Legacy political parties and media organisations exploded in fits of fury after one of Britain’s wealthiest men called out the country being “colonised” by migrants and the unsustainable cost of welfarism, while Brexit’s Nigel Farage said the analysis was correct.
Chemical engineer, businessman, and Manchester United Football Club co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who would be one of Britain’s richest men were he not a tax exile from the UK’s punitive system of wealth redistribution, has said the UK “has got lots of problems”, including “the economy, crime, education, health. It’s all not in a great place at the moment”. Speaking in interview with UK broadcaster Sky News, Sir Jim explored a long list of serious issues undermining the country, but it was his remarks on mass migration that triggered instant outrage.
He said:
The UK has got lots of problems, we can all see that… you have to do some difficult things with the UK to get it back on track… you can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits.
And huge levels of immigrants coming in, the UK is being colonised. It’s costing too much money… the UK is being colonised by immigrants. The population of the UK was 58 million… now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.
Sir Jim backed the Labour Party before the last general election but seems to have had a change of heart. Remarking the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is a “nice man” and “maybe too nice” to take the difficult decisions to save the country, the INEOS chemicals company owner reflected on his recent meeting with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage:
I think Nigel is an intelligent man and I think he’s got good intentions, but in a way you could say the same about Keir when he came in. I think it needs someone who is prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out.
Asserting that mass migration has negative consequences for the country is obviously very dangerous to the accepted narrative of decades of British governments which have, as led by the treasury, insisted that open borders are a prerequisite for economic growth and required to prevent national stagnation. Leaping to the defence of this long established dogma was the Prime Minister, who replied to the billionaire who had helped put him in office: “Offensive and wrong. Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country. Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.”
Other Labour politicians piled in, adding they thought his reflections on Britain’s surging population of foreigners was “inaccurate, insulting, inflammatory”, and “offensive”. The justice minister suggested “he should perhaps keep some of his views to himself”.
Britain’s legacy media spoke with one voice to condemn Ratcliffe in nakedly partisan reportage that moved fast to mark him out as having spoken unacceptably. Sky News prefaced the remarks with a trigger warning. Those same media outlets hours later crowed when Ratcliffe did issue something of an apology, claiming it as a victory. Yet the words of his follow-up statement make clear he was standing by the substance of his remarks.
Sir Jim said today: “I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe… It is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth… It is critical that we maintain an open debate on the challenges facing the UK”.
Brexit pioneer and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who has promised to radically change Britain’s migration system is elected to government, stood behind Ratcliffe’s remarks, noting that while “Labour may try to ignore that”, his party would not. In a statement on Thursday morning, Mr Farage said:
[Ratcliffe] caused outrage by his comments but what’s he actually said? Well he said our population has gone up from 58 million to 70 million and that with nine million people of working age on benefits we don’t need mass migration. He said much of the country had been ‘colonised’ by immigrants.
Now that word was controversial, and he said ‘OK you don’t like the word? We’ll tone it down’. But just think about this; you ask yourself why public services are diminished, you ask yourself why rents have gone through the roof. The population explosion has done that.
Then you look at parts of London for example where the road names, undergrounds signs aren’t just in English, they’re in a foreign language as well. One million people living in this country don’t speak any English at all. Four million living in this country barely speak passable English, and that was the point he was making.
Big areas of our towns and cities have been changed into something completely different to what they were and it’s all making us poorer. And I don’t care if No.10 is in uproar or if much of the mainstream media find his comments too difficult. I believe firmly that Jim Ratcliffe is right.
The Sky News interview was wide ranging but reportage of Ratcliffe’s remarks on the serious problems facing Europe were largely glossed over in favour of the immigration controversy. Speaking particularly of the chemical industry which he knows best, noting of its importance:
it’s so fundamental to the way in which we live today. You can’t run hospitals without a chemical industry, you can’t feed people without a chemical industry, and you can’t make weapons — you can’t defend yourself — without a chemical industry, so it’s a really serious national security issue.
Ratcliffe stated energy and compliance costs are so high in Europe they are “unsurvivable” for industry, something foreign competitors were taking maximum advantage of. There is real risk in pursuing this path, he said, telling Sky:
…with energy costs that are three or four times that of the USA, and carbon taxes which have quadrupled since 2020, and allowances that have halved since 2020, and our competitors who import product don’t pay carbon taxes. Product that comes in predominantly from China is dumped in the European market, those are unsurvivable conditions.
…they will close down and we’ll bring imports in. Nothing will survive in petrochemicals and plastics in these conditions… imports from countries which don’t have the same regard for the environment, are probably a coal-based economy… if you decarbonise Europe by deindustrialising Europe part of that will have taken place because of cheap imports, but of course once our indigenous production is gone then the imports are no longer cheap, because of course the prizes rise and it’ll be a stranglehold over Europe.
Manufacturing has already “collapsed” in the UK, he said.
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