Two-tier justice fury as Bob Vylan walks free over ‘death to IDF' chant while Tory councillor's wife locked up for tweet

The Sun

7 hours ago

CONTROVERSIAL rap act Bob Vylan should be "arrested and prosecuted immediately", says the shadow home secretary.
The punk duo - who perform as Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan - chanted "death to the IDF" and other alleged anti-semitic slurs during their Glastonbury appearance on Saturday.
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Chris Philp has called for them to be treated in a similar fashion to Lucy Connolly, the Tory councillor's wife who was jailed for tweets in the aftermath of the Southport murders last summer.
The former minister told the Daily Telegraph: 'It seems very clear that this man was directly inciting violence.
"He should receive the same treatment under the law as others, such as Lucy Connolly.
'He should be arrested and prosecuted immediately. A failure to do so would be a clear example of two-tier justice under Sir Keir Starmer and his attorney general, Lord Hermer.'
Connolly posted comments on her X account just hours after evil Axel Rudakubana murdered three girls in the Merseyside town on July 29 last year.
Connolly, 41, shared a call to arms following the deaths of Bebe King, six, nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, last July.
Posts wrongly claimed monster Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum seeker when he was actually born in Cardiff and raised Christian.
However, her punishment sparked fury across the political divide.
Furious Brits noted that despite the former child minder quickly deleting her post, she remains in prison while paedos such as Hugh Edwards escaped jail time.
It comes after PM Keir Starmer last night blasted the BBC for allowing little-known punk act Bob Vylan's hate-filled rant to be broadcast on live TV.
Lead singer from the group Kneecap arriving at Westminster magistrates court in London
They led the crowd in chants of 'death, death to the IDF (Israeli Defence Force)'.
Demanding an explanation from director-general Tim Davie, the Prime Minister said: 'There is no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech.'
He was joined by a raft of MPs and Jewish groups condemning the failure to pull the gig from the air, with Lord Astin calling it a 'very dark day' for the corporation.
Glastonbury Festival organisers said they were 'appalled' and said it 'crossed the line'.
Avon and Somerset Police said yesterday it was investigating.
The PM had previously said that controversial act Kneecap should be taken off the bill with one member facing a terror charge for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert.
Sir Keir last night said: 'I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence.
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'The BBC needs to explain how these scenes came to be broadcast.'
He was backed by his Health Secretary Wes Streeting who said the corporation had "questions to answer".
The pro-Palestine duo Bob Vylan also declared 'from the river to the sea Palestine…will be free' seen by the Jewish community as calling for Israel's elimination.
BBC bosses had already said that Kneecap's performance wouldn't be shown live on Saturday afternoon but act Bob Vylan – on stage before them - caught them unawares.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy contacted Mr Davie asking for an 'urgent explanation' into what checks had been made in advance of their appearance.
Critics last night said BBC chiefs must be fired for broadcasting anti-Israel jibes which descended into a 'sickening hate rally'.
Corporation bosses have been ordered to explain why licence fee cash was spent on the shameful outburst to viewers watching at home on the BBC iPlayer.
Lord Austin said: 'Glastonbury was turned into a sickening hate rally.
'You have to ask just what on earth the BBC is doing with our licence fee?
'They send hundreds of BBC staff to cover Glastonbury, but no one no one did anything to stop this easily foreseeable incident being broadcast?'
He urged Director-General Tim Davie to launch an urgent probe and swing the axe at those who are responsible.
He called the incident that totally overshadowed the three-day event as a 'very dark day' for the corporation.
He added that the incident 'calls its very purpose and future into question, if it can't stand up for British values and instead gives a platform to extremists'.
Meanwhile, shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel said the whole incident calls into raises the prospect of whether the BBC should call itself the national broadcaster.
She said: 'Glastonbury and the BBC are inciting murder and terrorist violence against Jewish people.
'We are witnessing dangerous extremes in our country of intolerance towards the Jewish community which is unacceptable and should never ever be tolerated.
'This display of invective and hatred has highlighted again, the BBC's editorial failings on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias which are now so consistently widespread we need change at the BBC - they no longer hold the respectability to claim the mantle of our national broadcaster.'
Members of the Commons' Culture select committee will meet tomorrow (Tues) to discuss when BBC bosses come before members to be quizzed.
Chair Caroline Dinenage said the matter raises 'questions about live broadcast/delays and editorial decision making on the fly'.
Telly personality and criminal barrister Rob Rinder said: "You can stand for Palestinian rights without denying Jewish ones.
"You can oppose a government without wishing away a people.
'If your activism leaves no room for someone else's safety, grief or history it's not activism. It's hate."
But former Cabinet Minister Lord Hain said it wasn't a time to 'fret' over the performance and the language used.
But Glastonbury and organiser Emily Eavis said it was also 'urgently reminding' everyone involved in the festival there was no room for 'anti-Semitism, hate speech or incitement to violence'.
They added in a statement that they stood against all forms of war and terrorism.
Former BBC executive Danny Cohen said regulator OFCOM should intervene and an investigation led by the corporations's Board led by Chairman Samir Shah.
But Avon and Somerset Police said video evidence is being assessed "to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation".
Former Cabinet Minister Lord Hain insisted it wasn't a time to 'fret' over the performance and the language used.
He said: 'I don't think we should fret too much about this, I think we should simply be grown up about it and say, yeah, people are saying things that we don't agree with, but that's music, it's said and it's gone amidst a few loud drum beats.'
The controversy came after one member of Kneecap also used their performance on the West Holts stage to suggest fans 'start a riot' at bandmate Liam O'Hanna's next court date.
But there will be no charges brought in relation to a November 2023 appearance by the group where they say 'the only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP' which was caught on video.
A BBC spokesperson last night said: 'Some of the comments made during Bob Vylan's set were deeply offensive.
'During this live stream on iPlayer, which reflected what was happening on stage, a warning was issued on screen about the very strong and discriminatory language. We have no plans to make the performance available on demand.'
ROD LIDDLE It's an outrage that Southport tweeter was treated worse than a sex offender – but I know what Two-Tier Keir's game is
By Rod Liddle
THE law is not an ass – but judges frequently are. And they are at their most stupid when they appear to have been politically co-opted.
Lucy Connolly's appeal has been rejected by a pompous, public school trio in the appeal courts.
She is the woman with no previous convictions who was sentenced to 31 months for tweeting something horrible about asylum seekers.
That was during those riots last ­summer. When an awful lot of people received very peremptory justice for ­saying stuff online.
Everybody could see that Connolly's sentence was ludicrously severe. Utterly inappropriate for the crime.
Everybody, that is, except Sir Keir Starmer, who tried to claim he didn't know the details of the case.
And the Appeal Court judges, led by Lord Justice Tim Nice-But-Dim Holroyde. Well, actually not that nice.
Connolly got a longer sentence than has been doled out recently to sex offenders, domestic abusers, robbers, burglars, stabbers . . . and everybody knows why.
It's because the new Labour government wanted swift justice handed down to these 'racists'. So these were political crimes, then.
And as Boris Johnson said, it is as if we were in a police state.
The judges concluded: 'There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive.'
For the rest of us, watching these proceedings in mounting fury, the precise reverse was the case.
There seems no arguable basis on which it could be said that the ­sentence imposed WASN'T manifestly excessive.
Lucy's distraught husband, Conservative councillor Ray Connolly, fumed: 'The court had the opportunity to reduce her cruelly long and disproportionate sentence, but they refused.'
And Lucy's barrister said: 'They have basically deemed her racist and they've decided that that is the ultimate moral sin. Perhaps it is in their world.
'We now have a Labour-supporting establishment and it is their inherent moral evil that the minute you can get painted as a racist, even though you're obviously not a racist, you become a ­second-rate citizen.'
This is precisely the case and it is hugely damaging to our society.
It means we lose all faith in our legal system — if we ever had any in the first place — when such outrageous ­miscarriages of justice occur.
For a long while now, the courts have operated a two-tier system for sentencing. And they do that because, just as the right-wingers say, we live in a two-tier country.
There are the asylum seekers who judges will seemingly not deport, no matter what heinous crimes they may have committed.
And similarly the eco-protestors who cause misery and mayhem, but are praised by idiot judges for their commitment to the cause.
And then, while people who tweeted nasty stuff about those asylum seekers get banged up in Starmer's state without so much as a by-your-leave, the Government refuses to hold an inquiry into the rape-gangs scandal which implicated so many Asian- Muslim men up and down the country.
What has happened to Lucy Connolly is a scandal.
And it is a scandal which involves the judges AND the Government. In collusion. When that happens, we are no longer living in a free country.
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