The BBC could save its super singers if it gives Gary Lineker the boot

Has there ever been a time when the BBC licence fee seemed more indefensible? Our national broadcaster cannot keep us all happy, for sure, but the past week has tested the patience even of those of us who are broadly on board.

The two events that have rocked the corporation may not appear connected but they both concern how it spends our money, and therefore are a gauge of bosses’ judgement, and go to the core of what is in the country’s interest.

By far the gravest is the decision to scrap the BBC Singers, along with imposing 20 per cent cuts on the BBC’s three English orchestras.

Around 20 singers will lose their jobs and the nation a choral institution that is almost 100 years old and widely acclaimed, not just artistically but for its role as an educator and in nurturing new British music.

The music world is apoplectic, calling the move an act of “cultural vandalism” that suggests the BBC no longer considers that classical music is something it should be doing.

“BBC Singers is an exceptional role model and support to choral groups across the UK; the impact of its removal is incalculable,” said the Royal Academy of Music. The orchestral cuts, meanwhile, “send a clear message to our aspiring musicians that careers in music are becoming unfeasible”.

What makes the cull more galling, and perplexing, is that it makes no financial sense. Axing the singers saves less than £1.5 million, said the Times music critic Richard Morrison. That’s less than an episode of Doctor Who, said the Telegraph’s Ben Lawrence. And almost on a par with the annual pay packet of Gary Lineker.

Which brings us to the second of the BBC’s current calamities. Musicians may have got up a sizeable petition (more than 75,000 signatures by midday yesterday) to try to save their fellow artists, but that is nothing to the storm following the football pundit’s running commentary on the government’s new immigration policy.

Lineker’s refusal to toe his employer’s impartiality rules has dominated the headlines all week and warranted a mention in the Commons (by Penny Mordaunt).

The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been distracted by the row, in particular Lineker’s tasteless invoking of Nazi Germany to slate her reforms.

Opinion may be divided over whether the Match of the Day host should be allowed to express his political views, but this divide does not necessarily correlate, as some claim, with one’s position on the immigration debate.

As usual, the public discourse is more nuanced than the right-left split Lineker’s luvvies (that’s his 8.7 million Twitter followers) would have us believe.

Lots of us, while persuaded of the urgent need to tackle the Channel boats crisis, are alarmed at Braverman’s drastic measures but don’t need a sports host to articulate our misgivings.

The fact that the BBC’s top paid presenter is allowed, so far, to get away with breaching the rules also clearly rankles with many of his colleagues, who have no such latitude themselves.

Contrast, for example, the reaction of Director-General Tim Davie to Martine Croxhall, who was taken off air for being “gleeful” about Boris Johnson dropping out of the Tory leadership contest last autumn. Later, she was named as one of the long serving anchors being made redundant by the BBC.

Lineker apparently thinks that because he is self-employed, the BBC’s editorial guidelines do not apply to him, but with his exclusive contract and high profile within the corporation, that argument is as “ridiculous” as the BBC leading its news bulletins with the story.

So why not just give him the boot and bring on some more modest substitutes? His vast fee could then be redistributed among, say, the casualties of the music department.

And unlike the BBC musicians, he won’t be out of pocket if sacked. His company, Goalhanger, produces two of the UK’s most popular, and lucrative, podcasts, The Rest is History, and The Rest is Politics (featuring one Alastair Campbell, who has become Lineker’s unofficial spokesman in recent days).

Lineker, drunk on the “love and support” he gets from the Twitterati, will probably miss the limelight. But Match of the Day audiences will survive the loss, just as Newsnight fans (a dwindling tribe anyway) bravely endured the departure of the opinionated Emily Maitlis for podcast freedom.

There are very few big beasts in the BBC whose personalities are greater than the shows they host. Interestingly, in a poll last week of people’s all-time top ten TV presenters there was no mention of Lineker.

David Attenborough won, followed by the late great Terry Wogan and then Bruce Forsyth, all three irreplaceable, though Claudia Winkleman (at number seven) has certainly earned her BBC pay in preserving the Strictly legacy.

If the BBC hesitates much longer or, worse, does nothing to sanction the mouthy striker, it may as well abandon its rule book altogether. For how can it justify punishing some staff while giving others a free rein?

Football programmes may be regarded as the corporation’s chief cultural asset these days, but all BBC employees should be in the same league.

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