Culture secretary says X ‘didn’t even bother to turn up’ to meeting about abuse, intimidation and doxxing on social media

In interviews this morning, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said she felt sympathy for Ed Sheeran after all his supporting acts dropped out from his tour in solidarity with one of them, the American rapper Macklemore, who was dropped over a “free Palestine” speech.

Commenting on the story, Nandy told LBC:

I really feel for Ed Sheeran in all of this, actually, because you know he’s got support acts who he wants to profile and platform.

He’s got promoters saying that they won’t when politics is being introduced to the stadium. I think he’s been left in a really difficult and impossible position.

The world is quite a difficult place at the moment, and I think a lot of people do also quite like to have a space where they can go, where they can leave all of that aside.

And so I do understand that for a lot of people, they just want to leave politics aside for a bit and be able to enjoy the music.