It's something of a standing joke amongst people who know me that I really do not like famous people. The reasons why I don't like famous people will probably one day be the subject of a different blog, or perhaps of a longer piece of writing (I'll probably write a book about it one day) but for now I'll just say that I think it is profoundly harmful to everyone that we consider well-known individuals to be role models. This attitude is a matter of great inequality, giving less respect to ourselves and our peers than we do to people whom we don't actually know, and whose public images are stage-managed to an extent that their true personality can't be seen (the recent headlines about Russell Brand and David Walliams are quite a good example of that).
The subject of whether celebrities should bring their political opinions into public life is another valid question, and another one for which my thoughts on the matter are far too complicated to really be summarised in a single blog. But in a nutshell: 1) Celebrities should bring their political opinions into public life, because everyone should; 2) Particularly if the celebrity is an artist, all art is inherently political, so that makes it additionally impossible not to; 3) (and this is an important one) A celebrity's opinion should not be considered any more relevant than the opinion of a regular member of the public. Celebrities are not experts, and whilst they have just as much responsibility to educate the public as we all do, they should not have any more platform to do that than anyone else does.
Bearing that in mind, we come on to the subject of two well-known people, English singer Ed Sheeran and Irish novelist Sally Rooney, the differing ways they've handled a situation regarding Palestine, and our media's reaction to it.
I will start with Ed Sheeran, because I actually don't believe the Sally Rooney instance would have happened in the same way were it not for that. Ed Sheeran removed the singer Macklemore from his 2026 tour after Macklemore's public statements of support for Palestine. The story seems to go that Sheeran was bullied and intimidated by the billionaire venue owner Robert Kraft, who threatened to cancel Sheeran's whole performance and influence other venues to do the same if Macklemore was allowed to perform. The decision to remove Macklemore led to profound levels of criticism for Ed Sheeran from a great number of cultural figures, as well as the general public. Many other support acts withdrew from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore, and for the most part the sales numbers for their music has gone up. The tour continued, but the Macklemore controversy continues to be the thing it's most remembered for.
It's important to make something clear. The amount of criticism Ed Sheeran courted for this is not just because people agreed with Macklemore about Palestine (although I hope many of his critics do). It's also because of a general indignation about artists being bullied in this way. As I said at the beginning, all art is inherently political - there is no such thing as apolitical art, art by its very nature is a reflection of the time and social culture that the artist exists in and the way they view that. Artists are, understandably, very nervous about the silencing of their own freedom of expression in the interests of kowtowing to the wealthy and powerful. Ed Sheeran has learned the hard way that you cannot be an apolitical artist, and particularly not when there's a genocide going on.
And that brings us onto the other major celebrity who's courted controversy recently, but in an entirely different way. Sally Rooney has been one of the most successful novelists over the last ten years. Her novels Conversations with Friends, Normal People, Intermezzo and Beautiful World, Where Are You? have all been critically acclaimed, and the first two of which have had incredibly successful television adaptations on the BBC. I've only myself read one of her books, Conversations with Friends, which I read during lockdown and I found quite interesting for being the only book I'd ever read that featured a main character with endometriosis, a very debilitating illness of the female reproductive system that isn't talked about nearly enough.
Last July, the direct action group Palestine Action was controversially proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government and the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. This proscription puts it in the same category as al-Qaida and National Action, and makes it a crime for any UK citizen to publicly express support for them. This proscription has been heavily contested ever since, with enormous numbers of protests in support of Palestine Action. Since June 2025, the number of arrests for terrorism in the UK jumped from 234 in 2024-25 to 3,867 in the following year - an increase of 1,553% according to the Government's own figures. There are also a lot of people who've protested in support of Palestine Action who haven't been arrested because there simply hasn't been sufficient police resources to do so. I've heard some commenters, apparently missing the point, saying, 'If they didn't want to be arrested, why not just protest for Palestine without mentioning Palestine Action?' But mentioning Palestine Action is the whole point - the purpose of these protests is to overwhelm the criminal justice system and make the proscription impossible to enforce, and it's working. Meanwhile, there is a process going through the courts to determine whether the proscription was legal in the first place. The Government has put itself into an impossible quandary on Israel's behalf, and any course of action it takes now will be highly embarrassing.
Since the proscription, Sally Rooney has been vocal about how she supports Palestine Action, and she is allowed to say that. A statement like this would be illegal if a UK citizen said it, but Sally Rooney is not a UK citizen; she is an Irish citizen and subject to Irish law, so she cannot face any legal action for a statement like this unless she says it in the UK. I've heard some Government ministers and media pundits speculating that she could be arrested for terrorism for making public statements like this, but it's an empty threat and they know it. The UK has no power to do any such thing.
Nevertheless, there was a discussion about a year ago speculating that possibly it may become illegal for Sally Rooney's books to be sold in the UK if she pledges to donate her royalties to Palestine Action. What the legal position is surrounding this, a publisher in the UK giving earned royalties to a foreign author who they know intends to spend the money on something that would be illegal in the UK but is not in their own country, is a very complex matter that I can't get to the bottom of without a great deal more legal knowledge than I have. Whatever the legal situation, Sally Rooney's books have been withdrawn from UK wholesalers, and can currently only be purchased in the UK from booksellers who already had them in stock. The official reason is that it would be illegal for her publishers, Faber and Faber, to pass on her royalty money knowing what she intends to do with it.
There are some things about this that I find very curious. The first, and most obvious one, is why has it taken until now for this to suddenly become the case? It was in July 2025 that Palestine Action was proscribed in the UK, and it was only quite soon afterwards that people started speculating about this with Sally Rooney (the earliest reference to it I could find was this BBC article from November 2025). Why has it suddenly become an issue now, a whole year later? If anything, the proscription against Palestine Action was a lot stronger a year ago than it is now; a year later, when it's become increasingly apparent that the police and the courts and the Government are all out of their depth, it feels very odd that suddenly now is the time that Sally Rooney and her publishers are facing legal difficulties over this. I've not seen anyone explain this in any of the media surrounding this situation - what has happened that has meant this has become illegal now, when it wasn't in the past?
There are a few other things that are a bit odd about this situation. The first is that Palestine Action does not have a bank account. Part of the proscription process involves freezing whatever bank account they did have, so it isn't possible for Sally Rooney, or for anyone else, to donate money to them. I should say that there is a 'Palestine Action Global', which does accept donations, so perhaps she donates to that. But at the bottom of the donation page is this disclaimer: 'Please see our statement on from September 2025, which explicitly states that ‘Palestine Action Global’ does not include the United Kingdom. The UK proscription covered Palestine Action in Britain, not its global groups. Any reporting which suggests otherwise, or implies Palestine Action Global contravenes the ban, is infactual and baseless.' So if Sally Rooney is donating to that, I don't understand how that would come under the UK proscription. And one other peculiar thing - the November 2025 BBC article speculates that the TV adaptations of Rooney's novels Normal People and Conversations with Friends may have to be removed from the iPlayer streaming service because Rooney also receives royalties from the BBC for that. So far, this has not happened. It is apparently not illegal for Rooney to receive royalties from the BBC. A lot of these things don't quite make sense to me.
But there is something that does make sense, which is how at ease Sally Rooney seems to be with the whole decision. From the comments she's made in her interviews, it doesn't sound as though she's at all upset about her books being withdrawn - I even have the impression that she's been quite a big part of the decision to withdraw them in the first place. And this creates quite an interesting comparison - this has been reported using very authoritarian language - there are words like 'ban', like 'censorship', all designed to suggest that this is something that has been imposed on Sally Rooney against her will. And her own position doesn't seem to be that. It feels to me as though this is actually a decision she has largely made herself.
And I think it is. I do not believe that the reason Sally Rooney's books have been withdrawn in the UK is because it's illegal for her publishers to pay her royalties - there are too many things about that explanation that don't quite stack up. What I think this is really about is what happened with Ed Sheeran. The world saw a spineless celebrity acquiescing to demands from powerful billionaires to silence his friends' and colleagues' freedom of expression. Sally Rooney, on the other hand, made a decision to not only speak positively about Palestine Action, but to put her money where her mouth was; to say, 'Fine, if you will continue to proscribe them as a terrorist organisation, I will take my business elsewhere.' And as a result, it's made the already hard-to-enforce proscription against Palestine Action even more of a headache for the UK Government. Just as with Ed Sheeran and Macklemore, people have been up in arms about this, particularly as Rooney is such a popular author. The most significant development is Rooney's fellow author Sarah Helm saying on social media, 'God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action', a statement which the police subsequently said did not meet the threshold for arrest. But Sarah Helm isn't just an author; this is significant because of who she's married to. She's married to Jonathan Powell, who is the UK's National Security Advisor. Clearly, it would have been a highly explosive situation had the wife of the UK's National Security Advisor been arrested for terrorism, so I'm not surprised that this one conveniently went away. But as a result, protesters have been standing with placards saying the exact same words that Helm said, and they have been arrested. This creates an even worse situation, where the law apparently considers words said online, to a big audience, by the wife of the UK's National Security Advisor not to meet the criminal threshold, but the same words on a bit of cardboard by an ordinary person to do so. Sally Rooney caused this situation, and I believe she knew she was causing it. That's what all this is about.
I cannot say for certain that this was the case with Sally Rooney. Most of what I'm saying is speculative, I cannot find any source to clarify that this was the case. But I also can't find any source that explains all the various bits of confusion about the official statement, so it is the most clear explanation. And if I'm right, it really says such interesting things about the state of our media. They could not report a well-known person taking a strong and principled stand in support of Palestine - so instead, they reported it as though it was something that was forced on Sally Rooney, as though she'd done something wrong and was being punished for it.
It made me think how the media would have reported the situation with Ed Sheeran if Sheeran had been a little more defensive of his colleague. Much the same, I would imagine. Say Ed Sheeran had cancelled his tour to any venues who refused to host Macklemore - this would have been reported as though he had been banned from the venues for refusing to follow the rules, as opposed to making his own decision to stand against bullying and intimidation from someone powerful.
That version of history doesn't exist. But it does create some interesting thoughts about the way the media reports it when a high-profile figure does make a principled stand. Consequences for such things are not always forced by others against the recipients' will.
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