Gary Lineker was right. Does it matter that he was right? Would it have mattered if he was wrong? Would it have mattered if he was on the side of the UK government? If he thought Suella Braverman was doing a bang up job?
t probably would have mattered in that sense that we don’t think had he backed the Home Secretary’s policies – inhumane, authoritarian and likely illegal as they are – Lineker would have come under half as much pressure as he did by opposing them.
The BBC Director General, Tim Davie, has denied that political pressure was behind the decision to suspend the Match of the Day presenter last weekend. Very few people seem to buy that, however, and it’s easy to see why.
It’s wasn’t just the wall-to-wall coverage of L’Affaire Lineker in the right wing press, it’s the fact that a collection of Conservative MPs, the so-called Common Sense group, were loud in their condemnation of the former Barcelona striker’s views and position at the corporation.
It’s the fact that the Chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, is a well-known acolyte of former Prime Minster Boris Johnson. It’s the fact that Davie himself is a former failed Tory election candidate.
It’s the fact that other presenters at the BBC have been as (if not more) nakedly party political than Lineker and not so much hand their knuckles wrapped (Alan Sugar’s denunciation of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn stands out).
You even had former Daily Politics host Andrew Neil as chairman of the right-wing and partisan Spectator magazine carry on his role without any push-back from BBC management.
With all that in mind it’s hard not to shake the notion that Lineker’s great crime in the eyes of the BBC wasn’t that he had expressed a viewpoint, it’s that he expressed one that didn’t align with the Conservative and Unionist Party. There’s something genuinely chilling about that.
Now we don’t think for one moment that anybody from Number 10 or the Home Office or even Conservative Party HQ picked up the phone to the Beeb.
It’s more subtle than that, more of a self-censorship on the basis that the BBC needs to stay on side with the government to an extent in order to protect its own position (and licence fee).
We do wonder, though, if no matter how hypocritical not to mention how cack-handed the BBC’s response to Lineker’s tweet calling out Braverman’s dehumanising language, the organisation’s leadership might have the kernel of a point.
Do we not want an organisation like the BBC to be impartial to a greater or lesser extent (acknowledging that neutrality isn’t always possible, or even wholly desirable)?
Think about the counter-factual we posed at the beginning of this piece. It wouldn’t sit very well with us to be honest if somebody working for a public broadcaster was taking such a stance.
Is there a danger that those of us on the centre-ground or even the left aren’t fully acknowledging the potential for a more nakedly political BBC just because we happen to agree with Gary Lineker. If Lineker was a Farragista little-Englander we’d probably think differently.
In the long run it could well be better for left, centre and right that BBC presenters are more neutral. After all we might not always like what they have to say.
Could this be the most resilient Irish side ever?
Accident or design? Or is it a touch of both? Either way this Ireland squad looks in a remarkably good place six months out from a Rugby World Cup.
Strictly speaking you’d prefer not to be losing players to injury, especially not three in the first half of a test match in Murrayfield. When you get a reaction that good, though, it’s surely worth the short-term trade-off.
Ireland are discovering things out about themselves – and about the depth they have available – they might not necessarily have otherwise, and they’ve done so without sacrificing what’s right in front of them: the Six Nations championship and a potential Grand Slam.
To have it happen naturally, so to speak, is probably a better way of going about it rather than trying to force it more artificially. Trying to rotate a squad, to blood new players, to test things out, to a set plan might even have the effect of making any particular game feel that bit less consequential.
When everything’s on the line – as it must be in any bid for the Grand Slam – that’s when you really find out what kind of mettle a player has got, and on that score pretty much everyone involved is coming up with the goods for Head Coach Andy Farrell.
Ross Byrne at out-half guided Ireland home against the French in Lansdowne Road. Box ticked. Then on Sunday with three forwards going off injured in the first half alone – Caelan Doris and Iain Henderson as well as hooker Dan Sheehan – their replacements all came up trumps. Tick, tick, tick.
Jack Conan was close to man of the match on replacing Ireland’s best player of the last eighteen months, Dorris, and while Ronan Kelleher went off injured having himself replaced Sheehan it only served to demonstrate the remarkable resilience of this side.
In Kelleher’s place came Cian Healy – just back from injury – to play a first game for his country, at 35 years of age, at hooker. He’s played in every position across the front row for Ireland and thrived in them all.
You even had Josh van der Flier throwing throwing six out of nine line-outs successfully in the absence of both hookers. Crazy stuff and proof for what a special bunch this truly is.
If Ireland were ever going to falter in their bid for the Slam, this surely would have been it. Instead they stuck together, dug deep and struck for home in quite simply devastating fashion to underline their status as the best side in the northern hemisphere at the moment.
France’s victory over England in Twickenham was more spectacular of course, but Ireland’s win in Edinburgh was the more impressive achievement given all that they were up against.
The job is still far from done. Grand Slams are hard won and all that, especially with a load of injuries to contend with and with a hurting England coming to town, but if any Irish side has the composure to finish this out it’s this one.
To win a Grand Slam with a patched-up side, that’s the sort of thing that might make one begin to believe about what might be possible in France later this year.
Farrell is going about it his way. It looks like it just might be the right way.
The hurling league feels inconsequential
Try as we might we just can’t get excited about the final weekend of the National Hurling League group phase.
Indeed, try as we might we’ve struggled to whip up any sort of interest in the bloody thing at all so far even as it’s sometimes attracted startlingly large crowds – such as for the clash between Cork and Limerick in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
Not even that game, which saw Cork effect something of a stunning comeback against the all-conquering All Ireland champions, really moved the dial for us.
If anything it only served to remind us that it’s not altogether that important, if at all. If it was do you think Limerick would have surrendered a healthy advantage like that? Nah we don’t think so either.
At the risk of threading over old ground, it’s the lack of any real stakes that takes you out of it. There’s no jeopardy for any of the big sides. It would take something apocalyptic for any of the established sides to be dragged into a relegation fight and even if they were the fact there’s a play-off between the bottom two sides in 1A and 1B makes it even less of a possibility.
Tipperary and Waterford played a diverting enough game in Semple last time out, but how much store would you set by it? How much store would you set by Tipp’s clean sweep of games so far? Or Cork’s?
How much store will we set by the semi-finals? Or the final? How much interest in those games will there be by the teams which qualify for them? How much interest will there be in qualifying for them at all?
The championship is set to start a fortnight after the league final and that’s where all the focus will lie you’d have to think. Until then we’ll be inclined to look elsewhere for our kicks, which is a shame considering how little top-class inter-county hurling we actually get in a year.
