There goes Wireless. The London music festival, often described as the capital’s flagship rap weekender, has now been ignominiously cancelled after its headline act Ye was blocked from travelling to the UK.

The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was initially meant to be headlining all three nights of the event in what was billed by Ticketmaster as a “genuinely era-defining weekend residency” after an absence of more than a decade from the UK. You can certainly still consider it era-defining, though for all the wrong reasons.

For one thing, this will surely go down as the shortest-lived headline announcement in history. It’s only been eight or so days since Ye was triumphantly unveiled as the star act of the 150,000-attendee weekend in Finsbury Park. Now organisers Festival Republic will have to pay back all ticket holders. In a statement, they said: “The Home Office has withdrawn Ye’s ETA [electronic travel authorisation], denying him entry into the United Kingdom. As a result, Wireless Festival is cancelled and refunds will be issued to all ticket-holders.”

In many ways, the cancellation makes perfect sense. The American rapper has a long history of antisemitic behaviour, including praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Just last year, he released a song titled “Heil Hitler”, rapped about reading Mein Kampf in bed and sold........

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