Gary Lineker war tracker
Numeracy is a socialist plot
Chris Johns
A storm has erupted out of nowhere. Britain’s most popular football pundit has Tweeted about the government’s attempts to make illegal the attempts by immigrants to cross the channel. It’s an illegal bill alright: it almost certainly breaks domestic and international law.
To list the various op-eds, blogs, Tweets and other outpourings on this would probably fill a the British library. So, I’m going to synthesise.
The most important thing to note is that Gary Lineker’s Tweets dominate today’s headlines, something that the Tory party’s PR handlers couldn’t be more delighted with.
Issues that really matter, the state of the economy, the cost of living crisis, the housing crisis, the NHS crisis, the Public Sector crisis, are all pushed out of the headlines. Labour need to get wise to modern PR: controlling the narrative is clearly something they still don’t get. Just look at the furore, the gift to the Tories, that is the decision to hire Sue Gray.
The spluttering, spleen-venting, bloviating list of usual suspected wing-nuts have emerged from their cockroach havens to condemn Lineker. All this requires no comment from me other than to observe the hypocrisy, double-standards and arguments that are really just noise, not logical propositions. One exception is this clear and well expressed narrative from ex ping-pong champion turned columnist Matthew Syed:
This is a wonderful example of someone arguing logically from a stated premise and then following up with a statement that is completely true. Able politicians do it all the time. When faced with a difficult question, often with accompanying tricky facts, the skilled debater starts with the non-sequitur and ends with the true, but utterly irrelevant fact, something like “Well, I must tell you that the sun always rises in the East”. A perfectly true statement, that often throws the less-skilled interlocutor off course and elicits a sympathetic nod from the casual, but inattentive, listener.
Syed begins with a non-sequitur, a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument. He concludes that Lineker is not entitled to opine on Twitter because his profile was built in part because of his association with the BBC. Yes, Lineker dose have fame because of the BBC. But, Lineker is not, in anybody’s mind, ‘the’ BBC.
Is a world-famous actor who appears regularly on the BBC, ‘the’ BBC? Judy Dench is more known to the British people than Lineker and has made more BBC appearances. I don’t recall anyone (other than the Daily Express) objecting when she opined negatively about Brexit.
Idris Elba, possibly the next James Bond (even Gary Lineker is not afforded that accolade) regularly gets stuck in with his views about the world. I’ve never heard anyone saying that these or similar media figures should be banned from the BBC.
Jeremy Clarkson, with a similar Twitter following to Lineker, used to be on the BBC rather a lot - at the same time as writing books and newspaper columns full of political polemic. He was fired for a punch rather than an opinion. I could go on with dozens of similar examples. Syed’s conclusion does not follow from his initial argument.
Richard Sharp, Chairman of the BBC, is more properly regarded as representing ‘the’ BBC. He has donated to the Tory party and failed to disclose his role in Boris Johnson’s finances.
Syed’s concluding statement of fact, ‘Britain is a polarised society’ is 100% true but, in this context, doesn’t pass the ‘so what?’ test. It is utterly irrelevant to his argument that Lineker is in the wrong.
Syed’s is the most serious argument, in an intellectual sense, that has been made. But one or two of us think it might be a bit of a pose.
Another perspective, from another Sports journalist:
Moving on from Syed, this from a mainstream journalist in The Times, in a similar vein:
Many, many journalists have voiced support for Lineker
This, from the former head of BBC news: a long thread but pretty definitive.
That’s all about Lineker’s right to speak. The case, may I say, is conclusively proven.
What did he actually say? First, he said “Good heavens, this is awful” in response to the Home Secretary’s blustering about the illegal immigration bill. Hardly a hanging or even sacking offence m’lud.
The he talked about data. This always gets Tory MPs nervous as they emanate from a class that believes numeracy is a Marxist conspiracy. But the numbers are unequivocally as Lineker suggested. Here’s Newsnight’s Ben Chu definitively showing how Britain takes in fewer refugees than most comparable countries in absolute and, especially, relative terms.
Lineker also talked about language. This is important - language always is. He didn’t say that the government was following Nazi-style policies. He said that the language being used was reminiscent of 1930s Nazi Germany.
Alastair Campbell, writing The New European, states:
…if I were doing a media studies PhD right now I would be tempted to analyse the similarities between Der Stürmer and the Völkischer Beobachter in ‘30s Germany and the Mail, Express and Co of recent decades here, in terms of headlines, story selection, consistency of populist messaging, denial of critical voices.
Polarisation. Populism. Post-truth. The 3Ps of modern autocracy.
Well said. It is long since time for all this dangerous populist neo-fascism to be called out. This from a German:
It wasn’t just language used in Germany
It’s been announced that Lineker has been given a good talking to and won’t be fired. (Note: events have clearly overtaken this announcement). Tory MPs will continue to demand his head. Always remember that this faux outrage is driven by people that know how easy it is to whip up popular anger about foreigners. That’s true historically, especially when the media is controlled by populists pursuing an agenda. The most important thing is to keep the truth from the front pages.
Is what Lineker Tweeted true or untrue? That's the real question and the media are not asking it. Could Prof Timothy Snyder or others qualified give us his expert answer, it would be very helpful....