Don’t fire Lineker – abolish the licence fee instead
Nigel Lawson was only half right. He said that in modern Britain, there is a religion: the NHS. Although one sees his point, what about football? This week, there will be a budget, plus an alarming background: the threat of a global banking crisis. It is hard to form a clear picture of military developments in Ukraine, yet there are many grounds for alarm, if not despondency: not today at any rate. But that could happen. The Government is also trying to deal with illegal immigration.
So there is a large amount of material for headlines and reportage. Yet the main issue appears to be Gary Lineker’s fatuous comment – and that story is by no means over. Bill Shankly, a footballer from a previous generation, once made a joke. But these days, irony has become literal truth. “There’s a lot of nonsense talked about football” he would say. “Some people go on as if it was a matter of life and death. What rubbish: it is far more important than that.”
Lineker must have been very well known. Even I had heard of him. He was, apparently, an outstanding player and is now an excellent commentator. Beyond that, who cares? That said, if he is going to persist with political comments, there is a lesson which he should learn. Trying to enhance your argument with a silly comparison to Hitler will neither add intellectual weight nor emotional force. It will merely make you sound thoughtless and self-indulgent. As Lineker clearly does possess a brain, he should try harder.
Even so, what does it matter whether or not he gets his brain in gear? Yet it now seems possible that some senior BBC figures may end up having to resign, over a tweet. There must be a lot of twits out there.
The dispute will now have to be resolved and there is an obvious mediator, though he almost certainly would not want the job. Chris Patten is committed to the BBC. Moreover, and despite his enthusiasm for the EU, he possesses an uncommon quality: common sense. He would also calm everyone down.
As for twittering, it may be impossible to find a compromise. Social media has escaped from the reservation. Again, does this matter? As time passes, the sheer volume of the material may ensure that nobody takes much notice. It should surely be possible to distinguish between the BBC’s official output and a cacophony of tweeterings.
Returning to the mainline material, there is one obvious principle. As long as there is a BBC, its news coverage must be rigorously impartial. To be fair, it has retained that reputation, across the world. But the further we move from the flagship news programmes, the less important that becomes. There ought to be controversial programmes, which sometimes set out to be strongly partial, as long as they are not all made by Left-wingers. Above all, there ought to be high-quality programming, providing material which the markets could not supply.
In that respect, some extremely bad tidings have just emerged and that has nothing to do with Gary Lineker. Perhaps some embattled official thought that this was a good moment to bury bad news about the fate of the BBC Singers. Their closure would be an act of cultural vandalism. It is the sort of high-minded institution which gives the BBC its raison d‘être. If the BBC withdrew from football coverage tomorrow, there would be an instant replacement. The BBC singers would be a permanent loss.
There could be a drastic solution. Abolish the licence fee, but provide a direct public subsidy to create a TV station for news, current affairs in general and the arts. This would renew a BBC in the steps of the Reithian legacy, but there are all sorts of reasons why it might not be workable. The disputes as to personnel and content would be so rancorous as to be irresolvable.
That brings us to one important aspect of the Lineker affair: free speech. Even footballers are entitled to it. There has been a further sad tiding in recent hours: the death of Bill Tidy, a delightful cartoonist. Inter alia, he drew for Private Eye, a strip based on the Cloggies, from the era in which the red wall was an uncontested psephological commonplace. One of Bill’s characters was the Blagdon amateur rapist, who was always portrayed in the nude, running for dear life from a posse of ladies, who either wanted revenge, or more services. Innocent days. In conclusion: Gary Lineker should be allowed to talk rubbish without bringing down half the BBC’s senior management. There may be better reasons than that for disposing of them.
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