The BBC is a much loved institution for millions of people in Britain, but the way it has tackled Gary Lineker over his use of Twitter is now causing real long term damage.
Firstly they spent too long, having days and days of internal meetings to decide what they were doing in response to his tweets criticising Government policy.
This allowed the right media to froth at the mouth and for Conservative MPs to get louder and louder in their complaints over essentially a couple of tweets.
Gary also felt passionately enough about the subject and the rights of asylum seekers to continue to write about the subject.
The BBC’s problem here is there are no hard rules, especially for freelance presenters not working inside the impartially of the BBC newsrooms.
So Gary may have breached guidelines but even that is an area open for debate.
Next the BBC failed to recognise that by not really making any final decision and pushing things into next week it meant forcing Gary off screen this weekend - which would cause a huge backlash.
The whole situation is now much much bigger than it ever needed to be. Match of the Day, one of BBC’s long running and most iconic shows, will be reduced to nothing more than a YouTube clips show this weekend. As I write this, Football Focus has also been cancelled.
The BBC cannot ban every person who appears on their programmes from having political opinions. As has been well documented, others like Lord Sugar and in days gone by Jeremy Clarkson voiced them loudly and regularly and stayed in their jobs.
The Mirror has launched a petition to have Gary Lineker reinstated at the BBC and as the host of Match of the Day. Sign it here.
Perhaps asking high profile names to add “personal views, not those of BBC” into their Twitter bios would solve this problem instantly.
Although most people with a degree of intelligence would already know Gary was expressing personal views.
Perhaps it was just a view some people at the BBC didn’t like that is the real problem.
A further issue is the idea that Lineker is biased and so, because of his views, he can’t work for the BBC. On that basis you may need to clear out more than just Gary next week.
Further up the ranks you have a Director General in Tim Davie who has strong Conservative links, which admittedly he has not brought up in the job.
But he stood as a Conservative councillor in the Nineties and was deputy chairman of his local Hammersmith and Fulham party.
And then we get to BBC Chairman Richard Sharp who is a Tory through and through. He was an adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London.
Sharp was once Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs when the prime minister was a junior banker.
Sharp was also an unpaid adviser for Sunak on the UK's economic response to coronavirus. He has donated over £400,000 to the Conservative party and helped organise a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson recently.
But yet, when this emerged last month following a parliamentary report, his spokesman gave an apology and he has continued in his job.
So with these factors, the Conservatives wanting Lineker out and millions of fans wanting him back on screen, it is a big mess.
Do the BBC now try to defend their reputation and wriggle out with Lineker back on the box next week and some rewording of guidelines perhaps, or go all out attack and force Gary to walk out and please some Tories but risk shattering their reputation.
Having dragged things into a second week, I just hope this extra time doesn’t see Gary pay the penalty.
Aside from liking him on screen, if he goes I think it will have huge ramifications for the BBC based on the reaction so far.
