Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s claim that the United Kingdom has been “colonised by immigrants” who are “costing too much money” has drawn widespread condemnation.
The backlash has been led by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said that the Manchester United co-owner’s comments were “offensive and wrong”, with Starmer describing Britain as a “proud, tolerant and diverse country” and calling on Ratcliffe to apologise.
Starmer has been joined in his condemnation by the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, and United fan groups including the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust and the Manchester United Muslim Supporters Club.
Many were quick to point out Ratcliffe’s erroneous claims about the effect of immigration on the size of the UK’s population, and that since 2020, he has been a resident of Monaco, a tax haven.
Ratcliffe’s comments found support elsewhere, however, on the other side of the political spectrum.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing party Reform UK, whose policy is net zero immigration, responded to Starmer’s criticism of Ratcliffe by arguing that “Britain has undergone unprecedented mass immigration that has changed the character of many areas in our country,” adding: “Labour may try to ignore that, but Reform won’t.”
Ratcliffe’s comments were also shared on X by Tommy Robinson, widely regarded as a far-right agitator in the UK.
Ratcliffe’s venture into the political arena has been explosive, igniting an issue that is defining the contours of British political debate and is set to be key and perhaps decisive at the next general election. Closer to home, it threatens to unravel some of the public support and funding that may be required to enable Ratcliffe’s vision of a new Old Trafford stadium to take shape.
At midday on Thursday, Ratcliffe responded to the backlash by saying that he was “sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern”, but insisted that “it is important to raise the issue of control and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth”.
Ratcliffe has been outspoken about his political views (Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)
On Thursday afternoon, United then released a statement of their own, in which they did not mention Ratcliffe by name, but said that “Manchester United prides itself on being an inclusive and welcoming club… Our diverse group of players, staff and global community of supporters reflect the history and heritage of Manchester, a city that anyone can call home.”
Ratcliffe’s outburst caused its own crisis within Old Trafford. The Athletic has been told that members of club staff raised concerns internally on Thursday, before the club decided to publish a statement. This is denied by United. Ratcliffe’s remarks are also unlikely to assist United’s already uphill task to maintain and expand their partnership portfolio, with a training kit and playing kit sleeve sponsorship uncertain ahead of next season.
The club received an email from the club’s fans forum group, while individual fans delivered their complaints too.
One supporter, named Chris, shared their email with The Athletic. It read: “As a Manchester United fan of over 40 years, a Mancunian, a season ticket holder, a MUST member… I am deeply appalled and offended by the minority co-owner’s comments, unbecoming of anyone associated with Manchester United. It is shameful, offensive and unpalatable.”
It continued: “Yesterday was a significant moment in the history of the club — great damage was done to the reputation of the institution.
“You are custodians of a worldwide global institution built by the people and values of Manchester. We will still be here for a long time, keeping the red flag flying high, in the right direction for whoever you are and wherever you come from.
“Manchester and Manchester United is for everyone. Sir Jim Ratcliffe is not.”
Once considered to be a relatively low-profile figure given his status as one of Britain’s richest and most successful businessmen, Ratcliffe is now often vocal and opinionated on matters of the day.
The petrochemicals magnate first came to prominence during one of the largest industrial disputes of recent British history, at INEOS’s oil refinery at Grangemouth, which came to a head in 2013 when Ratcliffe threatened to close the plant and wipe out up to 800 jobs.
Ratcliffe was also an ardent supporter of the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, which was in part driven by anti-immigration sentiments. In 2015, he told The Sunday Times: “The Brits are perfectly capable of managing the Brits and don’t need Brussels telling them how to manage things.”
In 2024, presaging Wednesday’s comments, the petrochemicals billionaire told Sky News that concerns regarding immigration were “the biggest component” of the pro-Brexit vote.
“A small island like the UK can’t cope with vast numbers of people coming in. It just overburdens the National Health Service, the traffic service, the police, everybody,” he added.
“The country was designed for 55 or 60 million people, and we’ve got 70 million people and all the services break down as a consequence.”
In the same interview, conducted in the weeks leading up to that summer’s general election, Ratcliffe backed Starmer and said he believed the Labour leader would “do a very good job at running the country”.
Ratcliffe at Grangemouth in 2016 (Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)
While claiming that INEOS is “apolitical”, Ratcliffe said the Conservatives “have had a good run over the last 15 or 20 years. Most of the country feels like it’s time for a change, and I sort of get that”.
According to publicly available data provided by the Electoral Commission, neither Ratcliffe individually nor INEOS as a group has ever provided political donations to candidates or parties. He was knighted in 2018 for his services to business and investment.
Labour won a landslide victory at the 2024 election, winning 411 of 650 parliamentary seats in total, yet received a lower share of the popular vote than any party forming a majority government since the Second World War.
Ratcliffe has also benefited from the support of the current government. Hundreds of jobs were saved at Grangemouth, which is still owned by INEOS, in December 2025 when the UK government provided a £120million package to maintain Britain’s only ethylene plant. INEOS put in an additional £30m.
Ratcliffe’s eye, however, has been wandering. This appears partly to be shaped by his business interests and partly by personal politics. In October, Andrew Gardner, the chair of INEOS at Grangemouth, claimed that the government’s energy policy may “damage an important UK asset”, while Brian Gilvary, chairman of INEOS Energy, told The Times in December that the UK government’s tax policy on North Sea oil and gas producers was an example of a government “leading by ideology without debate or logic”.
In September, Gilvary told The Daily Telegraph that INEOS Energy would no longer invest in the UK, instead focusing on the U.S. market due to kinder tax policies.
Reform only won five seats under the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, yet took 14.2 per cent of the popular vote, and Farage’s party has consistently led opinion polls related to the UK’s next general election since April last year. Four sitting Conservative MPs have defected to Reform since the 2024 election, with the party’s number of MPs currently standing at eight.
Ratcliffe has met Farage, the Reform UK leader (Jacob King/PA Images via Getty Images)
Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that he had recently met Farage, describing him as “an intelligent man” with “good intentions”, adding that he could say the same for Starmer.
Ratcliffe’s decision to meet Farage yielded headlines in British newspapers in October, largely as it is not common for leading business figures to meet with a political group that has such small representation in Parliament. Yet it also indicated the shifting sands of public opinion, underlined by Reform’s success in June’s local election and polls that have indicated growing public support for Farage’s party.
In the interview, he described the UK as “high tax, high immigration, high crime”, arguing that Donald Trump won the presidency in the United States by campaigning on those issues.
He has previously tapped into views often shared by those on the right of British politics, most notably when discussing public safety in England. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he claimed that he “can’t wear a watch in London” when he visits his INEOS headquarters in Knightsbridge. He claimed there had been a murder outside his offices, where a person “died in a pool of blood because somebody tried to take his Rolex and he resisted”.
He is aligned with Farage on other matters that find themselves at the center of modern-day culture wars. This week, Farage called for an “attitudinal change to hard work” in Britain, claiming that it is a “load of nonsense” to say people are more productive when working from home. Ratcliffe has described working from home as an “oxymoron”, claiming that he measured email productivity in a Swedish company, which showed people working half as hard when at home. One of Ratcliffe’s earliest acts at United was to mandate a return to the office for workers.
Ratcliffe’s intervention this week came at a particularly fraught moment in UK politics. Later this month, a parliamentary by-election will be held in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, an area in south-east Manchester.
The by-election was triggered following the resignation of Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, who won the constituency by a majority of 13,413 votes at the 2024 general election. But Labour now face a challenge to hold Gorton and Denton, with a two-pronged assault from Reform to their right and the Green Party to their left.
A by-election defeat would represent a significant blow to Starmer’s beleaguered government, which is still reeling from the controversy surrounding Peter Mandelson’s association with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States.
Starmer faced calls to resign earlier this week from Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, over the Mandelson affair, but that was followed by a unanimous show of public support from his cabinet.
Starmer’s rebuke of Ratcliffe, therefore, may have served a dual purpose. He may have been sincerely offended by Ratcliffe’s language, but it also offered an opportunity to rally his party with a popular line of attack against a billionaire, with dozens of MPs lining up to echo criticism of Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe’s attempts to wrap himself in the British flag have long attracted suspicion from the centre and left of British politics, stemming back to his decision to move INEOS’s domicile from the UK to lower-tax Switzerland in 2008, which Ratcliffe said was because he was denied a one-year deferral on VAT payments worth £350m. INEOS eventually moved back to the UK in 2016, but Ratcliffe shifted his own tax domicile to Monaco in 2018.
Ratcliffe’s comments have also drawn criticism at a local government level from Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester.
In a statement released on Thursday morning, Burnham said Ratcliffe’s remarks “go against everything for which Manchester has traditionally stood”.
Burnham, who served as a cabinet member under former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, described Manchester as “a place where people of all races, faiths and none have pulled together over centuries to build our city and our institutions, including Manchester United FC.
“Calling for curbs on immigration is one thing; portraying those who come here as a hostile invading force is quite another. It is inaccurate, insulting, inflammatory and should be withdrawn.”
Burnham’s statement also called for criticism to be directed towards “those who have offered little contribution to our life here and have instead spent years siphoning wealth out of one of our proudest institutions”.
Burnham was seen as a threat to Starmer’s leadership (Ian Vogler – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
This was an apparent reference to the Glazer family, United’s majority owners, who have faced hostile opposition from supporters ever since their controversial £790m leveraged buy-out in 2005 placed the club into debt.
Burnham stepped down as an MP to run in Greater Manchester’s inaugural mayoral election in 2017 and has served in the role ever since winning election. Nine years later, he remains a popular figure locally and has been re-elected twice, winning all but one of the region’s 215 wards in 2024.
Last month, Burnham announced his intention to run as Labour’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, which was widely viewed as a challenge to Starmer’s leadership.
Had he stood and won, Burnham would have returned to Westminster as an MP and been able to face Starmer in a leadership contest, potentially succeeding him as prime minister. Burnham’s candidacy was blocked by Labour’s national executive committee, however, by a majority of 8-1. Starmer was one of the eight NEC members to vote against Burnham.
Burnham’s criticism of Ratcliffe is particularly significant given his influential role in the proposed plans for a new 100,000-capacity stadium to replace Old Trafford.
Burnham was a member of the specialist task force that was formed to explore options for a wider regeneration of the area surrounding Old Trafford, including whether United should build a new stadium at its centre or redevelop the existing structure.
The task force ultimately recommended building a new stadium, with United unveiling plans last March.
Ratcliffe has previously suggested that government funding could be used to help finance the project, albeit United insist that public money would only be used on the wider regeneration of the surrounding area rather than the stadium itself. It remains to be seen how Ratcliffe’s rebuke of Starmer’s government may impact this mission, with chancellor Rachel Reeves describing his comments as “disgusting”. It represents a low in the relationship between the Labour leadership and Ratcliffe, with Starmer and Burnham previously joining the United co-owner for Arsenal’s match at Old Trafford in May 2024 to discuss his ideas for the “Wembley of the North”.
Ratcliffe with Starmer at Arsenal in May 2024 (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
At the unveiling, Ratcliffe made a point of tying United’s ambitions for Old Trafford to the Labour government’s plans for greater infrastructure spending, adding: “We are proud to be supporting that mission with this project of national, as well as local, significance.”
Healthy relations between Ratcliffe, United and both national and local government are essential for the progress of the stadium plans.
In his capacity as mayor, Burnham is also the chair of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), who, alongside Trafford Council, recently launched the Old Trafford Regeneration Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC).
MDCs are statutory bodies set up by regional mayors, such as Burnham, to deliver regeneration projects, and have the authority to force the sale of land through compulsory purchase powers to achieve that goal.
United’s plans for a new stadium adjacent to the existing Old Trafford site require the club to buy land that is currently used as a freight rail terminal. The land is owned by Freightliner Ltd and negotiations between the company and United are yet to reach an agreement.
Burnham confirmed last August that the MDC would be able to use such powers “if needed”, but played down that prospect in the immediate term. “There is plenty that can be done if agreements can’t be reached, but there is a lot to play out here,” he told BBC Radio Manchester in August.