It is only fair that employees of the BBC should not interfere in politics. That’s why there is such an almighty stink about Gary Lineker making a donation of £400,000 to the Conservative Party. What on Earth was he thinking about? It’s little wonder that he’s been removed from presenting Match of the Day, is it? What? I got that wrong? How so? Oh, it wasn’t Gary Lineker who donated a large fortune to the Tories, it was the actual chair of the BBC, Richard Sharp, who was appointed by that paragon of virtue Boris Johnson, but only after whiter-than-white Mr Sharp sorted out a loan of *checks notes* £800,000 for the former prime minister. Clearly, this is not remotely important, certainly not when compared with Lineker who committed the cardinal sin of tweeting that the government’s language was not unlike that used in 1930s Germany, WHICH IT WAS. He didn’t say the anti-refugee policy concocted by Tory toe rags Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman was reminiscent of 1930s Germany, WHICH IT IS, but naturally the hard right media establishment believes in free speech only if people agree with them.
Now Lineker has been suspended by the BBC from presenting Match of the Day, with his colleagues Ian Wright and Alan Shearer now refusing to appear in protest. What an absolute mess this is. Lineker, it should be remembered, is a sports presenter. He’s not the political editor. It’s just football he does and he does it very well. He’s not even on the BBC payroll. He’s a freelancer and he has always made it crystal clear that his twitter account represents his personal views. But Sharp and the right wing bumpkins who have tamed the corporation into little more than a puppet propaganda machine essentially trotting out the official line can’t be having that. Going after Lineker is but another example. For those who have said, somewhat laughably, that the BBC is run by the left I suggest they give their collective heads a wobble. I now call Lord Alan Sugar.
Like Lineker, and I do like Lineker, Sugar, who I don’t like, is paid a handsome contract to present The Apprentice, along with prominent Tory supporter Karen Brady. Late last year, Sugar attacked the rail union RMT and particularly its hard left leader Mick Lynch, accusing them of, among other things, holding the country to ransom. That, apparently, is fine. It’s also fine for the BBC to ban a new show fronted by David Attenborough because its contents may upset the right wing. All these things are fine, as was Andrew Neil’s chairmanship of the right wing Spectator and his fiery twitter feed when he worked for the Beeb. Now I didn’t care about that because Neil is a brilliant journalist and presenter and his views never got in the way of his day job. And he’s first and foremost a political journo. Lineker’s views about refugees don’t affect his ability to present Match of the Day. What’s the difference? Well, Lineker is perceived to be a lefty and the others aren’t.
While this pathetic ‘row’ is going on, Rishi Sunak, the son of immigrants and Suella Braverman, the daughter of immigrants, are hammering, er, Johnny Foreigner and today Sunak was in France for a meeting with President Macron. The main aim of Sunak’s visit was to announce the building of a detention centre, at a cost to us of half a billion quid, where desperate refugees could be detained without having done anything wrong. I hope it won’t be like the detention centre in the Netherlands my mum told me about where, in World War Two, Jews were taken to before being moved onto camps like Auschwitz. My mum actually saw people being rounded up to travel to Westerbork. And it’s certainly just as well that Lineker never made such a comparison which, I hasten to add, I haven’t either. But I do believe that the likes of Braverman, by conviction, and Sunak by populism, are flirting with fascism in this and many other ways.
If anything good comes out of this, I’d like to think we take a moment to consider where we as a country are headed. And we should begin by remembering those who fought and died so we may be rid of the tyranny of fascism.
A former footballer who became one of the great football presenters has inadvertently led us to this position, taking the lid off the pressure cooker that’s been bubbling away for years, fuelled by populist politicians dancing to the tune of hard right, hate speech media outlets. Of course, we need to deal with the human traffickers getting rich on risking the lives of desperate people seeking a better life, just like the sons and daughters of economic migrants who are now our leaders. And we need to stop the small boats crossing and find legal means of helping refugees, not least because of the increasingly unstable world in which we live.
