BBC’s Gary Lineker to ‘Step Back’ From Match of the Day Amid Twitter Row

Match Of The Day host Gary Lineker leaves his home in London following reports that the BBC is to have a "frank conversation" with the ex-England striker after Home Secretary Suella Braverman branded as "irresponsible" the TV presenter's comments in which he compared the language used to launch the Government's new asylum policy to 1930s Germany. Picture date: March 9, 2023. (PA Media)

Gary Lineker will step back from presenting Match Of The Day until he and the BBC have an “agreed and clear position on his use of social media,” after he posted a tweet criticising the government’s migrant policy.

The BBC is temporarily standing Gary Lineker down from hosting duties on its flagship football show after he compared the language used to launch the government’s new asylum policy to 1930s Germany.

The UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to put an end to illegal immigration as his government prepares to unveil new legislation banning Channel crossings by those seeking asylum.

Illegal Entrants

The government on Tuesday unveiled the Illegal Migration Bill, which will ban anyone who arrives in the UK illegally from claiming asylum.

Under the new law, illegal entrants will be swiftly removed from the UK to their home country or a safe third country like Rwanda. They will also be banned from reentry.

Lineker reacted to it on Twitter, calling it an “immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.”

As the state broadcaster, the BBC has strict rules so it can commit to achieving due impartiality in all its output.

In a statement, the BBC said: “The BBC has been in extensive discussions with Gary and his team in recent days. 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.”

Response

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said “flippant analogies” like one used by Lineker used “diminishes the unspeakable tragedy” of the Holocaust.

She told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast: “I think it is, from a personal point of view, to hear that characterisation is offensive because, as you said, my husband is Jewish, my children are therefore directly descendant from people who were murdered in gas chambers during the Holocaust.

“And my husband’s family is very, feels very, keenly the impact of the Holocaust actually.

“To kind of throw out those kind of flippant analogies diminishes the unspeakable tragedy that millions of people went through and I don’t think anything that is happening in the UK today can come close to what happened in the Holocaust. So I find it a lazy and unhelpful comparison to make,” she added.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly suggested Lineker needs to study the “history books.”

Cleverly told LBC radio: “There are some people desperate to gain attention by using deeply offensive and inappropriate language about this and I would gently suggest they use their history books a little bit more carefully.”

Lineker however drew support from former BBC staff as well as his co-presenter Ian Wright. Stating he would not be featuring on Match Of The Day on Saturday, Wright posted on Twitter: “Everybody knows what Match of the Day means to me, but I’ve told the BBC I won’t be doing it tomorrow. Solidarity.”

Former co-presenter of the BBC One television quiz show Pointless Richard Osman told his followers on Twitter that Lineker stepping back from presenting Match Of The Day until he and the BBC have reached an “agreed and clear position” on his use of social media “is pathetic for so many reasons.”

Private Life

Former BBC executive Richard Sambrook told the PA news agency there is “a lot of confusion” around whether freelance broadcasters such as Lineker should be subject to the same rules as permanent staff in news.

Sambrook, who was director of news at the BBC and director of BBC Global News and the BBC World Service, said: “I think the language he used was unnecessarily provocative but the wider question here is whether a sports presenter in his private life has to be bound by BBC policies.

“Traditionally, the BBC would always want that to be the case but I think in the current day and age when we live in a world full of social media, when journalism broadcasters have the ability to go and work for other people or do their own podcasts and all the rest of it, that’s a bit of an unrealistic expectation.

“So I think unless the BBC recalibrates its relationship with freelancers, then this is just going to happen again and again,” he added.

PA Media and Alexander Zhang contributed to this report.