Gary Lineker reinstated as presenter as BBC apologises

Gary Lineker was wrong to compare the Government’s rhetoric over small boats to that of 1930s Germany, David Baddiel has suggested. The comedian warned the overuse of Nazi references could amount to “soft-core Holocaust denial”.

Mr Lineker last month sparked a BBC impartiality row over tweets slamming the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill and comparing language used to that of 1930s Germany.

The football pundit has since insisted the remark “was never meant as any kind of comparison with the Holocaust”.

Speaking on The Rest is Politics podcast, which is produced by Mr Lineker’s production company, Mr Baddiel said the Nazis pursued their policies against their citizens rather than migrants.

The comedian claimed a more accurate comparison would be the rhetoric used by Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts as they were “using the language of invasion”.

Mr Baddiel said: “That is, I’m afraid, different from the language of the actual Nazis, and this is a key point, towards their own citizens.

“I’ve seen some people say ‘well what difference does it make, they’re all human beings?’. There is a difference.

“The Nazis turned their hate, extreme hate… on their own citizens.

“My grandfather had roots in Germany going back to the 19th century. They were Germans. They were not immigrants.

“So what would be equivalent is Suella Braverman saying to me, or any other minority group, living in Britain, ‘you are vermin, you need to go, you can’t marry a British citizen, you can’t work’. She didn’t do that.”

Mr Baddiel added: “There’s a sort of what Deborah Lipstadt calls ‘soft-core Holocaust denial’, and part of that is a tendency to use the Holocaust as an analogy for all sorts of things that are not really comparable to the Holocaust.

“The key element of that is, when Jews, which they often do, say that it is not really comparable, it gets a huge blowback from the Left.”

In early March, Mr Lineker retweeted about a Home Office video – in which Home Secretary Suella Braverman unveiled the Government’s plans to stop migrants crossing the Channel on rubber dinghies – saying: “Good heavens, this is beyond awful”.

In a response to a social media user, the former England footballer then 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.”

He was taken off air by the BBC after an impartiality row erupted, but returned to Match of the Day following a boycott by fellow pundits and presenters in solidarity with him.

Following the fallout, BBC director-general Tim Davie announced a review into the corporation’s social media guidelines and acknowledged “the potential confusion caused by the grey areas”.

Speaking on The Rest is Politics last month, Mr Lineker said he is still “bewildered” by the “disproportionate” response to his tweet.

He also said the comment “was never meant as any kind of comparison with the Holocaust”.

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