‘If they do, the BBC get rid of Gary Lineker, I’m out. I’m gone, I’m not staying there.’ (Picture: Getty; BBC)
Ian Wright has said he is ‘gone’ if the BBC sack Gary Lineker over his comments about the government’s newly announced migrant policy.
Yesterday the BBC confirmed it asked Gary Lineker to take a step back from presenting Match Of The Day pending a resolution after he compared the language used to introduce the Illegal Migration Bill to the language used in 1930s Germany.
Responding to a video by Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Twitter in which she called to ‘stop the boats’ with the bill, the footballer-turned-pundit called it an ‘immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’.
He later insisted that he stood by his tweet, and said he would be returning to host Match Of The Day on Saturday.
But the BBC’s statement yesterday wrote: ‘Gary Lineker to step back from presenting Match of the Day until agreement reached on social media use’.
A BBC spokesperson said: ‘The BBC has been in extensive discussions with Gary and his team in recent days. We have said that we consider his recent social media activity to be a breach of our guidelines.’
Gary Lineker was pulled out of Match of the Day following the comment (Picture: Getty Images)
Famous faces including Alex Scott have since spoken out in support of the TV personality, the most recent of which is Ian Wright, 59.
A string of pundits, including Wright, have also refused to appear on Match of the Day, with the network now confirming the show would ‘focus on match action without presentation or punditry.’
In the latest episode of podcast Wrighty’s House, Wright said he would be ‘gone’ if Lineker was sacked.
‘If they do, the BBC get rid of Gary Lineker, I’m out. I’m gone, I’m not staying there,’ he said.
‘On his own platform he should be able to say what he wants to say.’
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Ian Wright has said he’s ‘gone’ if Gary Lineker is sacked (Picture: PA)
He also called the whole fiasco a ‘perfect distraction for this government’.
‘They need Gary Lineker to distract everybody because for me it is a human issue, it’s not political,’ he said.
Wright went on to say ‘they didn’t just start throwing people into concentration camps, it starts with words and language’.
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Talking about the government, Wright added: ‘They’ve got no empathy, it’s always the most vulnerable ones that suffer’.
This comes as over 100,000 people signed a petition to reinstate the pundit to Match of The Day in just 12 hours.
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MORE : Alex Scott pulls out of BBC’s Football Focus in support of Gary Lineker
‘I’m not staying there.’