Corporation’s sports coverage severely disrupted as presenters and pundits pull out in solidarity with LinekerThe Labour MP Nadia Whittome said Gary Lineker was right to criticise the illegal migration bill.Whittome told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme:I think, firstly, Gary Lineker was right to call out the government’s bill and I think, yes, he works for the BBC and it’s important that the BBC is impartial, but as you say he’s a sports presenter not a news presenter, and if we’re going to talk about impartiality let’s talk about the fact that the BBC chairman donated £400,000 to the Conservative party and arranged an £800,000 loan to Boris Johnson.What I think we mustn’t be distracted by is from the bill itself, which is what Gary Lineker was drawing attention to because the government is trying to play divide and rule, pure and simple, by criminalising asylum seekers and, in the process, risking breaking international law.I think the point that he was making was about the cruelty of this bill.When you think about the kind of wider picture with the government, you would have thought, wouldn’t you, that they’d have learned not to have picked fights with footballers after Marcus Rashford forced them to U-turn on free school meals, and now this with Gary Lineker, and now we’re all talking about the government’s cruel asylum policy.The people who I think are at fault here are the Conservative MPs and ministers who lined up to criticise Gary Lineker, putting pressure on the BBC to take him off air.That is the priority now of the Conservatives – some culture war, rather than the interests and the concerns of people in their day-to-day lives. That is just all wrong. Continue reading...
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