Has Ireland fallen out of love with pop's Mr Nice guy?

Ed Sheeran’s week from hell just keeps getting worse - and he is largely to blame, says Alan Corr

This weekend, one of the biggest music stars on the planet is facing into the biggest crisis of his squeaky clean career - and for a man whose songs are about nothing much in particular, let alone politics, he has become the target of a moral outrage that he will find almost impossible to escape.

Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour began falling apart last Monday when support act, Seattle rapper Macklemore, revealed that he had axed from the line-up after he made an impassioned pro-Palestine speech from the stage of the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey earlier in September.

In the following days, his fellow support acts, Kerry-based band Beoga, who are founding members of Irish Artists for Palestine, Dublin singer Aaron Rowe, Finneas, brother of Billie Eilish, and Swedish act Lukas Graham, all walked out in solidarity.

It has left the avowedly "apolitical" Sheeran isolated and accused of moral cowardice for acceding to pressure from venue owners led by Robert Kraft, the Jewish billionaire owner of the Gilette Stadium in Massachusetts where Sheeran is due to play next week.

Timeline: How the Ed Sheeran-Macklemore tour row unfolded

It has resulted in the biggest fall from grace for a pop star in years and one of the most vicious pile-ons in recent memory.

Sheeran will take to the stage in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, tonight to the sound of protests outside the venue and with his standing among his fellow artists at a crushing low. Some sections of his Irish fanbase may now be questioning their loyalty to their idol.

His support acts have deserted him, he has been blacklisted by radio stations, including Dublin-based Classic Hits, the ticket prices for the remaining dates on his tour have plummeted and he is fast finding out that remaining neutral on the biggest global issue of the age is just no longer acceptable or even possible.

How did we get here? How did pop’s Mr Nice Guy and the everyman of the syrupy ballad become a hate figure in just one short - although very long for him - week?

It is easy to see why in Ireland. The country's support for Palestine and revulsion at the carnage in Gaza is well-known, and our own dark history of colonial oppression has long seen us feel an ingrained solidarity.

Last year Sheeran, who holds an Irish passport and whose dad is from Belfast, avowed that he identified as "culturally Irish". One of his biggest hits is Galway Girl and he has taken to the stage here wearing GAA jerseys and spoken fondly of his connections to the country.

There is no doubting his sincerity. Being pro-Palestinian is a not a requirement to being Irish, as some people have ridiculously suggested, but Ed’s grá for the old sod now seems singularly at odds with how most Irish feel about the ongoing war in Gaza. He is now learning how deep that feeling is. It is also worth noting that all of his support acts have an Irish connection - Macklemore (real name Benjamin Hammond Haggerty) has spoken about his family’s Cork roots, Finneas O’Connell’s family has roots in Dunmanway, West Cork, and Lukas Graham’s father is from Ballyshannon.

The Irish may have invented the boycott but the truth is that if he announced three nights in Croke park tomorrow, the tickets would be gone in sixty seconds. Sheeran has long proven himself to be critic proof. He may well be cancel proof as well.

The Irish government has been the among the most outspoken nations about Palestine and during the week RTÉ announced it would be boycotting the Eurovision for a second year due to Israel’s involvement. A huge football fan, Sheeran also knows what the Republic of Ireland’s home match against Israel next weekend was moved out of the country due to the public outcry.

The controversy that has engulfed Sheeran’s tour also comes at a time when the most exciting new acts in Ireland - Fontaines D.C,. CMAT and Kneecap - continue to be vocal about Gaza and a new generation of young Irish people have become increasingly politically engaged.

But is all of this likely to have an effect on the ginger one’s Irish fanbase? Sheeran fans are not known for their staunch anarcho-syndicalism (you won’t see anyone wearing a Crass t-shirt at his gigs) so the current firestorm may not change their minds one bit about their idol. Yesterday, Sheeran's latest album, +−=÷× (Tour Collection), dropped one place in the Irish album charts. Spotify, not known for their ethical stance on anything ever, are unlikely to kick him off their service.

The Irish may have invented the boycott but the truth is that if he announced three nights in Croke park tomorrow, the tickets would be gone in sixty seconds. Sheeran has long proven himself to be critic proof. He may well be cancel proof as well.

And in the same way Macklemore is perfectly entitled to his views and fully entitled to express them, Sheeran is also entitled to be apolitical and to keep his opinion to himself.

But as well as what appears to be a lack of loyalty to his friends and fellow artists, it is the rank hypocrisy that leaves a nasty taste. After we were reminded of Sheeran’s support for Ukraine, his staunch opposition to Brexit, and his support for former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn (he was always onto a bad bet with that one), his formerly well-meaning apolitical stance now looks decidedly á la carte.

However, it appears as though an anguished Ed is pleading innocence as he enables an assault on free speech. Aaron Rowe put it best when he said, "I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence … rightful voices."

As this story runs and runs, the question remains - what could Sheeran have done differently? Earlier this week, he reportedly had a fraught forty-minute telephone conversation with Robert Kraft in which he argued that Macklemore should stay on the tour. It was to no avail. Kraft had already allegedly contacted his fellow venues owners and prevailed upon them to insist Sheeran would not play if Macklemore remained on the bill.

Could Sheeran have called Kraft’s bluff? That always seemed unlikely as cancelling the tour would have put him in huge financial jeopardy (even for a man with an estimated personal fortune of $400 million) and left him facing legal wrangles for possibly the next decade and severely disrupting his touring and recording activities. Sheeran has seen the inside of a lot of courtrooms over the last few years, with his decade-long battle over copyright issues leaving him exhausted and angry.

And that’s before we get into the nitty gritty of the nature of the contracts on the Loop tour. Many headline acts have separate agreements with venues, promotors and support acts and we do not know the details of Sheeran’s legal agreements here.

Do our pop stars now have to pass an astringent purity test before they can perform or write songs? Will artists of all genres now face extreme pressure to conform to one opinion or the other, and the more extreme their opinions are, the better it will be.

However, it appears as though an anguished Ed is pleading innocence as he enables an assault on free speech. As the fallout continues, Aaron Rowe has defended Sheeran and put he it best when he said, "I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence rightful voices."

Sheeran has sacrificed loyalty to his friends and bowed to corporate pressure and no matter how you spin that, it looks very bad indeed. There a huge difference between selling out huge venues and just selling out.

And when Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who is also known as Tommy Robinson, comes out in your support, you have well and truly lost.

Questions must also be asked about the stern voices who have come out so angrily and viscously against Sheeran. People who have most likely never bothered with his bland music have now swamped Twitter with rabid calls for his immediate cancellation. As usual, calm heads are called for but in the unceasing shouting match that is Musk’s toxic trench, there is little hope of that. But given that less than 3% of Irish people use Twitter, they hardly represent what Ireland thinks of Sheeran.

Do our pop stars now have to pass an astringent purity test before they can perform or write songs? Will artists of all genres now face extreme pressure to conform to one opinion or the other, and the more extreme their opinions are, the better it will be.

Israel’s war in Gaza is the most emotive issue in the world right now. However, the brutal and vicious pile-on Sheeran is enduring is unwarranted and disturbing to watch. The impact on his mental well-being and sense of self must be devastating.

As the Loop tour continues, Sheeran is in crisis mode. He may well have sought advice from Taylor Swift, a woman who has somehow managed to sail serenely through the current global crisis, singing songs about crap boyfriends, fame, fickle fame, and some old poets without having to have an opinion - or have an opinion forced on to her. She has certainly never faced a backlash like this for keeping her own counsel when it comes to politics.

You will frequently hear people who have clearly never heard of The Beatles, Sam Cooke, The Rolling Stones, Sinéad O’Connor, Bob Marley, U2 and Bob Dylan grumble that musicians should stick to music and stay out of politics but by doing just that, Sheeran has brought about the biggest crisis of his sainted career. Just a few scant years ago, we used to lament that pop stars weren’t political enough. Now it seems they can’t be political enough.

It is often said that the wonder of Sheeran - and a large part of his personal fortune - is that he has become one of the biggest pop stars of all time by being just one man standing alone on stage every night with a guitar, singing songs about an idealised world where everyone just gets along.

He looks very alone now.