Gary Lineker is politically juvenile, but the BBC is utterly naive

The almighty row over Gary Lineker hasn’t generated the BBC’s identity crisis. That has been brewing on its own for quite some time now. But we have been reminded of the starkness of the problem.

The once-venerated institution – central to British public life, adored across the world – is directionless, and falling into the same traps time and time again. To survive, the BBC needs to recapture its soul.

The latest maelstrom started on Tuesday afternoon. Lineker – former England forward and host of the beloved Match of the Day – tweeted about the government’s immigration bill, likening the rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. By Friday the BBC announced it had suspended Lineker for breaching impartiality guidelines. His co-hosts – Ian Wright and Alan Shearer – refused to present the programme without him, triggering a solidarity boycott across the BBC Sport staff. There is plenty of chatter in London that the mutiny might extend beyond that. What a mess.

The BBC has long found itself caught up in the throes of the so-called culture wars. The Daily Mail thinks the organisation is stuffed to the brim with liberal wimps trying to frustrate the conservative agenda. The left thinks its reporters – notably former political editor Laura Kuenssberg – are too friendly with the Tories.

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The company walks a fine line, and is terribly anxious to maintain a reputation of gold-standard impartiality. It’s easy to see how Lineker’s soap-boxing can disrupt this careful (and desperately tricky) balancing act.

At least that’s what they think. In reality, by suspending Lineker under the guise of “impartiality”, the BBC has picked a side, backed itself into a rather political corner, and shone a light on its own inadequacies.

The chairperson of the BBC is a prominent Conservative Party donor; its director general is a former Conservative Party candidate. Robbie Gibb – formerly head of BBC Westminster – moved into Downing Street under Theresa May and seamlessly back to the BBC two years later. If we are going to raise eyebrows about BBC impartiality, this seems like a fruitful place to start.

Any organisation that looks like this is going to have a hard time justifying the suspension of Lineker for criticising Conservative Party policy. That was always going to be the case, no matter how much it is moonlighting as a great defender of BBC neutrality.

In its bid to avoid the “culture war” – to seem a mere bystander to the world – the BBC has capitulated to it, joined in, and reminded the world that it is no institutional saint. It’s maddeningly foolish and – not to mention – frustrating to watch the BBC aim a shotgun squarely at its own feet. With one action it has threatened a treasured TV show, inspired mutiny in its ranks, and tried to humiliate a national treasure.

From a reputation management perspective, “The BBC goes to war with football” is a rather hard line to sell to an already sceptical public. But worse than all of that, it has proven itself hopelessly adrift, unsure of its place in the world.

Lineker is a consistent exemplar of the BBC’s struggles with impartiality. He is a vocal Remainer, an obvious sceptic of the Conservatives, a standard bearer of the liberal centrists. He is also not an insightful political commentator. His comparison to 1930s Germany was crass, juvenile, and at Leaving Certificate history level of cultural analysis.

But he is a football commentator. He is not the BBC’s policy editor, nor its moral lodestar. His opinions aren’t news. He isn’t qualified on the subject of the refugee crisis. His function as a sports presenter is not compromised by his criticism of the government. And the BBC cannot claim that it is aspiring to impartiality by suspending him, while being perfectly comfortable with two Conservatives sitting at the highest points in its institution.

So long as Lineker is in jeopardy and the chairman isn’t, any claims to political neutrality are going to look rather flimsy. But all of this reveals something more foundational at the heart of the BBC’s identity crisis. It is aspiring to the wrong things. “Impartiality” is not a real or helpful concept. There is no person in Broadcasting House – no matter what they say – who isn’t driven by their ideology. Ideological instincts can be tempered and managed but they cannot be erased.

[ Match of the Day review: After a day of thunderous controversy, a deafening silence swallows BBC One ]

The question, then, is what is the BBC to do? It can acknowledge this fact and move forward with a rewired mission statement. Or it can refuse to self-assess, pretend that impartiality is an achievable goal, and continue making the same mistakes. The BBC instead should seek balance: ideological diversity, commentators resistant to group think and committed to inquiry, with room for Gary Lineker on Match of the Day and Tim Davie as its director general, journalists as committed to challenging Labour orthodoxy as they are to holding the Conservatives to account.

In aspiring for the unachievable nirvana of impartiality, it will always shoot itself in the foot.