Britain has been “colonised” by immigrants who are “costing too much money”, billionaire Ineos owner and Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said. The Telegraph has more.
The billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, who also owns chemicals empire Ineos, called on the country’s politicians to “show some courage” by tackling immigration, welfare dependence and the weak economy.
“You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he told Sky News.
“If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration, with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living… then you’re going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage.”
Sir Jim wrongly claimed that the population of Britain had swelled by 12 million people in the past five years to reach 70 million, blaming the increase on migration.
He said: “The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?”
Sir Keir Starmer wrote in a post on X that the comments were “offensive and wrong”.
“Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country,” the Prime Minister said. “Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.”
Sir Jim, whose personal fortune of more than £17 billion makes him one of Britain’s richest men, said Sir Keir had to grip the challenges facing the economy.
“You have to do some difficult things with the UK to get it back on track, because at the moment I don’t think the economy is in a good state,” he said.
He said he was unsure whether the Prime Minister was being prevented by “the apparatus” from tackling the problems, or whether he was “maybe too nice”.
Sir Jim claimed that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, was, like Sir Keir, “an intelligent man” with “good intentions”.
The UK needed “somebody who’s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out”, Sir Jim said.
His comments sparked an immediate backlash. Alex Sobel, the Labour MP for Leeds Central, said: “To seek to stigmatise immigrants and welfare claimants in this way is shameful.”
Sobel added: “These are outrageous and inflammatory remarks from an out-of-touch multimillionaire businessman who clearly has no empathy with hard-pressed families.”
A spokesman for charity Show Racism The Red Card added: “Language of this kind echoes narratives that have historically been used to stigmatise migrant communities, fuel division, and legitimise hostility toward minority groups.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Ratcliffe has apologised for offending “some people” following a backlash. He said:
I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe. It is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth. My comments were made while answering questions about UK policy at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp, where I was discussing the importance of economic growth, jobs, skills and manufacturing in the UK. My intention was to stress that governments must manage migration alongside investment in skills, industry and jobs so that long-term prosperity is shared by everyone. It is critical that we maintain an open debate on the challenges facing the UK.
Meanwhile, the Football Association has said it is reviewing whether he has brought the game into disrepute.
See Related Article Below
Why was Jim Ratcliffe punished for speaking the truth?
BRENDAN O’NEILL
Imagine getting angrier over a word than a rape. This will go down in history as the week when there was more digital fury over one man’s criticism of mass immigration than there was over the dire impact those untrammelled flows of people are having on Britain’s women and girls.
Millions of decent Brits are worried about our broken borders. And some might express themselves in an un-PC way
The conviction of an Afghan illegal migrant for the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton barely seemed to trouble the conscience of the virtuous of our chattering classes. But Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s lamenting of our broken borders? Worse, his use of the word ‘colonisation’ in relation to migrants? That pricked their hollow souls. That got them tweeting. From Whitehall to White City, the wail went up: ‘Something must be done about this awful man.’
The horror in Nuneaton involved 23-year-old small-boat criminal Ahmad Mulakhil taking a girl into a cul-de-sac last July and carrying out ‘extremely horrific sexual offences’. His conviction this week confirmed what working-class women up and down the country have been saying for more than a year now: that Britain’s porous borders pose a grave threat to women and girls, especially in the poorer parts of the UK where these men from afar tend to be placed, at taxpayers’ expense.
Yet within a poxy 48 hours the debate had shifted from dangerous men to supposedly dangerous words. From the real-world atrocities that spring from government ineptitude to the outrage of a rich bloke criticising that government ineptitude. The opinion-forming set was back in its comfort zone: ignoring the plight of working-class women and instead wagging a collective finger at a blunt billionaire.
Sir Jim’s offence was to say the word ‘colonised’. Britain has been ‘colonised by immigrants, said the petrochemicals boss and Man Utd co-owner in an interview with Sky News. Cue much clutching of pearls. From Keir Starmer down, they raged against his speechcrime. They charged him with using language that echoes the far right.
BBC News started a rolling live news feed, as if Sir Jim’s remarks were akin to a natural disaster or a war. Rachel Reeves said his comments were ‘disgusting’ and ‘unacceptable’. Sir Keir even demanded that Sir Jim recant and apologise for his sinful utterance. I’m sorry, what century is this? In what more moral universe is it acceptable for a PM to so publicly rebuke a British citizen simply for saying something he disapproves of?
Sir Jim eventually bowed to the bourgeois mob. He says he is ‘sorry my choice of language has offended some people’. No. 10 is gloating. ‘The Prime Minister asked for an apology, and one’s been issued’, said a spokesman with spectacular haughtiness.
Am I going mad or is No. 10’s brutish extraction of an apology from a supposedly misspeaking Briton by far the most shocking part of this story? Would I use the word ‘colonisation’ about immigration? No. But so what? Britons are either free to express themselves as they see fit or they are not. And the Starmer-led shaming of Sir Jim, the government’s heavy-handed demand that a man publicly retract his deeply-held beliefs, suggests we are not.
The taming of Sir Jim is as pure an act of cancel culture as we have seen in some time. Only in this instance it wasn’t wild-eyed, blue-haired students hollering for a public figure to withdraw his words that so wounded their brittle self-esteem. It was the government, aided and abetted by the public broadcaster, and of course by every tweeting tosspot who loves nothing more than the cheap thrill of being part of a dissident-gagging mob..
The Spectator: continue reading
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