Gary Lineker is to leave Match of the Day but was he pushed out?

He is to continue fronting other football coverage including the FA Cup 2025/26 and the 2026 World Cup, and for the first time his podcast The Rest Is Football will be available on BBC Sounds.

But when his contract came up for renewal, he was not offered the opportunity to continue presenting MOTD. Was it related to his behaviour on the social media?

It would be easy to understand if this was the case. Consider:

Thank you @GaryLineker #Gaza Silence is not an option

“I can’t think of anything that I’ve seen worse in my lifetime. The constant images of children losing their lives, day in day out”

What’s happening in Gaza. Clip from an interview @zeteo_news in May pic.twitter.com/IsnXzySywJ

— Jerry Hicks (@JerryHicksUnite) November 12, 2024

That was from an interview in May, when Mr Lineker contradicted the BBC’s corporate position, which is that Israel is always the victim and can do no wrong. He clearly believes that killing children is wrong (as do I).

And that wasn’t the first time he affected the political world from his Twitter/X account.

Gary Lineker first came to This Writer’s attention as a political figure in October 2016, when he responded to Tory MP David Davies’s claim that refugees entering the UK should undergo dental checks to verify their age. He tweeted: “The treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. What’s happening to our country?”

He suffered unwanted media attention as a result of this, from The Sun, which failed to get Mr Lineker sacked from MOTD, and the Mail, which tried to turn public opinion against him by publishing a salacious story about him in a Club Class cabin on a British Airways flight from London to Naples – only to have it disproved by people who checked the type of aircraft being used at the time and found it did not have a Club Class cabin.

The following month – I’m not sure if this counts because it’s from a TV show and not the social media, and may have been scripted for him – Mr Lineker, hosting the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, upset Brexiteers by saying: “Britain’s ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, has announced that a Brexit deal could take 10 years. That’s not fair. Most of the people who voted for it will be dead by then…”

In January 2017 he took to Twitter – and took then-President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spiced-Up Spicer gently to task over a wildly… optimistic appraisal of the number of people who watched Trump’s inauguration. Spicer said, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period.”

So Mr Lineker responded:

In November 2020, when footballer Marcus Rashford was campaigning to end child poverty – and after the then-Tory government agreed to provide almost £400 million to support the cost of food and household goods for poor families – the Mail published a dog-whistle story contrasting his campaigning for public money to support the poor with his own ownership of five luxury homes.

Perhaps recalling his own experience in 2016, Mr Lineker supported his fellow footballer:

Here they go. This is how they start. Subtle to begin with, but it will grow. It’s what they do. https://t.co/iIYpWG47Wx

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 15, 2020

In March, 2023, Mr Lineker compared Tory rhetoric by Suella Braverman about asylum-seekers – who come across the Channel in small boats because the UK’s then-government has closed off all their legal routes to seek sanctuary here – with that of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

His comment was greeted with a storm of protest from both Tory and Labour politicians (until Keir Starmer realised there was an opportunity to take an advantage over the Tories, jumped on the bandwagon and spoke up for Mr Lineker – in contradiction of his own shadow ministers). Of course, the attacks were very foolish because Mr Lineker was absolutely right.

But the BBC caved in to Tory pressure. I wrote at the time:

Mr Lineker was removed from his position as host of Match of the Day – and the Corporation lied about the circumstances. First we were told he was “stepping back” voluntarily until he could reach an agreement with the BBC over how he conducts himself on a social media account that is nothing to do with his employment and over which his employers should have no influence at all. Then we found out that he had been forced out.

And then the effluent hit the air conditioner.

Mr Lineker’s co-presenters on MOTD walked out in solidarity with him and everyone asked to be a possible stand-in host refused on principle.

Of course an accommodation was reached and Lineker returned to work after (rightly) refusing to retract his comparison of Suella Braverman’s words about Channel migrants with the rhetoric of Germany in the 1930s. There was no stipulation in his BBC contract – at that time – to suggest that he, as a sports presenter, should not be allowed to discuss politics on his own personal Twitter feed.

But is his retirement from Match of the Day now a consequence of this outburst?

In November of that year, Mr Lineker was speaking out again, supporting a well-argued claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

First, he took issue with Suella Braverman again, after she said people calling for peace between Israel and Gaza were trying to hold a “hate march” in London, saying there was a risk of “serious public disorder”, “violence”, “damage” and “offence”.

He tweeted:

Then he took the big step and endorsed a YouTube clip by Owen Jones that accused Israel of being responsible for a “textbook genocide” in Gaza. This whipped up another storm of protest from the usual suspects – who seemed oblivious to the fact that the person calling it a “textbook genocide” was an Israeli Holocaust scholar.

And in January this year (2024), he retweeted a call by a pro-Palestinian campaign for Israel to be ousted from all global tournaments and games “until it ends its grave violations of international law”.

I was reminded of this today – Tuesday, November 12, 2024 – due to the hooliganism of Israeli football supporters in Amsterdam:

After Russia invaded Ukraine, it was swiftly banned from all UEFA & FIFA tournaments.

Yet, after 13 months of genocide that has claimed 118,000+ Palestinian lives, Israel faces no such sanctions — highlighting the racist double standards entrenched in global politics & sports.

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) November 12, 2024

So this is clearly hypocritical of UEFA and FIFA; Israel should be banned from all their tournaments.

But Mr Lineker, who deleted his retweet, still received threats about it. Commenting, he said:

the minute you open your mouth – well, not my mouth, but the minute I tweet a little bit – it’s so toxic.

“If you lean to one side or the other, the levels of attack are extraordinary. How could it be controversial to want peace? I just don’t understand it. You don’t need to be Islamophobic to condemn Hamas, or antisemitic to condemn Israel. But at the moment it’s just awful. Awful.”

When talking about the numbers of children killed, he said: “I feel sick.”

And that brings us full circle – back to his words in the video clip at the top of this piece.

None of what Gary Lineker said on the social media is unreasonable.

He is extremely consistent in his position, which is standing up for the victims of persecution by politicians.

But he was suspended from MOTD by the BBC last year because he spoke up against the anti-refugee rhetoric of the then-Home Secretary that was provably similar to the words of the politicians of Nazi Germany.

That suggests that the higher levels of the BBC are stuffed with people who support such shocking ideas – and now it seems likely that they know how to hold a grudge.

Does it look that way to you?

 

You can find out more about Mr Lineker – and help Vox Political – by buying the following products using my Amazon Associates links:

Gary Lineker: A Portrait of a Football Icon (book – Kindle Edition / Hardcover)

Match of the Day: Top 10 of Everything – Our Ultimate Football Debates (book – Kindle Edition / Hardcover / Paperback)

50 Times Football Saved The World (audiobook)

Behind Closed Doors (audiobook)

If you’re really well-off…

Exclusive Memorabilia Gary Lineker Signed 1991 Cup Semi-Final Shirt. Deluxe Frame

Exclusive Memorabilia Gary Lineker Signed Photo: Semi-Final Goal. Deluxe Frame

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