Political football: how the UK’s culture wars engulfed the national game

Political and cultural warfare in the United Kingdom has now breached the sanctum of its favourite game, one of the last few havens of national unity.

The shattered haven in question is Match of the Day, a Saturday night programme on BBC that shows and dissects highlights of the day’s Premier League football (soccer) action.

It is the longest-running football show in the world, having begun in 1964. It has had the same theme tune since 1970, and, with an average audience of two million plus (far more for cup finals), a substantial share of the population can hum it in their sleep.

Despite the advent of streaming and commercial competition, Match of the Day remains a widely shared national experience of sport and jokey banter.

After 59 years, however, the banter will be silenced and this Saturday’s edition will be broadcast without hosts or pundits after the BBC suspended its regular host, former Leicester, Barcelona, Tottenham and England striker Gary Lineker, and his co-hosts, fellow legends Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, announced that they would stay away in solidarity.

Lineker is in hot water for tweeting criticisms of the government’s newly unveiled immigration policy, and in particular a video message by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, focused on stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats.

He pointed out that the suggestion Britain was being swamped was absurd as the country takes in far fewer refugees than most other major European states. It was, he said, “an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

The comments led to complaints from the government and the rightwing press, and ultimately a decision to