![]() Conservatives anxious that the Beeb is in hock to a liberal-Left establishment will find their suspicions confirmed. However it might be dressed up, after the Match of the Day boycott, Lineker’s return to the screens is a BBC climbdown. Credit must also be given to its director-general, Tim Davie, who attempted to do the right thing by disciplining Lineker. True, many of the Beeb’s journalists are genuinely dedicated to presenting current affairs through a neutral lense. Indeed, when John Reith embedded the principle of the BBC as an impartial body, he envisaged an institution answerable to neither government nor necessarily to listeners, but to a loftier calling: cultural uplift and civic nationalism. They are part of a civilising tradition – one that is not so much politically neutral but seeks to transcend politics in pursuit of a higher moral cause. But there is surely a historical continuity between the early BBC and football royalty’s disgusted invectives against insular Little England. It may seem facetious to point out that a similar sort of ideology was once upheld by the gentlemen of Union and empire. ![]() Many of its employees evidently think that its rightful role is as a mouthpiece for a particular political creed – one that thinks Britain somehow has a semi-mystical power to absorb and heal the diverse peoples of the world. It is far from being the strictly impartial body it purports to be, dedicated to representing fairly the views of the whole population. Make no mistake, however: in the eyes of millions, the pundit has once and for all exposed the lie at the heart of the corporation. There are many dimensions to the mess the broadcaster has found itself in since Gary Lineker’s Twitter outburst over the Government’s migration policies. That story is now disintegrating under the weight of its own contradictions. Liberal centrists have long sought to tell a highly particular story about our island nation – of the benevolence of a Blairite, technocratic Third Way, of unity in diversity, and of the desirability of a cautious and gradual approach to change. It’s not just the sacredly “neutral” institutions that are in peril, although many of them will struggle to survive the coming decades. ![]() Liberal Britain is beginning to collapse.
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