Lineker failed to heed the warnings
The football presenter may agitate over party politics but seems to have no concept of office politics
AS THE BBC’S highest-earning star, Gary Lineker appeared to have come to the conclusion that he was untouchable.
For years, he has seemed to derive as much pleasure from thumbing his nose at his bosses as he once got from poking another tap-in over the goal line. By defiantly doubling down on his tweet comparing the language of the Government’s policy on illegal migration to that used in Nazi Germany, he was effectively daring the BBC to sack him.
“I have never known such love and support in my life,” he tweeted from the eye of the storm on Wednesday, notching up 239,000 “likes” as evidence, he thought, that his critics had lost the argument. As Jeremy Clarkson knows to his cost, however, no one is bigger than the BBC, even those who helm their biggest and most profitable programmes. Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, has made it his mission to enforce the corporation’s rules on impartiality, and on Friday night Lineker discovered just how far Mr Davie’s patience can be tested.
Having refused to do as he was told, Lineker was told he would be “stepping back” from Match of the Day. Whether he will return is open to question.
He had already riled Tory MPS with his views on migrants in 2016, when he responded to a suggestion by a Conservative backbencher that dental checks should be used to verify the age of those claiming to be children.
“The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless,” he tweeted. “What’s happening to our country?”
Calls for his sacking were rebuffed by the BBC, and last year he kept his job despite a ruling that he had breached impartiality guidelines with a tweet about Conservative donors.
So when Lineker decided to stick the boot into Conservative migration policy once again this week, he undoubtedly thought he would get away with it yet again. “Good heavens, this is beyond awful,” he commented on Tuesday, above a video of Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, explaining her plans to stop small boats crossing the Channel. Warming to his theme, he wrote in another tweet: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries.
“This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s.”
Ms Braverman, whose husband is Jewish, said his comments were “offensive” because “my children are directly descended from people who were murdered in gas chambers during the Holocaust”. Lineker may, at this point, have decided to wind his neck in, but instead he treated the row as something of a joke.
“Morning all. Anything going on?” he tweeted on Wednesday morning. He followed up by saying: “Great to see the freedom of speech champions out in force this morning demanding silence from those with whom they disagree.” Later, he tweeted his “love and support” message, promising he would “continue to try and speak up for those poor souls that have no voice”.
But Downing Street branded his rhetoric unacceptable and “disappointing” and Grant Shapps said that as a Jewish Cabinet minister he needed “no lessons about 1930s Germany” from Lineker. Unlike Lineker, Mr Davie was taking the matter deadly seriously. He spoke to the presenter, who refused to give any undertaking about his future political comments, and as far as Lineker was concerned that was that.
On Thursday he told reporters outside his home that he had no regrets about what he had said, and that he was not worried about losing his job.
Rather than letting the story “abate”, however, Lineker went back on the attack, accusing Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt of making a “clumsy analogy” between him and Labour, adding: “I’m just happy to have been better in the six-yard box than you are at the dispatch box. Best wishes.”
For good measure, allies of Lineker briefed newspapers that he would be back on Match of the Day this weekend, in what seemed to be an attempt to present a fait accompli to BBC bosses.
Lineker may be a follower of party politics, but he appears to have little concept of office politics. Mr Davie had warned staff about their use of social media when he started his job in 2020 and has since tightened the corporation’s guidelines on the use of Twitter.
More importantly, he is engaged in a battle for the future of the licence fee, and is constantly trying to find ways to cut costs after the Government froze BBC funding. Lineker, who is paid more than £1.3 million, has long been a lightning rod for criticism of BBC profligacy by politicians, and getting him off the payroll would solve two problems in one.
Yesterday, Lineker’s Twitter feed went uncharacteristically silent. Then came the news that he would “step back” from Match of the Day until he and the BBC could reach an “agreed and clear position” on his social media use. Mr Davie may well be hoping that Lineker picks up his ball and walks away.