Gary Lineker has left the BBC with the kind of fanfare that, had he been less famous and less rich, would not have happened, though he will not admit that to himself. Rather, he would have left in disgrace. Perhaps, once you reach a certain level, there is no such thing as disgrace now. Football pundits banged him out on X: they talked of his gifts. I have no idea about this. I believe in expertise, and I am no footballer, but he was always soothing to listen to on Match of the Day. Others — not football pundits, those who should know better — banged him out too. Jeremy Corbyn led them. He called Lineker “the face of humility, warmth and decency” and “a man to be celebrated”. The insinuation is: Lineker, so golden, was betrayed.
This is how liberal societies collapse, not thrive: by destroying the institutions that protect them, and obliviously. That he shared a social media post about Gaza that included a cartoon rat (and that it was a cartoon was typical) was unforgivable. The rat means terror to Jews because it indicates we are an infection to be purged for the common survival of humanity. It was unforgivable by anyone, let alone someone with a high profile, and with such notorious goodness.
Did Lineker know that Zyklon B, the gas that left British Jews, his neighbours, the only intact Jewish community in Europe, is a pesticide? He doesn’t know much for a man who inserts himself into conversations relating to Jewish safety. That too is typical. He apologised, meaninglessly in my view, said he didn’t see the rat, didn’t understand the rat, didn’t know the rat. People rushed to excuse him: on behalf of Jews. This too is typical. His parting gift was a conspiracy theory circulated by his allies, though not he: that Jews ended him, due to our incalculable power, the same power that led to our sacrifice in living memory.
Mr Privileged
This is a story about vanity, and self-deception; of destroying things you do not need being rich, but others do. Lineker is, to use a word he would doubtless use, and I rarely do, but it is apt here, privileged. He is also thin-skinned and wary of criticism.
See also: Inside Gary Lineker's property empire — where the former Match of the Day presenter calls home
The two are related: it’s a trope that fame destroys you for a reason. He has not been working-class since the 1980s, and to name him that is ridiculous: if Lineker is working-class what are the real working classes? Fictional beings? But he relies on a sense of aggrievement. He exudes it. He says he was bullied as a young man for having dark skin, though he is white. Is this his solidarity for players of colour? Naming himself a victim of racism?
His trajectory is an attempt to deny this privilege. He is, at heart, another wounded patriarch who wishes to be well-thought-of by the kinds of people who post online. He is a bourgeois Leftist, typical of the modern BBC, part of the cohort that have destroyed the Left as a serious political force. They believe in performative struggle because they are too privileged to want real struggle, and then, from guilt and vanity, they launder their souls on Instagram. Lineker’s liberalism is tinny: a nothing. No serious liberal would share Jew-hating tropes to millions; or criticise the British government, or the American President from the Match of the Day studio. He could have done an essential thing to express his liberalism: his job. He positioned himself as the face of the BBC, an incalculable honour, and wholly undeserved.
Lineker leaves the BBC weaker and more exposed to its enemies even as he congratulates himself
The BBC is — was — an essential weapon of our liberal democracy, and he was charged to protect it. We need its objectivity and its (ebbing) reputation more than ever. Lineker either doesn’t know this — that is my default view on him — or he doesn’t care. He leaves it weaker and more exposed to its enemies, even as he congratulates himself and expresses, as ever, the “who me?” of the perennially aggrieved middle-aged male. Simply put, he understands nothing. Cartoon rat, cartoon activist? It’s the way of the age.
An English populist à la Trump
People ask: why does Lineker not get to speak his mind on politics when, say, Andrew Neil, once of the BBC, does? I will speak my mind too. Because Andrew Neil troubles himself to read words beyond social media. There is such a thing as expertise, and liberals should know this better than anyone.
We do not need people behaving like dilettantes, even if — or rather because — they are soothing to hear. They are dangerous. Lineker is not just a patriarch, an imposter and a dilettante. He is also that thing he most despises: a populist. He has more in common with Donald Trump than he will ever know.
Now he is a freelancer, dedicated to his podcast empire. He will be a media mogul, entitled, now he has left the BBC, to express his views freely. Respectable people will work for him, though they shouldn’t. His behaviour will do him no harm in the halls he wishes to be loved in. I wonder: did he do it, in the end, because he really missed football? It will be believed, by bigots, that Jews toppled him though, in truth, he toppled himself. It will not matter. For men such as he, it never does.
Tanya Gold is a columnist for The London Standard
