Lineker leaving the BBC is a win for sanity but bad news for the fight to end the licence fee - Philip Davies
Gary Lineker was the poster boy for everything that was wrong about the licence fee, writes Sir Philip Davies
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Sir Philip Davies is a former Conservative Party MP
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The decision of the BBC (finally!) to stop Gary Lineker presenting the flagship Match of the Day is good news for the BBC, but bad news for those - like me - who want to see the end of the BBC licence fee.
In fact, I have long suspected that Gary Lineker has been a plant at the BBC for the “Axe The TV Tax” campaigners.
When campaigning against the BBC licence fee, Gary Lineker was our poster boy. He represented everything that people hate about the BBC.
First of all, he was a colossal waste of money. Who on earth decided it was worth paying him £1.3million should have been fired.
The idea that millions of people would only watch Match of the Day if Lineker presented it was always an expensive nonsense. As a self-confessed sports fanatic, I have been watching Match of the Day since I was a young boy - long before Gary Lineker started presenting it - and I will be watching it long after he has hung up his presenting boots.
This may come as a shock to the suits at the BBC, but people who watch Match of the Day do so to watch the Premier League highlights from the matches from earlier that day. That will remain the same for whoever is presenting it.
Not only did Lineker represent the waste of money that the BBC has become renowned for, but he also was the epitome of the left-wing politics which has taken hold of the BBC and which makes so many Conservatives resentful at being forced by law to pay for something many of us see as a left of centre politically correct propaganda channel.
Despite a succession of weak Director Generals instructing Lineker - as the highest-paid BBC presenter - to stop flaunting his left-wing political views in public, he continued to defy them and clearly felt (with some justification) that he could act with impunity.
In fact, so good was Lineker for the campaign to scrap the licence fee that if he didn’t exist we would have had to invent him.
By finally plucking up the courage to dispense with his services, the BBC will probably realise they should have done it years ago.
A well-known BBC journalist told me a long time ago that virtually every employee at the BBC wanted him sacked as he kept getting away with things that wouldn’t have been tolerated by anyone else there.
For the rest of us, we will just have to hope that another bogeyman appears at the BBC in his place to further undermine the BBC licence fee. Is there any chance we could get Gary Neville doing it? We can but hope.
In the meantime, thanks Lineker for everything you did to help destroy the BBC and its licence fee. Nobody is more grateful than me.
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