Home Secretary James Cleverly has branded Banksy’s migrant ship artwork “despicable”, describing it as a “celebration of the loss of life in the English Channel” after the British artist confirmed he was The man behind the show Weekend at Glastonbury Festival.
On Sunday, Banks uploaded a video of an inflatable boat carrying immigrant dummies being lifted above the heads of thousands of revelers at a gig by Bristol punk band Idles on Friday night. The raft was launched as the band performed Danny Nedelko, a 2018 song with lyrics that begin: “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beautiful immigrant.” A spokesman for the band said it didn’t learn about this until after the show. A stunt. The ship made another appearance at rapper Little Simz’s set on Saturday when she performed on the Pyramid Stage.
Cleverly told Sky News today, seemingly missing the point of Banks and Edels’ work: “There is a group of people out there joking and celebrating crimes that cost lives. People die. People die in the Mediterranean, die In the English Channel. It’s not funny.
Asked whether the work could serve as a comment on the failure of the right-wing Tories to tackle migrant crossings, he said: “Our ability to tackle this problem is hampered at every stage by Labor, who are eager to tackle it. .
Cleverley added: “The level of hypocrisy on this issue from the left is appalling and to make this a joke at a pop festival and celebrate it while children are dying in the English Channel is completely unacceptable.”
Cleverley was being interviewed ahead of Thursday’s election, where polls predict a crushing defeat for his party.
Banksy has long focused on the immigration crisis in her work. In August 2020, he funded a real ship, named the Louis Michel after the 19th-century French feminist and anarchist, to rescue refugees making the perilous crossing from North Africa to Europe . Italian authorities seized and later released the ship in March 2023 as Giorgia Meloni’s government restricted humanitarian operations to stem a surge in Mediterranean crossings.
In 2019, Banksy made his mark at the Venice Biennale by stenciling an immigrant child in a life jacket holding aloft a hissing neon pink flare; and in 2015, he Stenciled image of late Apple founder Steve Jobs, slinging a black garbage bag over his shoulder and holding a Holding an original Apple computer.
In a statement about his work in Calais, Banks said: “We often think of immigrants as a drain on national resources, but Steve Jobs is the son of Syrian immigrants. Apple is the most profitable company in the world, paying more than $7 billion (£4.6 billion) in taxes, and it only exists because they allowed a young man from Homs.
