By caving in like this, the cowardly director-general has damaged the BBC more than he can understand

There was a time when most children learnt the nursery rhyme about the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his 10,000 men to the top of the hill, and then marched them down again.

The rhyme is about showing force — and doing nothing. That is exactly what Tim Davie, director-general of the BBC, has achieved in his futile showdown with Gary Lineker.

Mr Davie has capitulated. Last week he gave every sign of wanting to prevent the garrulous football pundit from firing off further tweets which would undermine the BBC’s impartiality, which he described as a ‘foundational issue’.

he even half-apologised to Mr Lineker yesterday — blaming ‘potential confusion’ and ‘grey areas’ in the BBC’s social media guidance. In other words, Gary had a point after all.

As for Mr Lineker, he has unleashed a stream of tweets in which there is no hint of apology or regret. he even doubled down on his original obnoxious tweet by saying that, ‘however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare with having to flee from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away’.

So Gary Lineker has won, and will be back on our screens this weekend. having initially shown some moral courage — though it took some time for it to do so — the BBC has hoisted the white flag. The promise of a review of guidelines, which will doubtless take many months, carries little conviction.

Why did Mr Davie give in so easily? I suspect that his cowardice (and no doubt that of fellow executives) arises largely from the exaggerated importance they attach to Match Of The Day, and the presenter himself.

To hear some commentators talk during recent days, you would think that the temporary curtailing of the round-up of Premier League football matches — normally watched by just over two million people, about 4 per cent of the adult population — was a national disaster.

In fact, the pundit-free edition of Match Of The Day last Saturday drew about half a million more viewers than usual. Some people were seemingly attracted by the novelty of watching football matches without any punditry.

In many ways, it was a relief not to have to listen to Mr Lineker witter on, or hear his sidekicks exchange tepid banter about their former glories as players. For once, we didn’t have to endure pundits mangling the english language.

Of course, I accept there are those who value commentary, whatever its shortcomings, and the programme could probably not have continued for many weeks without pundits offering their pennyworth.

But there must be other experts in the world who could have been persuaded to stand in temporarily or permanently for Mr Lineker and his mates, who are not indispensable.

Nor is there any evidence that rival broadcasters were lining up to offer a comparable job to Mr Lineker, and match his whopping £1.35 million-a-year salary. Scott Young, senior vice-president at BT Sport — where the presenter once had a highly paid berth — has told staff that the channel isn’t interested in hiring him.

In any case, what would it matter if it did? I repeat: Mr Lineker’s abilities are appreciated by a small section of the public, but there are others who could do just as good a job, or possibly even better.

And, unlike Mr Lineker, they wouldn’t think they had a Godgiven right to emit divisive tweets that not only defy BBC guidelines, — however imprecise they may be — but also alienate millions of licence-fee payers and damage the Beeb’s already precarious reputation for impartiality.

This is the crucial point. In the great scheme of things, neither Gary Lineker nor even Match Of The Day matter a hundredth as much as the BBC’s standing, and the esteem in which it is held by the people who fund it.

If an actor who appeared regularly on the BBC compared the language of Government ministers about illegal immigration with the appalling rhetoric used by Nazis in the 1930s, there could have been no reasonable objection. Ignorant and distasteful, yes, but not a matter of any significance.

Mr Lineker, though, is in an entirely different category because of his prominence. In a state of misplaced alarm, Mr Davie was terrified that the presenter, along with a bevy of virtue-signalling accomplices, might desert the Corporation.

Faced by a rebellion that would have probably fizzled out eventually, the director-general forgot all his fine words last week about defending the impartiality of the BBC, and expecting Mr Lineker to abide by existing guidelines.

There may be some ‘grey areas’ (to use Mr Davie’s phrase) in these guidelines, but they are not that grey. One injunction reads: ‘everyone who works for the BBC should ensure their activity on social media platforms does not compromise the perception of, or undermine the impartiality and reputation of, the BBC.’

Mr Lineker may be a freelance, but that is a technicality. he is paid far more than any person on the staff of the Corporation. he doesn’t work in the news department, where employees are supposedly constrained by especially tight impartiality rules, but he is nonetheless regarded by many as one of the BBC’s major voices.

Others in a similar position have undoubtedly also infringed existing guidelines. For example, Lord Sugar, star of The Apprentice, tweeted in 2017: ‘For the good of the UK, I sincerely advise NOT to vote for Corbyn.’

Brian Cox, the prominent professor of particle physics and BBC astronomy presenter, has been a vocal critic of Brexit on social media. Martin Lewis, the Money Saving expert founder with a weekly show on BBC radio 5 Live, recently warned that it would be an ‘act of national mental health harm’ if the energy price cap were allowed to rise.

BUTjust because others sometimes err, it doesn’t follow that Gary Lineker should be given free rein. Moreover, his controversial tweets are more frequent than those of other BBC stars, and often, as in his comparison of Nazi Germany to the Tory Government, far more provocative.

Tim Davie realised this, which is why he displayed momentary resolution last week. The BBC’s mission as defined in its charter is ‘ to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output’. Mr Lineker’s Nazi tweet was obviously not consonant with that duty.

Mr Davie may have saved Match Of The Day, and kept Gary Lineker in absurdly lucrative employment. he has quelled a rebellion by highly paid and not especially gifted pundits. But he has, at the same time, damaged the BBC more than he or his colleagues can grasp.

The director-general forgot about the silent millions — those licence payers who don’t think that the Government’s policy on illegal immigration can reasonably be compared to that of the Nazis, and who resent that one of the BBC’s most prominent presenters should be permitted to say such things.

In view of this craven and humiliating climbdown, it’s impossible to have any confidence that a review of guidelines will have any effect in restraining Mr Lineker. The bumptious football pundit believes that he is bigger and stronger than the BBC, and yesterday he succeeded in proving it.