DARREN LEWIS: ‘Wake as much as vile elite choking our world with hate’
Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United, showed his true colours recently, saying that the UK has been “colonised by immigrants”
Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
In some circles, it’s called showing your backside. In others, it’s described as revealing your true colours. Either way, Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United, capped a week that showed us where complacency and lack of awareness will leave us if we simply shrug our shoulders and move on.
Ratcliffe’s claim that the UK has been “colonised by immigrants” drew widespread condemnation from around the country. He’d been speaking to Sky News and within 24 hours of the appalling claim being broadcast, he apologised for the language but doubled down on the sentiment.
That’s where we are right now. It is brainless, xenophobic billionaires with ruthless business acumen, a right-wing, punch-down mentality and zero emotional intelligence who have both sides of the Atlantic in a chokehold.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour may be in power but the enemies are at the gates and climbing over the walls like mercenaries at the end of 1983 movie Scarface. The money men want another piece of the far-right jigsaw across Europe. They want a Prime Minister who will applaud from this side of the Atlantic when Donald Trump’s social media account reveals a clip of Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes.
Trump denies posting the clip but, again, has refused to apologise for it and few critics believe the claim from the White House that it was posted close to midnight by a staffer whose identity has never been revealed. Nor has there been an answer of any substance from him to the question of whether said staffer has been sacked.
Trump simply carries on regardless. Which is what Ratcliffe will do after dragging the name of United – who were forced to issue a statement distancing the club from his offensive remarks – into disrepute.
And Farage continues to linger like an example of flatulence so pungent, even an open window won’t get rid of it. The multi-platform desperation to indulge him, his repugnant, extreme politics of division and the digital numbers that come with it, is part of the problem.
You should not defend hate. Would you book someone on a show to offer the counter-argument to domestic violence? Farage agreeing with Ratcliffe last week was the last thing a country turning into a tinderbox needed. The Reform corporate lobby group leader started the current UK fire with his Brexit lies 10 years ago. Why are we giving yet more credence to the man with the matches?
We have to look at ourselves too. We also carry on regardless. Yes, we have jobs to go to, kids to bring up, bills to pay, lives to lead. But we have to wake up to the clear and very present danger. We have to see these guys for who they are.
The likes of Trump, Ratcliffe, Farage and the extreme fringe groups now springing up (I refuse to give them the oxygen of publicity in this column, it is what they want) see fertile minds to exploit. And they are going for it.
Not forgetting the likes of former government minister Nadhim Zahawi, either. People willing to throw themselves – presidential bodyguard-style – into the path of the bullets aimed at Ratcliffe.
Yet Ratcliffe was talking about him too. Zahawi was born in Iraq. When he was a Tory MP for Stratford on Avon in 2013 – before his defection to Reform – he was forced to admit that taxpayers paid the power bill for his stables.
Last week he went on to the radio to claim he didn’t “feel safe in London” and he was once forced to cross the street from a man who looked tired. That man was probably exhausted from working hard to keep your horses warm, Nadim.
The reality is, we shouldn’t be feeling safe when these people fire off their twisted brand of hate and division. Their true colours are screaming at us – and we ignore them at our peril.
