BBC treated Michael Vaughan like a guilty man – yet spared Gary Lineker in the spirit of woke

In the increasingly insane world of identity politics, in which an accusation of racism has become akin to a sentence of social and career death, perhaps the worst feature of all is that an accused person is guilty until proved innocent. That was certainly how the BBC interpreted the allegation by Azeem Rafiq that Michael Vaughan had used racist language towards him, an accusation of which Vaughan was cleared on Friday – though on what the Cricket Discipline Commission’s panel called ‘the balance of probabilities’.

The fact of the matter is that there was no proof Vaughan had behaved in this way: so how regrettable that the CDC, a creature of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has to use weasel words to describe its failure to prove anything against him, presumably so as not to upset the anti-racism lobby. It might as well have said that "on the balance of probabilities" he wasn’t involved in the Great Train Robbery.

The BBC, where Vaughan was an expert summariser on Test Match Special before being abruptly kicked off when the allegations were made against him, made no immediate announcement about how it would react now he is no longer stained with the taint of racism.

His treatment contrasts starkly with that of the overpaid and overrated Gary Lineker, who because of the Godlike regard in which he is held would presumably by now have been our president had Britain been a republic. The minute outrage was expressed on Lineker’s behalf that for breaching his undertaking not to get political he was being dropped from Match of the Day, the BBC’s climbdown began. And of course, in the spirit of woke (Lineker was protesting about the treatment of illegal immigrants) and mateship the rest of the BBC’s football staff walked out, making the climbdown even more certain. None of the BBC’s cricket staff could do this, because to sympathise with him would have made any such colleague an accessory to racism in the eyes of the political fanatics who now dictate our ethics.

No such problem arose with supporting Lineker, who had spoken up highly improperly on the side of the allegedly oppressed. Indeed in kicking him off his perch for an evening the BBC, which vies with the New York Times in being the most rabidly woke media organisation on the planet, found itself temporarily on the wrong side of its self-imposed orthodoxy. That too helped secure the rapid climbdown, with so many people who wished to virtue-signal in the most shocking way, and/or suck up to Lineker, walking out in sympathy, an act for which there appears to have been no unhappy consequences for them.

On Friday, the BBC was quick to say that Vaughan was not under contract to it, but the Corporation had "remained in touch" with him and "at this stage we will not be commenting further". Far be it from me to give the BBC advice, but there would seem to be a three-part process for it now to go through, if fair play all round is to be seen to be done.

First, it jolly well should put Vaughan, who is a superb analyst of the game as one would expect of an Ashes-winning captain and great batsman, under contract as swiftly as possible. Second, it should issue an unreserved apology to him for the effect on his otherwise unblemished reputation as a sportsman and as a man for it having treated him in a fashion that appeared to have judged him to be guilty before his hearing. And third, given the way the Corporation splash the cash around on people such as Lineker, it should rapidly ensure he is compensated adequately for that damage. I hope Vaughan is talking to his lawyers both about that and about the mealy-mouthed finding of the disciplinary board, which seems to confirm the long-held view that many of those in positions of authority in cricket are not people of the highest intelligence.

On that subject, the ECB is ripe for serious investigation into its own conduct, both for its initial hysterical reaction to the allegations and its subsequent treatment of Yorkshire and of individual personnel; it and the BBC are two peas out of the same pod, or at least both similarly obsessed with identity politics and toadying to the minority who agitate for that ideology.

And it isn’t good enough for Rafiq to protest, after Vaughan’s exoneration, that this was never about him. As Vaughan, I am sure, would tell him, that is not how it seemed either to the accused or to the general public. This has been an inadequate and invidious process, with little pretence of fairness from the word go, and it cannot be allowed to be repeated. A number of people have behaved either stupidly, improperly or ruthlessly, and Vaughan is not one of them.