Dear old Auntie always gets her knickers in a twist when it comes to a crisis. At this she is as predictable as a flasher’s mac. The dilemma is what do you do with a popular presenter who behaves like a twat? The answer is er, ah ahem; let’s have have a cooling off period and persuade him to make a grudging apology. If Lineker didn’t have pulling power he would have been thrown under a bus like that poor old local radio presenter who played The Sun has got his hat on, not realising that the N word appears in one of the verses. A long and distinguished career was trashed. At least he apologised. To no avail. His feet never touched the ground as security threw him and his cardboard box of thirty year hold history of memories into oblivion.
What really irritates me about Lineker is not so much what he tweeted as his sheer arrogance of not caring about the damage he is doing to the BBC. They really can’t win. He has given oxygen to the to the carpet biting defunders who had been locked back in the attic after the defenestration of Mad Nad. Now they are back on the war path stirring up the pitch fork waving classes into a frenzy of BBC hatred. But Lineker knows that by giving Braverman a good kicking he will enhance his reputation as ‘independent minded’. Well, that’s what his PR people spin. Braverman is worthy of many good kickings, mostly for being mind numbingly incompetent and having an ear for compassion that was mined in Cornwall. But comparing her to the Nazi regime (yes, I know he didn’t use the N word but we know in which direction he was travelling) is just bloody stupid. And insensitive and insulting to the victims of genocide carried by Hitler. But don’t forget the knuckle dragging football commentators’ mantra, ‘football is not about life or death. It’s far more important.’ Phew.
So let me put this into perspective. I genuinely don’t care if Mr L slags off the government of the day. We believe in free speech. But he is contracted to the BBC who have very strict rules on impartiality. This is where it gets interesting. Mr L is in dispute with HMRC over a few million quid of tax owed. The issue is whether he is employed an employee or a subcontractor. I really don’t care about most of this. But he and his accountant do. Mr L appears to want to take Auntie on. Unwise. As are those commentators in his thrall for withdrawing their labour. They are cynically assuming that Mr L will be reinstated at some short time in the future and that criticism of Mr L would be seen as a betrayal and lead to recriminations and horror of horror……sackings.
However, there is a bizarre twist in this freak show. The Chairman of the BBC who helped facilitate a loan to Boris Johnson, who should have been given his cardboard box weeks ago, is now seen to to have caved into the mad right by suspending Lineker. Of all the criticisms of him, and there are many, this one doesn’t hold too much water. Action had to be taken to preserve the BBC’s cherished impartiality. So the left accuse it of being controlled by the government and the right accuse it of being controlled by the left. There is something in this for everyone. Except for poor old Auntie.
But it will pass. Those who hate the BBC and accuse them of left wing bias will have their day in the Sun. In the meantime welcome to SKY Sport.
Yesterday I lunched with contemporaries from my days in Parliament and Fleet Street. They were by no means natural Tory supporters, whichever paper they worked for. But there was a consensus. Sunak has found his Mojo. Most people don’t realise that by threatening to invoke article 36 to overrule the Scottish government over the madness of sending rapists who identify as women but have male genitalia into female prisons is dangerously mad. It destroyed Sturgeon and set back Scottish independence for a generation. Then came the Windsor Agreement. By resetting our relationship with the EU from megaphone to discreet diplomacy there has been a breakthrough. Oh, and something the Johnson and Truss governments forgot about. Common sense. The Unionist community is divided. The ERG are torn. He will press on and has a fighting chance of success.
Finally the boat people. A tricky one. But once Sunak sets his laser like mind to detail and determination the impossible suddenly becomes less so. In terms of spin I have never understood why the government doesn’t give the public the figures on this. The number of people coming in on boats is about the same as those who came in on lorries. The traffickers just changed their business model. And the boats are more visible.
Oh, I forgot to tell you about the final consensus. Sunak might just win.