DARREN LEWIS: ‘Ratcliffe rant in elite league of untamed hypocrisy’
Sir Jim Ratcliffe is in danger of turning into a serial targeter of immigrants. Because eight months after his heavily qualified apology for “offending some people” by saying the UK had been “colonised by immigrants”, he’s been at it again.
Speaking to the BBC last week, he said: “Nobody is tough enough to deal with the immigration problem, nobody is tough enough to deal with the benefits problem.”
Manchester United’s minority shareholder also described the UK as being a country “on the slide” from the days when it had “the greatest empire in the world”.
What the BBC should have done in response was place his remarks into context, to avoid them becoming yet another wedge with which to divide our society.
Because Ratcliffe, who founded petrochemicals giant INEOS, has lived in Monaco, which has a relaxed tax regime, since 2020,
When he moans about “the benefits problem”, he omits to count himself among the recipients. He had an education in this country as a youngster, paid for by the state.
He lived in a council house, paid for by the state. He went to university at a time when fees were free. And here’s the kicker: he has already taken hundreds of millions in public state support for his businesses from UK, French and German governments.
The BBC, the UK’s public service broadcaster, could have done the UK a huge public service by pointing all those facts out. Or even by reminding viewers that Ratcliffe’s Manchester United employs a whole host of immigrants at the club’s stadium, Old Trafford.
Ranging from first-team players and coaching staff to stadium operations and administrative personnel. Take a walk through the stadium on any given match day and you’ll see for yourself.
In fact, back in March, after Ratcliffe’s “colonised by immigrants” remarks, United fans displayed a banner in response reading: “MUFC – proudly colonised by immigrants”.
They, like you, probably remember Ratcliffe outing himself as a Brexiteer, and that Brexit has left his country poorer – particularly in the North – and even more divided.
They, like you, can probably see clean through the attempts to frame Ratcliffe’s remarks as the zeitgeist, the prevailing wind, rather than the latest contribution to creating the conditions for the Far Right to whip up support.
But its as easy to Google evidence pushing back on Ratcliffe as it is to find artists and songwriters refusing to steer clear of politics: Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, The Clash, The Specials, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and so on.
And why, if it is OK for a billionaire to take government money, is it not OK for working people on low wages – some of whom work at Ratcliffe’s football club on zero hours contracts – to do likewise?
Why is it not OK for them to take subsidies from the state to heat their homes and feed their kids? Why is it not OK, as our population ages, to pay out more to protect our mothers, fathers and grandparents?
Ratcliffe is in his 70s. You’d have thought he’d be thinking more of future generations and finding ways to support them rather than lashing out at a status quo that he sees as preventing him from making even more money.
This is a man who scrapped free hot meals for staff at Old Trafford and Manchester United’s Carrington training ground in February 2025, as part of a cost-cutting transformation plan. Non-playing staff were offered soup and bread.
When faced with criticism, Ratcliffe hit back: “Nobody ever gave me a free lunch”. Except they did, Sir Jim. They did.
