Gary Lineker will exit the BBC a year earlier than planned after latest social media mistake (Image: 2024 Marc Atkins/Getty)

Gary Lineker is leaving the BBC early after a red card for his latest social media scandal. But when it comes standing up for what you believe in, columnist Darren Lewis believes the BBC could actually learn some valuable lessons from the Match Of The Day host

It was never going to be the case that Gary Lineker would choose football over principle. Right up to the bitter end, he was classy and concise as he announced his exit from the BBC when the season ends on Sunday.

He apologised for “the error and upset that I caused and reiterate how sorry I am” following his controversial social media repost from last week. What, though, will his critics do now? Fewer and fewer of his audience (he has 8.7miillion followers on X ) watch traditional TV, let alone the BBC.

Most of them, particularly the younger audiences sought after by so many broadcasters, agree with Lineker’s moral clarity over the Middle East cycle of blood. In fact, imagine being so angry that someone, anyone, can no longer stomach the daily diet of kids caught in the crossfire and their parents being shot or blown to bits.

Imagine baying for the blood of someone – anyone – unable to watch from the west as men, women and children go hungry as the response to the murderous October 7 attack by Hamas, 20 months ago, continues in plain sight. Lineker is not an automaton.

Yes, the Match of the Day host is paid handsomely by the BBC but Lineker has made it clear, time and again, that his views are his own and that they are confined to his X feed, along with whatever interviews he is asked to give.

Gary Lineker was fixture on Match Of The Day for more than 25 years ( 
Image:
BBC/Pete Dadds)

Gary Lineker will be enjoying more downtime after he leaves the BBC earlier than originally planned. He’d originally planned to cover the 2026 World Cup
Yes, if you want to have an opinion about the issues that affect us all, the Beeb is not the place for you. But crucially, in the modern era, it is no longer enough as a broadcaster, or a broadcast outlet, to put your hands over your eyes and ears and pretend the world isn’t on fire.

So after Breakfast show host Naga Munchetty was censured by the BBC in 2020 for branding Donald Trump’s ‘go home’ rhetoric racist, she stuck to her guns. “One of the balancing acts of being a Breakfast presenter is being comfortable enough to show who you are and your personality,” she told British Vogue.

“You have to show empathy. You cannot sit there and be a robot on that sofa. And I do stand by it. It is not OK to use offensive language, or to skirt around offensive language…”

American sports commentator Keith Olbermann famously quit his ESPN shows to not only defend his right to talk politics but to launch a politics show. The rise of the podcast, the format within which stars and ordinary people can speak truth to power in context and even more depth, has placed the impotence – and also the inconsistency – of the UK state broadcaster into sharp focus.

For example, the same BBC had no issue with Lineker condemning the treatment of migrant workers and discriminatory LGBTQ+ laws in Qatar, before and during the 2022 World Cup. Nor did the BBC have an issue with Lineker articulating his concern that all of us had been Sportswashed (the practice of countries dazzling the world with money and glittering events to mask their poor human rights record) by Russia at the 2018 World Cup.

The Beeb remains the state broadcaster on whose flagship political show, Question Time, Nigel Farage – whose racist and xenophobic rhetoric is well documented – had made the most appearances before he was democratically elected. And Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, is a former deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Party.

The only constant within the state broadcaster would appear to be the flexibility of the rules. Lineker is now free from the Beeb’s maze of moral fluidity. But he has lost his job and the BBC is losing one of the most accomplished sports broadcasters of his generation.

There would appear to be few winners in this sorry saga.