A history of Gary Lineker’s most controversial posts – from Rwanda and Brexit to Gaza
Gary Lineker, the BBC’s highest-paid on-air presenter, is to leave the corporation in a matter of days.
The Match Of The Day host will step away from the broadcaster at the end of this month, with his last appearance expected on 25 May, the last day of the Premier League season.
His exit comes after he “apologised unreservedly” for sharing a social media post that featured a rat – used in Nazi propaganda to dehumanise Jewish people – and said he would “never knowingly share anything antisemitic”.
It was the latest controversial post by the 64-year-old, who has found himself at the centre of several rows over his social media usage, most of which involve him sharing his political views, which go against the BBC’s rules on impartiality.
In a statement on Monday, Lineker said: “I care deeply about the game, and about the work I’ve done with the BBC over many years. As I’ve said, I would never consciously repost anything antisemitic – it goes against everything I stand for.
“However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”
Here is a round-up of the pundit’s most contentious comments as he prepares to leave the BBC.
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Gary Lineker to leave BBC immediately
Gaza documentary
Although not via social media, earlier this year, Lineker was one of 500 media personalities who condemned the BBC for pulling the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone after it emerged the child narrator, Abdullah, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who had worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.
In an open letter addressed to BBC director general Tim Davie, chairman Samir Shah and outgoing chief content officer Charlotte Moore, Lineker joined hundreds of TV and film professionals and journalists who called the decision to remove the documentary “politically motivated censorship”.
The presenter later said the BBC had “capitulated”, adding that he did not see Abdullah as an issue, and maintaining that the corporation should not have admitted to “a number of serious failings in their commissioning and editorial processes”.
The BBC admitted the documentary’s failings were “a dagger to the heart” of the corporation’s impartiality.
Tory migrant policy
In March 2023, Lineker called a Conservative government policy on migration “immeasurably cruel” and compared the language around it to 1930s Germany.
Hitting out at a video of former home secretary Suella Braverman, where she unveiled the Illegal Migration Bill and claimed the UK was being “overwhelmed” by migrants, Lineker wrote on social media: “There is no huge influx.
“We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries.
“This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ’30s.”
His comments sent politicians, pundits and social media platform X into a spin.
As a result, Lineker was removed from his duties as Match Of The Day presenter after claims he had breached their impartiality guidelines.
He later returned to the presenting role after the row prompted a boycott by his fellow football pundits and commentators, hitting TV and radio coverage across the BBC.
Lineker has been consistently vocal on the issue of migration. In 2020 the former England footballer welcomed refugee Rasheed Baluch into his Surrey home.
Mr Baluch, who was from Pakistan, stayed with the presenter for weeks, and spoke out in the pundit’s defence in 2023, describing him as a “very sympathetic, caring and human loving man”.
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From March 2023: Gary Lineker stands by social media post
‘4 chaps Shapps’
Criticising former defence secretary Grant Shapps in December 2023, Lineker posted photos of the politician – who lost his seat in last year’s general election – along with different names he has been accused of using in the past.
It was in response to Mr Shapps defending the government’s Rwanda scheme. The politician said Lineker should stick to football and stop “meddling” in other matters.
Lineker replied on social media, saying: “A tad rich coming from someone who can’t even stick to one name. 4 chaps Shapps.”
Chair of the BBC Mr Shah said at the time the post breached the corporation’s guidelines.
Brexit and Tories
Lineker was a vocal opponent of Brexit and in 2018 backed the campaign for another EU referendum, saying Brexit felt like it was “going very wrong indeed”.
At the time, a BBC source told Sky News that Lineker’s position as a freelance broadcaster, and a presenter who does not front news or politics programmes, meant he was clear of the corporation’s rules on impartiality.
As well as voicing his Brexit opinions, Lineker bemoaned “the absolute state of our politics”, saying “imagine how hopeless you’d have to be to still be behind the Tory party in the polls”.
BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew hit back, criticising Lineker for speaking out on politics.
He posted on X: “Gary. You are the face of BBC Sport. Please observe BBC editorial guidelines and keep your political views, whatever they are and whatever the subject, to yourself. I’d be sacked if I followed your example. Thanks.”
Lineker made a barbed reply: “Jonathan, I’m the face of my own Twitter account. I’ll continue to tweet what I like and if folk disagree with me then so be it.”
Russian donors
In February 2022, Lineker tweeted about the Conservative Party taking money from “Russian donors”.
Retweeting a story about the then foreign secretary Liz Truss urging football teams to boycott the Champions League final in Russia, he added: “And her party will hand back their donations from Russian donors?”
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) upheld a complaint and said Lineker’s post “did not meet the BBC’s editorial standards on impartiality”.
The ECU said Lineker was “one of the BBC’s highest profile stars” and said while not being required to uphold the same high standards of impartiality as its journalists, he had an “additional responsibility” because of his profile.
“We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies and to take care when addressing public policy matters,” the ruling said.
Row over sewage
A senior BBC journalist questioned Lineker’s commitment to the BBC’s impartiality rules after the presenter posted on social media about sewage in August 2022.
At the time, Lineker wrote on social media: “As a politician how could you ever, under any circumstances, bring yourself to vote for pumping sewage into our seas? Unfathomable!”
BBC journalist Neil Henderson asked Lineker whether he had a contract allowing him to breach BBC impartiality, writing: “The BBC lives or dies by its impartiality. If you can’t abide it, get off it.”
He subsequently apologised to the former footballer and deleted the tweets. Under the BBC’s social media rules, criticising colleagues is off-limits.
Read more:
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Qatar World Cup
Lineker opened the BBC’s coverage of the 2022 Qatar World Cup with a scathing critique of the host country’s record on human rights and treatment of migrant workers.
The segment analysed the decision to award the tournament to Qatar amid corruption allegations and brought in pundits to discuss workers’ rights and discrimination against LGBT people.
Former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis – who was once found to have breached impartiality guidelines herself – compared that incident to the response to his other social media posts around the same time.
She said: “Curious that Gary Lineker was free to raise questions about Qatar’s human rights record – with the blessing of the BBC – over the World Cup, but cannot raise questions of human rights in this country if it involves criticism of government policy…”
In advance of the tournament, Lineker criticised then foreign secretary James Cleverly after he suggested LGBT football fans should be “respectful” of Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, if they visited for the World Cup.
Responding to the comments, Lineker said: “Whatever you do, don’t do anything gay. Is that the message?”
A pitch invader with a rainbow flag during a Qatar World Cup match. Pic: AP
The time he didn’t speak out
Reflecting on his comments about the Qatar World Cup, Lineker said he and the BBC should have spoken out more during the World Cup in Russia in 2018.
At the time there were calls for Russia to be stripped of the World Cup or boycotted in 2014 after it annexed Crimea and was blamed by the West for supplying arms to pro-Russian separatists suspected of shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine.
“I think we were all going how great it was, and this and that and the other, and that’s how sportwashing works,” Lineker said during a BBC Radio 4 interview.
“We’ve seen what Putin’s done subsequently, but he’d done it before.
“I think looking back now in hindsight, I think we should probably have spoken out more.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
Flawed data has been used repeatedly to dismiss claims about “Asian grooming gangs”, Baroness Louise Casey has said in a new report, as she called for a new national inquiry.
The government has accepted her recommendations to introduce compulsory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in grooming cases, and for a review of police records to launch new criminal investigations into historic child sexual exploitation cases.
Politics latest: Yvette Cooper reveals details of grooming gangs report
Baroness Louise Casey carried out the review. Pic: PA
The crossbench peer has produced an audit of sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales, after she was asked by the prime minister to review new and existing data, including the ethnicity and demographics of these gangs.
In her report, she has warned authorities that children need to be seen “as children” and called for a tightening of the laws around the age of consent so that any penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 is classified as rape. This is “to reduce uncertainty which adults can exploit to avoid or reduce the punishments that should be imposed for their crimes”, she added.
Baroness Casey said: “Despite the age of consent being 16, we have found too many examples of child sexual exploitation criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 to 15-year-old had been ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The peer has called for a nationwide probe into the exploitation of children by gangs of men.
She has not recommended another over-arching inquiry of the kind conducted by Professor Alexis Jay, and suggests the national probe should be time-limited.
The national inquiry will direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry’s “purpose is to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies”.
On the issue of ethnicity, Baroness Casey said police data was not sufficient to draw conclusions as it had been “shied away from”, and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators.
‘Flawed data’
However, having examined local data in three police force areas, she found “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination”.
She added: “Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.
“Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue.
“This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.”
Read more:
Officials tried to cover up grooming scandal, says Cummings
Why many victims welcome national inquiry into grooming gangs
Grooming gangs scandal timeline
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From January: Grooming gangs: What happened?
The baroness hit out at the failure of policing data and intelligence for having multiple systems which do not communicate with each other.
She also criticised “an ambivalent attitude to adolescent girls both in society and in the culture of many organisations”, too often judging them as adults.
‘Deep-rooted failure’
Responding to Baroness Casey’s review, Ms Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons: “The findings of her audit are damning.
“At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence.
She added: “Baroness Casey found ‘blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions’ all played a part in this collective failure.”
Ms Cooper said she will take immediate action on all 12 recommendations from the report, adding: “We cannot afford more wasted years repeating the same mistakes or shouting at each other across this House rather than delivering real change.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper responded to the report. Pic: PA
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “After months of pressure, the prime minister has finally accepted our calls for a full statutory national inquiry into the grooming gangs.
“We must remember that this is not a victory for politicians, especially the ones like the home secretary, who had to be dragged to this position, or the prime minister. This is a victory for the survivors who have been calling for this for years.”
Ms Badenoch added: “The prime minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgement has once again been found wanting.
“Since he became prime minister, he and the home secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir.
“They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as, and I quote, ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the prime minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend – shameful.”
The government has promised new laws to protect children and support victims so they “stop being blamed for the crimes committed against them”.
It is also launching new police operations and a new national inquiry to direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.
There will also be new ethnicity data and research “so we face up to the facts on exploitation and abuse,” the home secretary said.
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