The world has stopped

Forget Russia’s aggression. Never mind the scandalous state of the economy. Don’t worry about the NHS dropping below Third World standards. Don’t give a second thought to our education churning out cultural savages.

None of this matters, comparatively speaking. Or at least that’s the impression one gets.

For four days now, every newspaper has been devoting most of its front-page inches to Gary Lineker, BBC footie presenter who refuses to see a difference between Tories and Nazis. That lack of discernment got him suspended from Match of the Day, took the BBC to a point of meltdown and kicked off impassioned debates.

What turned an incident into a calamity was a solidarity walkout of all BBC sports hacks, starting with Lineker’s permanent sidekicks, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer. As a result, some sports programmes were reduced to a travesty and others cancelled altogether.

When I wrote about this debacle four days ago, I never thought the resulting din would muffle all other news. Yet I did write about it, and I shan’t repeat my arguments.

But what other people are saying is worth a look because they cover the whole spectrum of opinion, with some totally inane, some moving away from the ridiculous, but without ever reaching the sublime.

Ably representing the inane end was sports journalist Martin Samuels, who recently moved leftwards from The Mail to The Times: “Lineker is still being derided for comparing government rhetoric around immigration to that of the Nazis; except he didn’t mention the Nazis. He specifically referred to 1930s Germany.”

Yes, but I don’t think he meant the Weimar Republic that was replaced in 1933 by you know whom. If Samuels thinks he scored there, he should realise the goal was his own.

Other dim commentators insist that Lineker shouldn’t have been punished because he was right: any attempt to stem the influx of illegal migrants is tantamount to Nazism. Thus spoke Lineker’s acolyte, another ex-footballer Ian Wright:

“They need Gary Lineker to distract everybody because for me it is a human issue, it’s not political. They’ve got no empathy, the vulnerable ones are the ones that suffer, they’re the ones that suffer… On his own platform he should be able to say what he wants to say.”

All issues are political these days, or, as Thomas Mann once put it, “All intellectual attitudes are latently political.” Wright proves that by launching his own assault on ‘them’, which is to say Tories.

The other day I said all I could about the pathetic face value of Lineker’s comment. But Wright’s last sentence makes a free speech argument, which is worth a few words – especially since it has also been wielded by many debaters brighter than him.

Out of curiosity, how would Wright feel if Lineker used “his own platform” to say that any black man having sex with a white woman should be lynched? Couching that in a language that wouldn’t expose him to criminal prosecution for hate speech? Let’s say he’d write something like: “Makes one think of 1930s Alabama, doesn’t it?”

That would test Wright’s commitment to free speech, and I doubt it would pass muster. Like most left-wingers, he believes free speech really means free left-wing speech. They ignore elementary logic that says freedom means nothing if it doesn’t also protect statements we dislike.

That fundamental freedom also protects obvious lies, which latitude was avidly grasped by numerous commentators who have accused the BBC of… – I know you won’t believe this, but I swear it’s true – … a pro-Tory bias.

That’s like accusing today’s Russian TV of Americanism or, come to that, Der Stürmer of Judeophilia. The BBC is so pro-Tory that in the last general election, when the country voted Conservative in a landslide, over 90 per cent of Beeb staffers voted Labour. The Tory voters there were mostly the technical personnel: cameramen, grips, drivers, electricians.

BBC recruitment ads appear only in the Appointments section of The Guardian, our leftmost broadsheet. Sometimes BBC programmes do invite token conservatives to create the impression of balance. But, as I can testify from personal experience, such troglodytes are easily outshouted.

Accusations of Tory bias are based exclusively on the personalities of Richard Sharp, BBC Chairman, and Timothy Davie, its Director General, both Tory appointments who are indeed Tories, if dripping wet.

It’s quite possible they censured Lineker because, unlike Messrs Wright et al., they found his comment abhorrent. But that’s not what they gave as the real reason. Lineker’s diatribe, they said, violated the Beeb’s commitment to impartiality, for which the Corporation is widely known, if only within the narrow circle of those who love its unwavering wokery.

Writing for The Telegraph, Charles Moore typically tried to be even-handed and civilised. His main argument was that Lineker was censured not for the content of his statement, but for stepping outside the BBC guidelines.

I don’t think Lord Moore has seen Mr Lineker’s employment contract, and neither have I. So we have to go by the BBC Charter that does state it must “provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them”.

Since the BBC is about as impartial as the erstwhile chap spouting harangues from a soapbox in Hyde Park, it violates its Charter at will. That apart, Lineker and his defenders insist, correctly, that he spoke not as a BBC employee but as a private individual.

I couldn’t find anything in the Charter that says BBC employees (staffers or freelancers like Lineker) have to keep their views to themselves even in private. It’s possible Lineker’s contract stipulates something along those lines, in which case Lord Moore is right: he was suspended not for his views but for disobedience.

Anyway, the scandal has reached such a fervour pitch that one or both of Messrs Sharp and Davie will probably be sacked. They have the same premonition, which is why Mr Davie has already indicated he’ll be happy to take Lineker back.

But no satisfactory solution to the situation is possible. For, as defence barristers are fond of saying, “It’s society’s fault, M’lord”. As long as society is willing – nay, agog – to listen to any ignorant gibberish, as long as it comes from a celebrity, such problems will recur.

Alas, history has no rewind button which alone could resolve the issue. We could push it and backtrack to the happier times when footballers talked publicly only about football, astrophysicists about astrophysics, and neither trespassed on one another’s fields.

Conversely, today’s voracious demand for celebrity opinion will always produce steady – and increasing – supply, boosted by social media. That’s why I suggested four days ago that Lineker shouldn’t be sacked. Not because such punishment would be unjust, but because it would be pointless.

Now I think the BBC should take him back, but insist that he sign an ironclad contract covering every aspect of his behaviour in and out of the studio. Resistance is futile, as they say in bad films.