Keir Starmer has said Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe should apologise for his comments that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants.
In an interview with Sky News on Wednesday, Britain’s seventh-richest man, who moved to tax-free Monaco in 2020, took aim at people receiving state support and immigrants.
“You can’t afford … you can’t have an economy with 9 million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he said. “The UK is being colonised by immigrants, really, isn’t it?
“I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.”
Figures from the Office for National Statistics indicate Ratcliffe’s claim is incorrect. The ONS estimated that the population of the UK was 67 million in 2020 and was last anywhere close to 58 million in 2000.
Responding to the claims, the prime minister posted on X on Wednesday evening: “Offensive and wrong. Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country. Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.”
A Downing Street spokesperson added that Ratcliffe’s remarks “play into the hands of those who want to divide our country” and called on him to “immediately” apologise.
The response was in contrast to the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, who told Sky News that Ratcliffe was “right to say that there are too many people who have been written off, not allowed to make the contribution that they could make to this country”.
She said that people deserved an immigration system “they can trust”, claiming that both illegal and legal migration were too high while the Conservatives were in government.
Ratcliffe’s criticism of the number of people on benefits comes shortly after the government awarded a £120m grant to Ineos, the chemicals company upon which his £17bn fortune largely rests, to protect 500 jobs.
The billionaire, who shifted his tax residency to Monaco in 2020, is no stranger to wading into politics, having vocally backed Brexit and lobbied against green taxes and in favour of fracking.
In the interview, at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp, he compared the performance of Starmer with the Reform leader Nigel Farage, whom he said he had met recently and described as an “intelligent man”.
Ratcliffe said he knew Starmer, and added: “I don’t know whether it’s just the apparatus that hasn’t allowed Keir to do it or, or he’s maybe too nice – I mean, Keir is a nice man. I like him, but it’s a tough job and I think 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 Farage was “an intelligent man, and I think he’s got good intentions”. “But in a way, you could say exactly the same about Keir, when Keir came in. I think it needs somebody who’s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out.”
Responding to the billionaire’s claims about the UK being “colonised by immigrants”, Farage told Sky News: “The country has undergone unprecedented mass immigration that has changed the character of many areas in the country. Labour may try and ignore that but Reform won’t.”
Ratcliffe compared the changes he had made at Manchester United, including mass layoffs and the appointment and subsequent sacking of Ruben Amorim, to running the country. He told Sky News he had been “unpopular” but that the changes were starting to pay off.
“But you’ve got all the same issues with the country. If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration, with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living,” he said, the government was “going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage”.
