DAILY MAIL COMMENT: BBC risks own goal over Lineker scandal
The arrangement is meant to be straightforward. The BBC receives £3.7billion a year from the licence fee and, in return, it is obliged by charter to be scrupulously neutral.
However, the question of who calls the shots when it comes to the state broadcaster’s impartiality rules is today under the sharpest scrutiny. Is it the corporation’s bosses – or the highly paid and self-regarding celebrities they employ?
The issue has been thrust into the spotlight by football pundit Gary Lineker’s grotesque intervention in the small-boats debate. In a tweet, the Match of the Day host turned tedious virtue-signaller drew a parallel between Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s crackdown on illegal immigration and Nazi Germany.
It’s difficult to think of a more ignorant, preposterous and offensive comparison.
Hitler’s evil regime exterminated six million Jews. Here in Britain, the democratically elected Government is trying to save lives by ending perilous Channel crossings by illegal migrants.
In a tweet, Match of the Day host Gary Lineker drew a parallel between Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s crackdown on illegal immigration and Nazi Germany
This is, of course, a legitimate – indeed, compassionate – policy supported by a large majority of the public. By effectively equating them with fascists, the ex-footballer insults the very people who pay his bloated £1.35million annual salary.
When he condemns critics of his fatuous remarks as attacking his freedom of speech, he is deliberately missing the point.
Using his privileged platform to express his political opinions drives a coach and horses through editorial guidelines introduced to restore battered trust in the corporation’s impartiality.
True, he’s a freelancer, not staff. But as one of the faces of the BBC, it’s important that he should abide by the rules.
Lineker has a record for making gratuitous anti-Tory jibes. Indeed, in October he was reprimanded by the corporation.
But he clearly thinks his fame makes him untouchable. By flagrantly championing the liberal-Left, this sanctimonious poser is daring chiefs to sack him.
They should call his bluff. Has his presence in the Match of the Day studio ever added a single viewer? Countless other presenters can string together football highlights.
If Lineker is let off with a slap on the wrist, BBC director-general Tim Davie will score an own goal. It would send the message he doesn’t care about fairness and balance.
Whitehall’s dark side
Home Office staff have ganged up on Mrs Braverman to condemn her asylum policy
The head of Whitehall’s trade union has had a fit of the vapours after an email in the Home Secretary’s name accused a ‘blob of Left-wing civil servants’ of thwarting her crackdown on illegal immigration.
This, said Dave Penman, was a ‘cowardly’ attack on their impartiality.
But isn’t she right? For Home Office staff have ganged up on Mrs Braverman to condemn her asylum policy because it doesn’t conform to their own woke views.
As top mandarin Sue Gray unashamedly plans to become Labour’s chief of staff, don’t these antics shine a light on how anti-Tory activists have infiltrated Whitehall?
- With mounting concern that Britain has become a ‘low-growth, low-productivity, low-wage economy’, Jeremy Hunt plans to use the Budget to hand firms tax breaks on investment to revive our fortunes. True, it saddles them with red tape but is still welcome. But when most businesses want to plough money into a venture, they look at the headline tax rate – another reason the Chancellor must ditch catastrophic plans to hike corporation tax.
- How extraordinary that despite apparently loathing the institution of monarchy, Harry and Meghan have adopted the royal titles for their two children that became available when Charles became King. Yes, the Sussexes risk accusations of hypocrisy. But it’ll be lucrative to have Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet in tow.
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