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The billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who moved to tax-free Monaco in 2020, has claimed that the UK is being “colonised” by immigrants.
Speaking in an interview with Sky News, Britain’s seventh-richest man and the part-owner of Manchester United FC 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 that this 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.
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 Keir 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.”
Ratcliffe compared the changes he had made at Manchester United, including mass lay-offs and the appointment and subsequent sacking of Ruben Amorim, to running the country.
He told Sky News that 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”.
