Kneecap row shows just how desperate Kemi Badenoch can be

Christy Moore. The Wolfe Tones. And now Mo Chara. One third of the Irish rap trio Kneecap has joined his predecessors in being dragged into legal battles or censorship not for violence, not for incitement, but after a political, artistic performance that challenges British authority. To Mo Chara's supporters, this could look like he's been arrested for performing, being provocative and making the British state look stupid.

Nothing rattles the British establishment like being laughed at by someone who isn't supposed to have a voice. Mo Chara, real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has been charged with a terror offence after allegedly displaying a flag during a gig in November 2024.

The incident follows weeks of controversy, including cancelled shows and backlash over Gaza-related messages at Coachella. Counter-terrorism police began investigating after videos surfaced allegedly showing support for banned groups.

Kneecap's performances are theatre. They're deliberately provocative - in the same way protest songs, political graffiti, and punk rock always have been. They make statements. And those statements shouldn't be subject to criminal charges in a democracy.

Now a man who grew up in the shadow of streets festooned with the flags of proscribed organisations - both republican and loyalist - without prosecution levied, is facing actual charges, because the Met, the same force that can't keep up with its own myriad of failings, let alone its moral compass, has stepped in. We could be forgiven for thinking our police don't know how to handle dissent without detention.

And the hypocrisy from Tories is vile. During a 2019 meeting, Frank Hester, a major Tory donor, allegedly said made him "want to hate all Black women".

He was then alleged to go even further, saying, "I think she should be shot... [his black female executive colleague] and Diane Abbott need to be shot." That's not a lyric. That's not part of a performance. That's hate speech. Real, actual racism, directed at Britain's first Black woman MP.

And what did Kemi Badenoch do? She defended him. Bent over backwards to explain it away, as if multimillionaire donors deserve more empathy than women who've spent decades being targets of abuse.

Kemi Badenoch was quick to go after Kneecap, but slow to criticise Frank Hester.

It was as though she leapt on an opportunity to condemn Irish republicans while treating the vile Frank Hester row as a PR inconvenience.

Mo Chara was made an example of - why? Because Kneecap are difficult. Because they don't behave. Because they mocked Kemi Badenoch and the Tory government's funding of their own music, gleefully pointing out that the British state helped pay for songs that celebrate Irish republican resistance.

That was Kneecap's real crime. Not waving a flag. Not shouting slogans in a packed venue. But making the British establishment look like fools on the world stage - winning a BAFTA with a film about that very music, then turning the spotlight back on their hypocrisy.

And just to make their point even sharper? They took that £14,000 in public funding and split it down the middle, half to a youth club on the Catholic Falls Road, half to one on the Protestant Shankill. A quiet act of unity, using Westminster's own money.

What critics seem to forget is that Mo Chara and Kneecap are standing in a long and sacred Irish tradition. Irish art has for centuries been political, rebellious and anti-colonial. It's baked into the poetry of Yeats, the music of Christy Moore, the rage of Sinead O'Connor.

In 1972 after the British Army killed 14 catholic civilians in Derry, Paul McCartney, who has Irish heritage, and his band, Wings, released Give Ireland Back to the Irish. Banned across British airwaves.

The message was too raw. Too real. Too close to the bone. Christy Moore was detained and questioned over songs that detailed British brutality in Northern Ireland.

Irish bands like The Pogues have faced the same treatment for decades. Their song 'Streets of Sorrow', which told the truth about the wrongful imprisonment of the Birmingham Six, was banned from British airwaves well into the 90s.

Now Mo Chara faces the threat of prosecution. Whether or not he waved a Hezbollah flag at a concert should not be a matter for the British state.

Art isn't some sideshow to be tolerated when it's safe and censored when it is not. That's the whole point. Art is a mirror. A weapon. A reckoning. Too many in the British establishment don't want a reckoning. They want obedience.

They don't mind political speech - so long as it's theirs. They don't mind outrage - so long as it's directed at the powerless. They don't mind protests - as long as it's their side making the noise.

What Mo Chara is alleged to have done is not dangerous. Nobody at a concert in London is going to go and sign up for Hezbollah.

His treatment reeks of an attitude that tells every young artist, every working-class kid with something to say, to shut up. Just sing the hits. Smile.

And the charging of Mo Chara won't shut him up, or what he stands for. That voice is too loud, too real, and too deep-rooted to kill off.

If the British establishment had any sense of history, they'd know they've already lost. The more they come after artists for telling the truth, the louder they get.

Mo Chara is not the problem. Kneecap are not the problem. The system that fears them is. The system that stays silent while over 60,000 civilians are killed in Gaza - and keeps signing off UK export licenses to the bombs that do it.

Kneecap called that out, too. They have gone as far as to suggest that's why they were targeted. Which side are you on?