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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Barney Ronay

Why there are no winners after the BBC’s two-footed tackle on Gary Lineker

Gary Lineker
Gary Lineker has been suspended from hosting Match of the Day after his criticism of the government’s asylum policies. Photograph: James Manning/PA

Keep politics out of sport. Ha, yeah. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, in what we must, if only out of a sense of convention, call the Real World, we have this: the strange and sinister developments of Friday evening in what will now come to be known as the Lineker affair.

The suspension of Gary Lineker from BBC presenting duties – not Newsnight or Question Time, but the bloodless warm bath of Match of the Day – over a tweet sent on Wednesday afternoon criticising government policy on migrants is, frankly, a jaw-dropping act of political intervention.

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