The BBC has undermined its own credibility with its decision to stand Gary Lineker down from hosting Match of the Day because it will be viewed as having bowed to government pressure, its former director general Greg Dyke has said.
Dyke’s comments come after the corporation suspended Lineker on Friday for breaching impartiality guidelines by criticising the government’s asylum policies.
Dyke told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is a long-established precedent in the BBC that is that if you’re an entertainment presenter or you’re a football presenter, then you are not bound by those same rules.
“The real problem of today is that the BBC has undermined its own credibility by doing this because it looks like – the perception out there – that the BBC has bowed to government pressure.
“And once the BBC does that, then you’re in real problems. The perception out there is going to be that Gary Lineker, a much-loved television presenter, was taken off air after government pressure on a particular issue.”
Asked whether Lineker’s tweet was acceptable, he said: “We live in a world of freedom of speech and therefore, yes. He didn’t broadcast it on the BBC, it was a tweet he did privately.
“I think what the BBC did yesterday was mistaken. And over the years since I left the BBC I have never gone public criticising the leadership of the BBC and the decisions they take, because I know what a difficult job it is, and difficult decisions have to be taken.”
But the precedent at the corporation was that “news and current affairs employees are expected to be impartial and not the rest”, he said.
“If you start applying the rules of news and current affairs to everybody who works for the BBC, where does it end?
“If you thought on Match of the Day tonight he would have been talking about immigration policy, then I can understand the BBC’s position, but he’s on talking about football.”
He added that it was “quite clear” Lineker did not intend to give the BBC any assurances about his future conduct and that “therefore I suspect this is the end of Gary Lineker as a BBC presenter as we’ve known him”.
Lineker’s suspension came after a tweet on Monday in which he said a government plan to effectively ban anyone who arrives in the UK illegally from claiming asylum had been expressed in “language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.
It was announced on Friday that Lineker would “step back” from hosting Match of the Day until an agreement had been reached about his use of social media.
The decision led to displays of solidarity from Lineker’s co-hosts, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, who announced that they would not be participating in Saturday’s show. The BBC said in response that the show would be broadcast without a presenter or pundits.
Bristol Rovers, who play Forest Green Rovers in League One on Saturday afternoon, said their players would not be giving interviews to the BBC after the match.
“We won’t be talking to the BBC before or after today’s game. #BristolRovers #WeStandWithGary”, the club wrote on Twitter.
The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, also condemned Lineker’s suspension on Friday night.
“Chilling to see a great public broadcaster cowering to rightwing fanatics,” he said. “Our democracy is made of tougher stuff than this.”
The Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner, tweeted: “The BBC’s cowardly decision to take Gary Lineker off air is an assault on free speech in the face of political pressure from Tory politicians. They should rethink.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the outgoing first minister of Scotland, said that, as a “strong supporter of public service broadcasting” she wanted to be able to defend the BBC, but the decision was indefensible.
“It is undermining free speech in the face of political pressure – and it does always seem to be rightwing pressure it caves to,” she said.
Also speaking to the BBC, Patience Wheatcroft, a former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, said the corporation had failed to apply its impartiality guidelines fairly.
Citing the case of Alan Sugar, who hosts the BBC show The Apprentice but who endorsed the Conservatives in the 2019 election, she said: “Guidelines only work if they are applied right across the board within the scope of the guidelines. And clearly the BBC has failed on that.”
She said the BBC should “work very close with both sides [of politics] to come up with a policy that it will then apply across the board”.
Speaking on her talkshow on TalkTV, the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries defended the move.
“The people who are paying Gary Lineker’s salary are licence fee payers and they do not all agree with Gary Lineker,” she said.
“And I think the BBC has a responsibility to possibly use Gary Lineker as a line in the sand to say: ‘You can’t do this. If you’re working for the BBC, you have a responsibility, when you’re public-facing … to retain that element of impartiality.’”