HOME OFFICE CANCELS ANDREAS MALM’S UK TRAVEL AUTHORISATION

The Home Office has cancelled Swedish author and climate scholar Andreas Malm’s Electronic Travel Authorisation, preventing him from entering the UK. It told Malm that his presence “is not considered to be conducive to the public good”. Malm had planned to travel to London for the launch of a magazine issue titled *Empire Now*. He was also due to attend an academic conference and appear on the BBC. Malm said the decision had left him “deeply dismayed”.

The London event included a panel on free speech and the ban on Palestine Action, alongside one of the group’s co-founders. Malm told BBC Radio 4’s *Today* programme that he could see no explanation for the decision other than his planned appearance on that panel. The Home Office proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation last summer. Malm wrote *How to Blow Up a Pipeline*, a book later adapted for film. He said he had travelled to the UK for decades to conduct research, lecture and attend conferences.

Malm appealed for the decision to be overturned. His publisher, Verso Books, said no British government had previously revoked one of its authors’ right to enter the country in more than 55 years of publishing. Irish author Sally Rooney called the decision “a sad and frightening act of cultural self-harm”. Editor Oliver Eagleton said he found it “deeply disturbing”. The Home Office gave the same public-good reason when it barred American commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur from entering the UK in June.