Susan’s experience shows, there is still further justice that needs to be gained.
These laws should never have been made, and so, quite clearly, every incident under them must be looked at. There has to be an urgent review of every arrest and conviction made under these regulations.
