Andy Coulson

The BBC should admit its mistake and get Lineker back

Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images.

While sports fans this morning are discussing why the entire England rugby team backed Gary Lineker by choosing not to turn up at Twickenham, the drama rumbles on. At its heart, this is a communications crisis borne out of that all-too-often-seen disease of people with important jobs taking themselves far too seriously.

First we have Gary Lineker: who, clearly unhappy with his lucrative lot in life, feels the need to get involved in politics. I’m interested in the views of all sorts of people outside of Westminster – including on the deeply complex issue of immigration. But Gary, whilst being one of my go-to thinkers on football, doesn’t make that list. Just as his fellow multi-millionaire pundit Gary Neville is not a person I pay a lot of attention to on the subject of food banks.

Next up on the taking-themselves-too-seriously list: the Tory MPs who quickly whipped themselves into an artificial outrage, claiming an historic breach of the BBC’s impartiality rules.

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