”Richard Ayre, former controller of editorial policy at the BBC, who also served as a member of the regulator Ofcom's content board, said the corporation had "no choice" but to take action against Lineker after his tweets criticising the government's asylum policy.”

Lineker didn’t ‘criticise the government’s asylum policy’, he criticised some of the language being used by the proponents of that policy. Not the same thing, not the same thing at all.

And his tweet was made on his personal Twitter account, not his BBC one. He spoke as a private individual, not in the BBC’s name. Nit-picking defenders of the indefensible please take careful note.