Under heavy questioning by angry Tory MPs at the DCMS Select Committee this morning, BBC Director General Tim Davie claimed he’d spoken to Gary Lineker over his government-hating tweets, which he claims has improved over his tenure, and “I think he understands the guidelines.” Guido has a bridge to sell Tim…

The questioning came after Lineker had a dust-up with fellow BBC employee Neil Henderson who slammed Lineker’s Twitter bias and correctly proclaimed the BBC “lives or dies by its impartiality”. 

Davie received a barrage of probing tweets from all parties’ MPs this morning, not least around Emily Maitlis’s recent speech that claimed there’s an “active Tory agent” at the heart of the broadcaster in the form of Sir Robbie Gibb. Davie defended Gibb as well as Jess Brammar. Tory MP Steve Brine put to the BBC executives examples of bias in the broadcaster’s news output, simultaneously proving himself a keen co-conspirator by raising plenty of Guido’s expert activist interviewees featured on BBC News without any contextualization of partisan bias. Damian Green came out with the best zinger, pointing out many of his Tory colleagues would accuse Emily Maitlis of being an “active Labour agent” inside the BBC…