KISS star Gene Simmons called Thursday for lawmakers in Northern Ireland to return to government, in an unlikely intervention in the UK province’s dysfunctional politics.
Simmons, 73, the long-tongued frontman for the legendary New York glam rock band, said it was “important” that Northern Ireland’s regional government resume because “the people’s business needs to get done”.
“It’s the government’s job to take care of people’s needs. So I hope everything gets back in order in Northern Ireland,” Simmons told BBC radio in an interview.
Simmons made the comments after visiting the UK parliament in London on Wednesday at the invitation of Ian Paisley Jr, an MP for the Northern Ireland constituency of North Antrim.
Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, the largest pro-UK party in Northern Ireland, launched a boycott of the power-sharing government in Belfast in February last year over opposition to post-Brexit trading rules.
The walkout has paralysed politics in the region, which only emerged from decades of bloody sectarian conflict over British rule in 1998 following the signing of peace accords.
Simmons spoke of his admiration for Paisley’s father, Ian Paisley Sr, a firebrand fundamentalist preacher who dominated unionist politics in the province for more than 50 years.
“I had known about his father of course, legendary Ian senior, and what he did for Ireland,” Simmons said.
Simmons, whose band is in the UK on the European leg of their End of the Road tour, described his day at Westminster as “amazing”.
“The history and the hallowed halls of democracy, it was very inspiring,” he said, adding after watching a debate in the chamber that “Americans can take a big lesson in civility in how to make democracy actually work and still respect the other side”.
The rock star’s unexpected visit is not the first to a UK legislature.
In 2005, Lemmy, the gravel-throated frontman of heavy metal band Motorhead, visited the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff and told lawmakers to legalise heroin.
