Does Gary Lineker deserve Amnesty’s human rights award?

‘We need to be careful with the language we use,’ said Gary Lineker as he picked up an award from Amnesty International in Rome for his ‘strong commitment towards immigration and human rights issues’. It was an interesting line to take, given it was Lineker’s intemperate tweeting – particularly his referencing of 1930s Germany in relation to language used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman – that boosted his social justice warrior profile and probably helped win him the award.

Having collected his gong, Lineker claimed in a waffly interview with Channel 4 to be a believer in freedom of speech. ‘But,’ the Match of the Day host said, ‘in my experience of freedom of speech, particularly the people who campaign for freedom of speech, they’re all for it until they disagree with what you’re saying’.

Is Lineker oblivious to the special nature of working at the BBC, which surely obliges a certain discretion and neutrality on its presenters, even those who may, or may not be, contractually exempt? And one wonders how free those of his colleagues who didn’t support him in March (there