After publicly criticising the government’s asylum policy, embroiling the BBC in an impartiality row and fomenting widespread disruption to sports programming, Gary Lineker has said it was ‘“factually accurate” to call the plans “cruel”.
Weeks after the Match of the Day presenter was suspended for criticising government immigration policy, the former England footballer has said he stands by his remarks, in an interview with Men’s Health UK magazine.
The row began when the former England footballer responded to a video message by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, about stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats. He wrote: “Good heavens, this is beyond awful.” He later tweeted: “This is just an immeasurably cruel policy.”
Referring to the tweet, in which he also likened the home secretary’s language to that of 1930s Germany, Lineker said: “I think that is factually accurate.” The BBC’s highest-paid presenter said he wasn’t prepared to back down on language he felt was “fair and true”.
In the video announcing an illegal migration bill that has since come under fire from the UN Refugee Agency, Braverman said the new legislation would help to detain and remove asylum seekers arriving in small boats.
Lineker told the magazine: “I talked about the use of words like ‘invasion’ and ‘swarms’ and ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists’, which I think we should be very careful about because it has real-life consequences.” He added that he has worked with refugee charities for years.
“I wasn’t abusive, I wasn’t saying she [Braverman] was a Nazi,” he said.
After the impartiality row, the BBC announced an independent review of its social media guidelines, a decision later echoed by the regulator Ofcom, which said the corporation’s editorial guidelines needed updating for the modern world. The BBC’s chair, Richard Sharp, also came under increasing pressure to quit after the corporation apologised for its actions.
Lineker, who receives £1.35m annually, returned to presenting sport on the BBC after widespread disruption to sports programming when presenters Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Alex Scott, among others, pulled out of their respective shows in solidarity.
The BBC has attempted to frame the row over Lineker as a question of preserving impartiality. However, the corporation did not take any action when Lineker questioned Qatar’s human rights record during the recent men’s football World Cup.
Lineker’s agent, Jon Holmes, who has worked with the former footballer since 1980, previously said his client believed he had a special agreement with the BBC’s director general to tweet publicly on matters surrounding refugees and immigration.
Lineker told Men’s Health UK that when new social media guidelines were introduced by the director general, Tim Davie, in 2020, he agreed he would not stop “occasionally” tweeting about the climate crisis and refugees.
He said a key resolution with senior management at the BBC had come as other presenters expressed solidarity after he was taken off the air for his remarks.
“I love the BBC and I was very glad to be back on air and talking about football again,” Lineker said.
The BBC has been approached for comment.
