KEIR RADNEDGE COMMENTARY —- The BBC scored a remarkable own goal by suspending Gary Lineker from his duties as presenter of its long-running Match of the Day Saturday football highlights programme.

Football analysts including Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Alex Scott subsequently refused to continue in the show which went ahead in a truncated 20-minute form without commentaries and studio links after commentators refused to work.

Three other major football programmes on TV and radio had to be cancelled through sympathy action.

Lineker, former England striker and popular freelance presenter on several channels, had become embroiled in a row over impartiality by comparing some of the pejorative language used in the promotion of a new, controversial government asylum policy with that used in 1930s Germany.

The BBC said initially that Lineker would “step back” from hosting the weekly football highlights programme. Even that was contentious. Lineker objected that the wording suggested, wrongly, that he had been compliant in the decision.

BBC director general Tim Davie told the broadcaster: “I think we always look to take proportionate action – and that’s what we’ve done. As editor in chief of the BBC I think one of our founding principles is impartiality and that’s what we are delivering on.”

In fact the BBC had left itself wide open to charges of hypocrisy given that chairman Richard Sharp is a financial donor to the Conservative Party and had helped enable provision of a significant loan to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Corporation statement

The corporation said in a statement it has been in “extensive discussions with Gary and his team in recent days.”

It added: “We have said that we consider his recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines.

“The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media.

“When it comes to leading our football and sports coverage, Gary is second to none. We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.”

A statement from the Opposition Labour Party condemned the BBC’s “cowardly decision”, saying: “The BBC’s cowardly decision to take Gary Lineker off air is an assault on free speech in the face of political pressure.

“Tory politicians lobbying to get people sacked for disagreeing with Government policies should be laughed at, not pandered to. The BBC should rethink their decision.”

All that being said, anyone who calls down inter-war Germany in a search for modern-day comparisons is opening a Pandora’s Box.

The Lineker tweet:

There is no huge influx [of refugees]. 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, and I’m out of order?

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