Jim Ratcliffe. Photo: Mike Egerton/PA.
The billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, who also owns chemicals empire Ineos, called on the country’s politicians to “show some courage” by tackling immigration, welfare dependency and the sluggish economy.
“You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he told Sky News.
“If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration, with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living ... then you’re going to have to do some things which are unpopular, and show some courage.”
Ratcliffe, who himself is an immigrant to Monaco, where he resides, wrongly claimed that the population of Britain had swelled by 12 million people in the past five years to reach 70 million, blaming the increase on migration.
He said: “The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?”
Ratcliffe, who is one of Britain’s richest men, said Keir Starmer had to grip the challenges facing the economy.
“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.
He said he was unsure whether the Prime Minister was being prevented by “the apparatus” from tackling the problems, or whether he was “maybe too nice”.
Ratcliffe claimed that Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, was, like Keir, “an intelligent man” with “good intentions.”
The UK needed “somebody who’s prepared to be unpopular for a period of time to get the big issues sorted out”, Mr Ratcliffe said.
He compared it to his tenure as owner of Manchester United, which began in early 2024 and required him to deliver a difficult turnaround.
“I’ve been very unpopular at Manchester United because we’ve made lots of changes,” he said. “But for the better, in my view. And I think we’re beginning to see some evidence in the football club that that’s beginning to pay off.”
It comes less than 24 hours after Ashwin Prasad, the chief executive of Tesco, warned Britain is “sleepwalking” into a worklessness epidemic because of the millions of people out of work and on benefits.