Ben Birchall/PA
A ‘re-purposed airport’ has opened at Glastonbury Festival that will celebrate migration.
The new area, named Terminal 1 after the (now defunct) terminal at Heathrow, features contributions from a range of visual and digital artists and creatives, including Love Watts, La Linterna and Yoshi Sodeoka.
Its purpose is to show that “no human is illegal” and comes at a time of significant political attention around immigration, which featured heavily during last night’s leaders’ debate.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak fired a barrage of criticism at Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer over migration, claiming “people smugglers are going to need a bigger boat” because of his plans to scrap the Rwanda deportation scheme.
On Labour proposals to strike returns deals with other countries, Mr Sunak asked: “Will you sit down with the Ayatollahs? Are you going to try to do a deal with the Taliban? It’s completely nonsensical – you are taking people for fools.”
Some 50,000 people have arrived in the UK on small boats since Sunak took the keys to Number 10, with most of them now stuck within a broken asylum system.
Discussing the opening of Terminal 1, Sir Michael Eavis said the installation is “dealing with the issue of immigration”.
“They’re taking the approach that we can solve it,” he added.
“We can be friendly to these unfortunate people in the boats.
“It’s demonstrating, the whole festival is, really, that you can get on with your neighbour. And they’re putting all of that into a show. Isn’t that amazing?”
Glastonbury returns to Worthy Farm this weekend with Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and SZA set to headline.
Other confirmed acts include Shania Twain, LCD Soundsystem, Little Simz, The National, Avril Lavigne, The Last Dinner Party, Jungle, Justice, Bloc Party, Fontaines D.C., Yard Act, Arlo Parks and Gossip.
