Bob Geldof has confirmed he will not be running for the Irish presidency – and says it’s partly because he’d “miss London”.
Speaking to Sky News at the Sky Arts Awards on Tuesday night, the 73-year-old musician and aid campaigner said: “My kids are here, my missus is here, my homes are here.
“I’d miss London. The band is here, I wouldn’t be able to play.”
In Ireland, any Irish citizen over 35 can run for president – but to get on the ballot, a candidate must be nominated by 20 members of parliament or four local authorities.
Geldof said: “I simply wouldn’t have had time.”
He said he had considered it, thinking it could be something “new, interesting and useful”, 50 years after finding fame in The Boomtown Rats, and 40 years after launching Band Aid.
Geldof said he’d briefly spoken to Prime Minister Micheal Martin, asking him: “‘What would you think about Bob Geldof being the candidate for the Fianna Fail Party?’ He said, ‘I think it’d be great, but I’ve already chosen someone’.
“I said, ‘That’s the end of the conversation Taoiseach, thanks very much,’ and that was it.”
Former football manager Jim Gavin was later announced as Fianna Fail’s official candidate.
Conor McGregor pulls out
Geldof admitted he was relieved former mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor was no longer in the running.
McGregor, who had promised to curb immigration in order to protect “Irish culture” and to give power “back to the people,” announced he was withdrawing from the race earlier this week.
Ex-Riverdance performer Michael Flatley, 67, has also expressed an interest in running for office.
This year’s ballot deadline is midday on 24 September, a month ahead of the election on 24 October. A largely ceremonial role, representing Ireland at home and abroad, it runs for a seven-year term.
‘Please stop,’ Geldof tells Israel
Geldof, who has Jewish heritage and is the Founding Patron of the British Holocaust Museums Aegis Trust for Genocide Studies, also spoke passionately about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Following a UN Commission report which found Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, Geldof said: “When you purposefully starve children as an instrument of war then you are a war criminal.”
He went on: “People simply don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the cost of living, the flag waving, the horror of Ukraine, the horrors of Gaza. They’re just tired, and they just want Israel to please stop it. And the UN has just confirmed that. Stop.”
The accusation of genocide has been made by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Israel’s foreign ministry said it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report” and called for the commission to be abolished.
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Geldof was speaking at the prestigious Sky Arts event, where he was recognised for his influence as a musician and cultural figure over the last five decades with a lifetime achievement award.
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Never afraid to be outspoken, he was one of the defining voices of the 1970s punk era before going on to co-create Band Aid and the historic Live Aid concerts, reshaping the relationship between music and global activism.
Geldof performed with his band, The Boomtown Rats, during the ceremony which took place at London’s Roundhouse, hosted by comedian Bill Bailey.
See all the Sky Arts Awards winners here.
