"Their collective dishonesty is beyond shameful. God help Britain": Queen's Brian May hits out at the UK government and Britain's right-wing press

Brian May versus The Daily Mail
(Image credit: JMEnternational/Getty Images)

Queen's Brian May has hit out at the UK government and Britain's right-wing press in a scathing post on Instagram.

Queen's guitarist posted a photo of the front page of the Daily Mail newspaper from Friday, August 4, which featured Greenpeace protestors in front of, and on the roof of, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's "country mansion", holding up a banner reading, 'Rishi Sunak - Oil Profits Or Our Future.' The Daily Mail headline accompanying the photo reads 'HOW ON EARTH COULD THIS BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?' with a sub-headline/Daily Mail Comment stating, 'As eco-protestors occupy the roof of the PM's family home, what a humiliating symbol of our supine tolerance of a tiny, self-obsessed bunch of zealots who disrupt everyday life with impunity.'

The image May posted had red lines scrawled over the newspaper front page.

Alongside the photo, the guitarist wrote, "The poisonous Daily Mail strikes again, deliberately obscuring the point. The point being that the unquestionably suspect Rishi Sunak is unquestionably WRONG to allow vastly more drilling for oil in our waters - and the advocates of Just Stop Oil, no matter how annoying they might be, are UNQUESTIONABLY RIGHT.

To me it’s now unquestionable that the wrong people - The Tory Government and the Tory Press, are the WRONG PEOPLE to be in power. Their collective dishonesty is beyond shameful. God help Britain."

The comments beneath May's post are, unsurprisingly, mixed.

"Heard on radio 4 the other day that Just Stop Oil will be on the right side of history when we look back on these times," one comment reads. "They reminded that the suffragettes pulled stunts like this and disrupted public events which were reported just like this in the news."

A dissenting voice added, "Regardless of your opinion on the matter, it does not give these individuals the right to trespass and stage a protest on private property."

Queen were recently awarded a BRIT Billion Award by the BPI, to celebrate the band’s achievement in passing one billion streams in the UK.

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.