It’s been a terrible week for redheaded songwriter and spectre-of-supermarket-speakers Ed Sheeran, to put it mildly. And the source of the chaos has been none other than “oh yeah, I remember him” rapper Macklemore.

The Thrift Shop rapper performed a pro-Palestine song and chanted “free Palestine” as he opened for Sheeran’s huge stadium tour. Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium and prolific donor to Israel, along with other tour promoters, threatened to cancel upcoming stadium shows, putting pressure on Sheeran and his promoter to drop Macklemore from the tour. The billionaire Kraft stepped in and accused Macklemore’s performance of including a “broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery”.

So that was it: Macklemore was dropped from the tour. No big loss, surely. Until every other support act dropped out in solidarity. Even Sheeran’s own backing band, Irish folk group Beoga, resigned from the tour.

Sheeran put out a damage control statement, committing the worst thing he could do in that moment: wishy-washy fence-sitting. A “both sides” attempt to keep everyone happy but ultimately making no one happy. He also made sure to note that it was not his decision, but strictly the decision of the promoters and venue owners. “I am not complicit” was his incredibly ironic defence. Poor innocent Ed, he gets his name up there in shining lights and still gets no say in anything.

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