BBC left bruised by handling of British soccer legend's tweets on migrant policy

With just 32 words posted on Twitter, one of the U.K.'s most beloved sports personalities found himself at the centre of a national controversy, the likes of which had not been seen since Partygate.

Gary Lineker's face was splashed across the front page of more than three dozen newspapers in less than two weeks in a squabble that has called into question the impartiality of the country's public broadcaster, the BBC. 

Lineker, 62, is a former professional soccer player who spun his career as an athlete into a role as a commentator on the BBC's popular soccer program Match of the Day. 

But on March 7, Lineker swapped sports commentary for political commentary on social media, taking aim at the government's proposed legislation effectively attempting to ban asylum seekers from the U.K.. 

The policy would see individuals who tried to cross the English Channel detained and returned either to their home country or to a third country, such as Rwanda, whether that was near their country of origin or not. 

The proposed policy has attracted international condemnation from human rights organizations. They allege the Illegal Migration Bill, which passed second reading this week, would contravene international humanitarian law.

Following the reveal of this proposed legislation, Lineker retweeted a video of Home Secretary Suella Braverman explaining it with the comment, "Good heavens, this is beyond awful."

When pressed on why he thought it awful, Lineker wrote: "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, and I'm out of order?"

That could