BBC cowardice caused the Gary Lineker rebellion. And there will be more unless it finds some courage

‘The most urgent requirement is to make peace with a football presenter who was always popular and has now been turned into a national treasure.’ Gary Lineker outside his home in London on Sunday. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

In 2005, I wrote a cover piece in the New Statesman, which I was editing at the time, detailing BBC management’s concerns about John Humphrys’ pugnacious style on Iraq and other issues, and their desire for political interviews to be toned down. This was shortly after the highly tendentious Hutton inquiry that had forced out the BBC chairman and director general. This was under a Labour government.

To illustrate the story, we chose an old-fashioned television with spindly legs alongside the logo and the words “Broken, Beaten, Cowed”. That was the BBC then: that is the BBC now in the shadow of the Gary Lineker saga.