Rejoice at Lineker’s victory over the BBC and the right. Then learn the lessons for battles to come

‘It is a mark of the right’s triumphalism that they decided to pick a fight with a footballing hero: big mistake.’ Gary Lineker outside his London home on Monday. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The BBC’s humiliating climbdown over its attempted silencing of Gary Lineker is a milestone. For years, emboldened rightwingers have succeeded in driving the national political conversation ever further in their direction. They’ve achieved this in two ways: first, by treating progressive political opinions as illegitimate; and second, by simultaneously claiming that it’s rightwingers who are really being silenced, a truly shameless spectacle of crybullying.

It continues to this very day. Witness Richard Littlejohn’s column in the Daily Mail. “Endless strikes, the small boats crisis and now the Lineker fiasco are proof that anti-Tory groupthink has taken control in Britain”. Risible. And predictable.