Gary Lineker’s decision to live with a migrant is just another virtue-signalling ploy to allow him to lecture everyone else

Football icon Gary Lineker has become an insufferable lefty intent on telling people what to do and think. How did someone we once looked up to become an elitist who happily looks down on the rest of us?

I once admired Gary Lineker. Back in 1990, when I was just 10 years old, his contribution to the Italia 90 World Cup made him an English national treasure and, for boys like me, a role model.

Sure, he was a bit boring, but he was also an everyman figure and a truly talented footballer. During his time with England, he scored 48 goals over an eight-year international career, which still holds up. In fact, to this day he remains England’s third highest scorer, behind legend Bobby Charlton and Wayne Rooney. 

As if that wasn’t enough, he was also a working-class hero. Born in 1960 to fruit-seller parents in a modest part of Leicester, he defied the odds to become a sporting superstar.

And, for a while, it seemed that he could do no wrong. This was proven (rather gratuitously) when he soiled himself during a crucial match with Ireland during the 1990 World Cup, and survived the PR aftermath with ease. 

Yep, only Lineker could sh*t himself while representing the country and STILL be revered. Such was the love for good ol’ ‘jug ears’...  

In short, he was football’s golden boy long before Golden Balls himself, David Beckham. Then, much to the nation’s dismay, it all went a bit pear-shaped.It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when he went from hero to zero, but it was somewhere between signing a multi-million-pound contract with the left-wing BBC (despite already getting a fat salary from promoting Walkers crisps) and lecturing ordinary folk – many of them working-class football fans – about politics. 

First, he started virtue-signalling about Brexit, implying that Leave voters were racist and insular. In one post-referendum tweet he wrote: “Feel ashamed of my generation. We’ve let down our children and their children.”

Then, in a bid to prove how non-toxic his masculinity is, he sold out to feminists by telling the Times magazine: "I’m not massively into sex,” and that he preferred “flirting” or a “nice dinner.” [INSERT VOMITING SOUND]

As if that wasn’t enough, he then began wading into the migrant crisis, which has seen thousands of people enter Britain illegally, piling increased pressure on everything from the NHS to schools and emergency services. Even during Covid-19.

Not a huge problem for him and his private healthcare/security etc, of course, but less great for the rest of us – the same people he once called “hideously racist and utterly heartless.” 

Now, after much pressure from the right, including several Conservative politicians, Lineker has agreed to house a migrant in his £4 million Surrey property. But, in true left-wing style, this gesture seems more self-aggrandising than philanthropic. 

See, unlike the countless illegal immigrants arriving in the UK by boat from Calais, his lodger will probably be thoroughly vetted for security purposes.I don’t blame him for this – it’s sensible, but it’s at odds with the experience of the general public, who are increasingly forced to live cheek-by-jowl to those who could easily be violent criminals. Perhaps even terrorists.

See the hypocrisy in his behaviour? He does, after I kindly pointed it out on Twitter, which got me blocked from his echo chamber. Further proof that Lineker –once a man of the people – doesn’t just reside in a gated mansion of bricks and mortar, but also an elitist bubble. One financed by the licence-fee payers he thinks are xenophobic and callous. 

And this is precisely why people now find Lineker’s behaviour so offside. He once represented the country, but now seems to loathe it with a sneering contempt – while getting fat from its excesses. A hallmark of many modern liberals.

The man I looked up to now looks down at the rest of us. That’s an own goal by anyone’s standards. 

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