The political classes seem generally incapable of distinguishing between the foundations of some principle and the analysis of events occurring whilst operating within that principle. The Gary Lineker issue has brought this failure to the fore.

The principle here is surely whether a media presenter, exploiting the audience that role has bequeathed him (or her) with, should be bound by any restraints which the media channel seeks to impose on public expression of his personal opinions, or not.

The principle in the case of Gary Lineker is whether he should be allowed to express controversial personal opinions via social media, when (a) he is seen as being associated with the BBC and (b) it is his BBC contract which has arguably gained him a significant proportion of his followers on said media.

Labour seems to have taken the view that this is an unwarranted restriction on the freedom of someone who is in fact a free agent and not employed by the BBC; Keir Starmer said he defended Lineker’s “right” to opine as he did.

[The latter point is demonstrably spurious; many BBC presenters were employed by personal service companies and not the BBC, although the viewing public were not able to discern whether they were employees or not; and yet there is a wide spread opinion that, for example, a news reader should not express personal controversial opinions publicly.]

Following the logic of the ‘free’ agent argument, would those defending any opinion as being entirely a matter for the presenter, regardless of any association with the BBC, accept his opining that he is against the Monarchy and that King Charles should be beheaded?

In this case, would Labour drop the right of expression stance, and argue that the principle is not absolute but subject to some bounds of decency and good taste, and that Lineker should be sacked should he suggest that Charles should be subject to the blade? This is wholly contradictory, because it is at odds with their expressed view that the BBC (having given the presenter a pulpit) should have no say in what sermon is then preached. Starmer’s likely hypocrisy is that he would not extend Labour’s support to a crassly right wing statement.

Sadly, British politics is evolving on the lines of that in the USA, by the politicisation of matters which should surely, in this case, be matters for the BBC. It would astounding if the BBC did not have a termination clause in Lineker’s contract which allowed the agreement to be terminated if in their sole judgement, any public utterances had brought the corporation into disrepute by association. Why should the BBC be allowed to do this ? There are 1.35m reasons, paid by the taxpayer to Lineker, all with the Kings head still firmly in place. They provided the platform Lineker exploits.

Any decision of this type has to have a sanity check by asking “what precedence does this decision create?” . The old saying that “hard cases make bad laws” applies with a vengeance here, and they may rue the day they capitulated in letting economics rule principle.