On 4 September, opening for Ed Sheeran in front of 89,000 people at MetLife Stadium, Macklemore said two words, "Free Palestine," wore a keffiyeh and performed "Hind's Hall" while footage from Gaza played behind him. This was the norm for a Macklemore concert, a fact that his friend Ed Sheeran was surely aware of before booking him to join him on his stadium tour.

Ten days later though, Macklemore was off the tour, for doing the same thing he had done at every concert since 2023. He removed by Sheeran's promoter, after Robert Kraft told Sheeran he would not be allowed to play Gillette Stadium and, by Macklemore's account, organised other stadium owners into the same ultimatum. One of these stadiums had recently played host to Kanye West, another two will soon host the self-professed Nazi.

Sheeran broke his silence on Tuesday, and made it worse. Six slides on Instagram, beginning with the claim that he is appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine and that the suffering on "both sides" is a human tragedy. A genocide, found as such by a UN commission of inquiry, does not have "sides". Sheeran was not worried about "both sides" when he expressed his support for an invaded Ukraine, but suddenly cared about optics when profit margins could be affected.

Then the alibi, which he cannot keep straight across two slides. Macklemore's removal was the promoter's decision and not his, he says, because the contract was with the promoter. He then says he spoke with the venues at length all week to build a bridge, that one of those people was Robert Kraft, and that he was in direct talks with promoters and activists to find a mutual resolution.

Which was it? Because both cannot be true. A man with no role in a decision does not spend a week negotiating it with the billionaire who forced it, and does not then report the outcome as something he was unable to prevent. He was in the room. He wants the result filed under a promoter's letterhead, which is what Monday's promoter statement existed to achieve.

Then the principle, and this is the lie. There is a reason he does not use his professional platform for politics, he writes. In March 2025 he wrote an open letter to Keir Starmer demanding £250 million for music education, copied to five government departments, gathered over 600 signatories, triggered a parliamentary debate in July and a curriculum change in November. The Prime Minister called it powerful, hard for the Prime Minister to offer praise if the artist is wholly non-political.

In 2022 he headlined the Concert for Ukraine, then released "2step" with Antytila, a Ukrainian band whose members were serving soldiers, with a video they shot at the front, one of them leaning on a military vehicle mid-patrol. He wrote that he stood with Ukraine and gave away the royalties.

No both sides there, and rightly so, no human tragedy shared out between invader and invaded. The rule of not being political has an exception, and the exception is profit margins.

The stated reason for the rule is that his audience includes young people, often children, and that his shows are for unity and escapism. Rachel Accurso, also known as Ms.Rachel, is a children's entertainer whose entire audience is children, and when she spoke about the children of Gaza, StopAntisemitism asked the regime's attorney general to investigate her as a foreign agent. She did not stop, and she still has her career. Sheeran is invoking children as the reason he cannot mention twenty thousand dead ones.

What he was asked to accommodate, by his own account relayed through Macklemore, is that the words and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to people he had spoken with. Britain recognised the State of Palestine as sovereign and independent on 21 September last year and the flag went up over an embassy in Hammersmith the next afternoon. His own government's flag protocol is more radical than his stage, unless you ask Sheeran himself of course.

The tour closes on 7 November at Raymond James Stadium, owned by Hillsborough County and built with $168 million of public money. That building hosted Kanye West across two nights in June, thirteen months after a song released by West called "Heil Hitler," and when a U.S. senator and 11,000 petitioners asked the Tampa Sports Authority to cancel, it refused on contractual and constitutional grounds.

That venue is on the list that would not take Macklemore. A song praising Hitler was a matter of principle. A flag Britain recognises was a booking problem. Ed Sheeran had the chance to stand up for a country under a Genocide, and his promoters said "Don't". Sheeran obeyed.

Update:

Every remaining act on the Loop tour has now walked. Aaron Rowe, the Irish singer-songwriter brought in as one of Macklemore's replacements on the US dates, withdrew saying that as Irish people they know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation, and that he would lose all respect for himself carrying on as normal. Lukas Graham, the Danish band lined up for the same replacement slots and friends with Sheeran for over a decade, went too, saying people should be able to speak about civilians being killed and children who deserve to grow up, whatever flag flies over them. Finneas, Billie Eilish's brother and producer, was due to open the South American leg in November and pulled out with the line that artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. Beoga, the Irish folk band who come on mid-set and co-wrote several of the songs they play with him, left as founding members of Irish Artists for Palestine. Sheeran has no opener and no band. He has also lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers since Monday, down from 47.6 million to 47.3, while the five artists who left have gained 1.6 million between them.