It is obvious that director general Tim Davie and those who pushed him into error misread the public mood, says Guardian journalist Archie Bland
after its presenter Alex Scott, pulled out – is the natural endpoint of the position that the corporation has so painfully staked out for itself: a football fizzing about without much sense of why, or what the stakes are. Give up on meaningful analysis in pursuit of neutrality and the result is a version of events which is uncontroversial, certainly, but also difficult to understand.
Most people are now clearer on where a television presenter stands on the small boats crisis than where the Labour party, which has largely confined its critique to a managerialist argument about Home Office asylum application backlogs, does. If you’d rather people didn’t view every story through the prism of celebrity, you have to offer them a more compelling alternative.
To state the obvious: you shouldn’t trust a definition of impartiality created by actors with an obviously uneven way of applying it. Nor should you trust a vision for a public body set out by people who would like it to be privatised. Even so, theappears resigned to meekly chasing after the football that the Daily Mail dangles in front of it. You will recall that when Charlie Brown did this with Lucy, he repeatedly wound up on his backside in the dirt.
However Lineker’s employment status is resolved, we might hope that more significant consequences arise from all this. Keir Starmer should consult the anonymous source of that quote about what could be gained from a more nuanced understanding of what voters want than can be found in a PowerPoint presentation of the latest issue polling. Perhaps, he may conclude, sincerity and clarity will put him on safer ground than the endless pursuit of diluted border conservatism.
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