Lineker and crisis at the BBC
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The last few days have plunged the BBC into crisis. We have seen the failure to deal with yet another presenter who has attacked the UK government (and in Gary Lineker’s case has trivialised the history of Nazism by comparing its language with that of the Conservative government); the trashing of the BBC’s reputation for being the standard-bearer for classical music on British broadcasting; more instances of the BBC’s systematic anti-Israel bias; and the failure of the Director-General Tim Davie or the BBC’s Chairman Richard Sharp to explain or address any of these issues. Can it get worse for the BBC before the #DefundtheBBC movement gains even more momentum?
It’s unfortunate for the BBC that these issues have all come together at the same time, but clearly it’s the Lineker affair more than any other that has caught the public imagination. That’s not just because Lineker is such a popular figure, but also because this story is symptomatic of something much larger and more worrying both for the BBC and for its critics.
The Lineker affair has taken off largely because it is symptomatic of the fact that on major issues of the past decade the BBC has been seen by its critics to be out of touch with many of those who pay for it. First, there was Brexit in 2016. Then the Conservative landslide in 2019. Then a series of attacks by BBC presenters on successive governments since 2019.
As Roger Mosey, former head of BBC television news, wrote in his excellent book, Twenty Things That Could Make the News Better, too many BBC news editors, reporters and presenters seemed happy in their metropolitan bubble. They didn’t spend enough time beyond London and were caught by surprise by the results. Mosey quotes a recent BBC executive: “The unconscious tone from the top made it quite hard to raise pro-Brexit views as something to be taken seriously and explored.” He also quotes Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News from 2004 to 2013, who referred to an “extreme liberal bias” at the BBC on immigration. He doesn’t point out, though, that Boaden was Director of News for almost a decade and that this bias persists nearly twenty years after she assumed her post.
It wasn’t just about Brexit. It’s no coincidence that immigration has been such a divisive issue since Brexit. The liberal-left alliance have seen successive Home Secretaries as hate figures. The Conservatives, by contrast, see immigration as a vote winner. According to Professor Matt Goodwin, “More than half the country think we should remove illegal migrants from the country and block them from returning. Only 16% completely disagree with the policy.” (See his Substack site at: https://mattgoodwin.substack.com/p/stop-the-boats.) He goes on, “There’s a new three-word slogan in town. After Take Back Control, Brexit Means Brexit, and Get Brexit Done, this week Rishi Sunak revealed the three words that will almost certainly dominate the election to come. Stop. The. Boats. [W]e’re living through a re-run of the Brexit playbook,” Goodwin writes. “Target an issue on which much of the elite is out of touch…, turn up the volume to increase its salience, spark a big clash with the House of Lords, the ‘lefty lawyers’, the Labour Party and others, and then hope to reap the electoral dividend from an issue which, like Brexit, cuts across the left-right divide.”
Brexit and the 2019 election polarised opinion on a whole number of issues in Britain, including immigration. They also led to a growing sense of anger among the metropolitan Left, who regard this Conservative Government as not just the most right-wing administration since Mrs Thatcher’s, but as dangerously extreme. And because they see the BBC as part of some conspiracy with the Government, they have started to use the same language about our national broadcaster. Take this tweet by Alastair Campbell on the BBC’s latest cuts: “another disastrous move by the BBC in response to the Tory government political pressure and cuts – the abolition of BBC Singers and cuts to BBC orchestras. This is another resonance with 30s Germany – the assault on culture and the arts.”
This is what explains l’affaire Lineker. When he compared the language of the government on the issue of migration with “the language of Germany in the 30s”, many thought this extraordinary language was not excessive and felt he was speaking for them. He was even compared to Spartacus or the French Revolution. This is what Brexit has done to so many smart people.
As for the BBC, it has been caught between three different problems. First, some of its presenters and, it seems, many of its producers — and perhaps even news editors — think it is acceptable to take sides as Britain becomes more polarised. Second, this is happening at the very moment when the BBC’s finances are being pressed, leading to the cuts in BBC spending on classical music announced this week. Third, BBC managers have failed to make clear to licence fee payers that BBC presenters have responsibilities not to inflame public opinion by their comments. Such comments have been aired on television (Emily Maitlis on Newsnight on 26 May 2020, when she told viewers that Dominic Cummings had “broken the rules”, adding that “the country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot”), on social media (most obviously, Gary Lineker) and in print (Lewis Goodall, Maitlis’s former colleague at Newsnight and now a colleague at News Agents, wrote an article for The New Statesman while he was still at the BBC, subtitled, “How a government led by technocrats nearly destroyed a generation of social mobility’ in August 2020). It is no coincidence that these cases have arisen in the last three years. Under better management, the BBC would by now have clarified this situation of what presenters, freelance or otherwise, are allowed to say.
At a moment when Britain seems more divided about politics and the culture wars than at any time since the 1980s, the BBC is seen by many on the Left as having sided with the Government, whereas those on the Right see it as part of a coalition of Remainers, anti-Conservatives, critics of the Government’s policies on immigration and critics of Israel.
This is the context for the outcry over Lineker. It is not irrelevant that his tweets received millions of views (one of them almost 4 million). These will be useful when he negotiates his next contract with Walkers crisps and his next TV employer if the BBC eventually tire of him.
Another point that has gone unnoticed. A significantly high proportion of Lineker’s critics have been Jews (including journalists Stephen Pollard, Jonathan Freedland and Alex Brummer, as well as Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust). Conversely, Lineker’s reference to “the language of 30s Germany” seems to have gone almost unnoticed by most of his supporters. They see the issue as one about free speech. Just as they couldn’t hear Corbyn’s antisemitism, so now they can’t see why there’s a problem with comparing the Government’s language with that of the Nazis during the period of Dachau, Buchenwald and Kristallnacht. What would they have said, though, if Lineker had supported the Government on immigration? It’s easy to defend someone’s right to free speech if you agree with them. Less so, if you don’t.
Finally, there has been some very wild talk about Match of the Day itself. Lineker’s supporters call it a national treasure. In fact, it has long been left behind by the better coverage on BT Sport, Sky and Amazon. Shearer and Wright, in particular, sound like dinosaurs by comparison with the smarter new generation of football pundits. Shearer stopped playing for England in 2000, Ian Wright in 1998. You would have to be in your Thirties to have any memory of seeing them play. One leading football journalist got very emotional about how many Premier League players would display solidarity with Shearer and Wright. Really? All those overseas superstars from Brazil, Argentina and Europe in their early 20s?
According to YouGov, Match of the Day is “liked” by 36% of those polled and comes 142nd in a list of the most popular TV programmes. According to BARB and Think Box, it doesn’t make the top fifty of popular programmes, coming below classics like Amanda and Alan’s Italian Job, The One Show and Countryfile. Its programme share in 2020 was 19.1%. Compare that with Strictly during the same period (41.6%), I’m a Celebrity… (42.2%), Bake Off (29.8%), Doctor Who (32.8% in 2018 before it nosedived with Chris Chibnall). It’s not entirely the fault of the MOTD team. Most of the best matches are now shown live on a Sunday because that’s where the money is and the BBC doesn’t have any.
If you are rushing to the barricades, Match of the Day, Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker’s interest in analogies with Nazism seem an odd hill to die on. The BBC will watch with interest how this crisis plays out. So will the Government. Not because they are in cahoots with the BBC, but because the culture wars and immigration may be the only issues that will win them the next election.
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