The Home Office has blocked Andreas Malm, the Swedish climate academic and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, from entering the UK.

Malm, an associate professor of human ecology at Lund University, was told by immigration officials that his presence in the country 'may not be considered to be conducive to the public good'.

He was due to headline a conference organised by Tribune magazine next week discussing Washington's global reach and Britain's role in it, and to speak alongside Huda Ammori, a co-founder of the proscribed group Palestine Action.

He was also due to be interviewed for BBC Radio 4's Radical With Gabriel Gatehouse programme. Malm called the decision 'scandalous' and appealed for it to be overturned.

The ban lands at a charged moment: the Tribune event was timed to coincide with the start of a supreme court challenge to the Palestine Action proscription next Wednesday, and the panel was expected to discuss the ban's impact on free speech — including its effect on author Sally Rooney, who has withdrawn her books from sale in the UK over her support for the group.

Tribune's editor, Oliver Eagleton, said Malm was 'being censored for speaking out about censorship, in truly Orwellian fashion', arguing it is now commonplace in Britain for authors and academics to be treated as terrorists because they support Palestinians.

The ban follows a similar pattern earlier this year, when US commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker were barred on the same 'conducive to the public good' grounds.

Malm told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on Friday morning that he could see no other explanation for the Home Office's decision than his scheduled appearance on the panel, according to Novara Media.

In a statement reported by The Guardian, he said he had been travelling to the UK for decades, doing PhD archival research, lecturing at universities including Oxford, Cambridge and King's College London, and participating in dozens of conferences.

Rooney described him as among the most brilliant and influential intellectuals working in Europe today, and called the exclusion 'a sad and frightening act of cultural self-harm'.

Malm also said he had expected the Burnham government to show more respect for freedom of expression and democratic rights. The Home Office said it does not discuss individual cases.

Attention now shifts to Wednesday's supreme court challenge to the Palestine Action ban, which was the first direct action group in British history to be proscribed as a terror organisation last summer, according to Novara Media.

Malm is urging the government to reverse the exclusion, but with the Home Office declining to discuss the case and the same 'public good' powers having already been used against Uygur and Piker under the previous Labour leadership, the episode is set to intensify debate over how far the state will go in restricting entry for foreign commentators critical of UK policy.

The outcome of the court case will likely shape how such entry bans and proscription powers are tested going forward.