[Steve in Pudsey]

But he clearly hasn't breached the policy, the example of a sports presenter commenting on politics being low risk to the BBC reputation and impartiality is explicitly given in the Editorial guidelines.

Any controversy should have been met with a statement from the BBC saying “Lineker’s views are his own and not that of the corporation, as a freelancer who presents non-news programming, he’s entitled to publish his own views on other platforms, his views aren’t representative of the BBC which is politically neutral”. It wouldn’t have shut people up, but it would have avoided this much bigger mess.

Which is what they said in 2018 when he was posting about Brexit.