Gary Lineker has been slammed by former editor of The Sun Kelvin MacKenzie, following the sport star’s latest outburst on X.
Taking to the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, Lineker hit out at Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s comments on plans for pro-Palestine marches on Remembrance Sunday.
Braverman said to her 146,000 followers that the planned demonstrations on Armistice weekend were “unacceptable” and were an attempt to “desecrate” the Remembrance events.
Braverman has also previously branded the demonstrations as “hate marches”.
Gary Lineker hit out at Home Secretary Suella Braverman over pro-Palestinian protests in London
PA
Lineker reposted the comments onto his feed, responding with “marching and calling for a ceasefire and peace so that more innocent children don’t get killed is not really the definition of a hate march.”
Speaking to Mark Dolan on GB News Tonight, MacKenzie reacted to the football pundit’s attack on the Home Secretary.
When asked by Mark if MacKenzie would “put up” with Gary Lineker’s behaviour, MacKenzie revealed: “If he works for talkSPORT, he goes and works for ITV, or he goes and works for TNT, he can work for whoever he likes, as long as I don’t have to pay for his views.
“I object to the fact that part of my license fee goes to his… look, he’s entitled to earn what he wants to earn. He makes £1.2million a year and he could earn a lot more, I suspect.”
MacKenzie fumed at Lineker: “I don’t want him to talk about things like Palestine. I don’t want him to talk about Israel. I don’t want him to talk about poverty. I want him to talk about the fact that Tottenham got beaten tonight 4-1.
“I’m not saying he’s a fool or anything like that. What I can’t understand is why there is a director General, a CEO of a company who can’t say to him, look mate, it’s been great. Here we are, we’ll pay your contract up, just bugger off. And if you’ve got any views, please give them to somewhere else.
“He knows that they, in his entire political standing, and the fact that his tweets mean anything are connected to the fact that he works for the BBC. He knows that if he works for talkSPORT and he suddenly says he’s running the breakfast show on talkSPORT, then nobody gives a damn about it. I don’t.
“I object to my money going into his pocket and him giving him views I radically disagree with.”
Kelvin MacKenzie says there’s ‘one rule for Gary Lineker’ at the BBC and not other presenters
GB News
Mark agreed with MacKenzie’s views, saying: “Most definitely, and it tells you that there’s a failure of management at the Beeb, because I don’t think any of the other presenters would get away with it.”
MacKenzie replied: “They all hate it. They absolutely detest it. All that mob on the Today programme, who will probably have the biggest intellects now currently at the BBC, they keep on saying how is it he can talk about Palestine and Israel, and we the minute we step outside the line we’re in trouble.
“So there was one rule for him and what they say about him is that he’s a sport freelance or something like that.
“Now the majority of his money, I’d be very interested whether HMRC agree with that, because it’s normally defined your freelance is how much money that particular role brings in and if it’s a percentage that’s too high against your total earnings, then you are considered an employee.”
Post comments (0)