Gary Lineker, on the hook at the Beeb once again. Lineker is not a historian, nor an academic. He says he was not aware of the depiction of Jews as rodents in pre-war Nazi propaganda when he shared an Instagram video critical of Zionism accompanied by a rat emoji. And his subsequent actions make clear his remorse.
He is not an anti-Semite, yet the episode has been weaponised by, among others, defenders of Israeli policy in Gaza and the BBC.
This has effectively allowed the BBC to corner a troublesome presence whom the new head of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, had already cancelled, notwithstanding the compromise of a double FA/World Cup finale.
While his latest post was indefensible, instead of running Lineker out of town, we should be celebrating his willingness to engage on important subjects and human rights issues, and more broadly, speaking up for those who don’t have a voice.
That he does so entirely off his own bat, steered by his own conscience without an army of media managers and advisers, is to his credit – although the engagement of an expert might be advisable in the future if he is to weigh in on subjects to which he has an emotional attachment.
Lineker has somehow become the country’s conscience. His 26-year stretch as Match of the Day host provided acceptance, a national treasure welcomed unconditionally into the nation’s living rooms.
It was a privilege Lineker took seriously, presenting on Saturday nights a reassuring warm front, all harmless camaraderie and bonhomie.
The greengrocer’s-son-made-good is a powerful representation of the upwardly mobile engine that is central to British culture, the idea that hard work, application and perseverance are the keys to unlocking talent and potential.
Lineker was always more than one of the lads, a grammar schoolboy as well as the scion of a Leicester fruit and veg trader. Though his horizons were conditioned by background and milieu, his passion for football trumping all else, an inquiring mind propelled him beyond standard dressing room norms.
He made a fist of Spain, learning Catalan during his three-year stay at Barcelona, and in the twilight of his career forged a pioneering path with a move to Japan’s J-League at Nagoya Grampus Eight.
Thereafter, his wider interests and broader outlook made him an ideal candidate for a media role. The BBC duly gobbled him up, grooming him as the successor to the wildly popular MOTD anchor Des Lynam.
Lineker’s one-liners and clever, topical sign-offs were quintessential Lynam. Latterly, however, he stepped beyond the MOTD chair into the political realm with a number of interventions that set him at odds with a BBC hierarchy fiercely protective of its political neutrality and journalistic integrity.
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In March 2023, Lineker’s left-leaning, liberal sentiments were outraged at the previous government’s attempts to relocate asylum seekers in Rwanda.
By putting his name to a letter signed by other celebrities seeking an alternative solution to the refugee problem, Lineker and the BBC attracted serious heat from the political class alleging a breach of impartiality rules.
On that occasion he survived following an initial suspension for comparing the language used by the Conservatives about migrants to that heard in 1930s Germany.
Undeterred, he put his name to another letter earlier this year pressing his employers to make the documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone available on iPlayer after it was pulled by the BBC following the discovery that the young narrator was the son of a Hamas politician.
Furthermore, Lineker claimed the BBC had capitulated to political pressure and criticised the broadcaster for admitting to “a number of serious failings in their commissioning and editorial processes”, which he thought unnecessary.
In expressing his discomfort at the redistribution of desperate souls to a central African state and at the genocide inflicted on innocent citizens in Gaza, Lineker is aligned to the sentiments of many Britons.
The audience is surely mature enough to distinguish the personal from the professional and recognise that when Lineker expresses a sincere view on social media or via some other mechanisms, he does so under his own name and not as a BBC representative.
The hounding of him by certain opportunistic critics is the shameful aspect of this regrettable episode. Whatever the outcome, there is little in his conduct for which he must reprove himself, other than the element already carrying a genuinely heartfelt apology.
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