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James Nokise is a New Zealand comedian, writer and podcaster.
OPINION: There is something quintessentially English about that country’s biggest political scandal of the year (so far) and its biggest football scandal being both the same scandal and involving not a single game of football.
In the moments before the BBC decided to officially remove Gary Lineker from its flagship football show, Match of the Day, someone must have posed the question “Are we sure?”.
As has been the case for celebrities this year, his crimes requiring sentencing were based upon tweets. However, rather than career-killing rants involving multiple forms of bigotry (RIP Kanye West), he had controversially chosen to highlight the plights of refugee applicants, especially under the current government’s proposed law changes.
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Gary Lineker will return to the BBC to present sport as the broadcaster announces an independent review of its social media guidelines, focusing on how it applies to freelancers working outside of …
The first tweet was a simple “Good heavens, this is beyond awful”. Underneath it was a video where Home Secretary Suella Braverman outlined policies that looked liked they’d been copied and pasted from Australia 10 years ago, replacing Manus with Rwanda.
The policy shift has been roundly criticised, and not just by football pundits. Former prime minister Theresa May (not renowned for left-wing views) said in parliament this week: “Anyone who thinks this bill will deal with the issue of illegal migration once and for all, is wrong.”
Lineker’s next tweet, though, was more direct: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”
Comparing anything to Nazi Germany without the presence of actual Nazis is always a risk, because once you invoke Nazis, especially to a country which was bombed by them for years, whatever point you are trying to make tends to get lost. Had he stopped after the word “people”, this would arguably have not become a story.
It led the evening news. The focus had shifted from refugees and policy to the BBC and the early front-runner for international word of the year: Impartiality.
Lineker has 8.9 million Twitter followers. Sports trivia fans will know his first International match was against New Zealand, but he is not well known on this side of the world. That’s to be expected about a 62-year-old sports presenter from another country, whose playing heyday was in the 1980s.
In the United Kingdom, though, he is a bona fide cultural icon.
Possibly the third most beloved English footballer ever, behind Geoff Hurst and Bobby Charlton, he is their third-highest goalscorer, and won the Golden Boot at the 1986 World Cup. During his entire career, he never once had a red or yellow card.
A proud son of Leicester, he fronted adverts for the locally owned Walkers Crisps, the snack du jour of the Brits, and comes from a long line of greengrocers. When Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016, Lineker famously hosted Match of the Day in just his boxers, following through on a slightly less controversial tweet from the previous year.
He has hosted the show since 1999 and is the BBC’s highest-paid presenter. However, he is not a contracted employee, but a freelancer.
This makes the BBC policies around impartiality a bit of a grey area when applied to him. On the one hand, he is not an official employee, and the work he does is neither journalism nor political. On the other, he is arguably the most-watched man on the public broadcaster.
Impartiality has been a talking point in New Zealand of late, particularly when applied to high-profile public servants. While the public might agree with the sentiment of what people like Rob Campbell are saying, there are clear rules about someone in his position being the person to say those things. This of course is why God invented “leaks”.
Imagine if Richie McCaw was hosting a TVNZ primetime rugby show, while also privately tweeting specifically against government policy on refugees. Then imagine TVNZ fired McCaw.
That is the conundrum that the BBC found itself in when it removed Lineker from Match of the Day, and then all hell broke loose.
Many fellow pundits and staff across the BBC refused to work in protest.
Match of the Day itself was comically 20 minutes long, down from its usual time of at least 90 minutes. Other football programmes were cancelled and replaced at the 11th hour. The public was in an uproar. Some of them still are. There is a perception that the government interfered. The chairman of the BBC is under investigation.
Lineker was reinstated, and as the waters settled he tried to remind people about the cruel policies affecting refugees that had started the chaos. But that boat had sunk.
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